How would you creatively engage attendees at a trade show with your products while at the same time teaching them about your company’s social initiatives? Our friends at Virtustream found a unique way.

In May, Virtustream sponsored a booth at the Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, where business and IT executives come from around the world to learn more about new SAP products. But they wanted to do more than promote their products. They wanted to share their social conscience with everyone they met at the show.

While their presenters held sessions on their product offering at Virtustream’s booth, a digital whiteboard artist drew renderings pertaining to the topics. She worked the presentation into a piece of art right before the attendees’ eyes. This allowed everyone passing by to see what was going on and basically acted as an advertisement for their booth. Further, when the session was finished, Virtustream had the images downloaded to a t-shirt press so those who attended could literally wear the notes home.

Now they were ready to add their heart to the effort. They call their cause marketing “Virtustream In Action,” and CURE Childhood Cancer is one of their chosen charities. Not only did they highlight CURE’s important work in the life of children and families fighting cancer, but in keeping with the artistic theme, presenters gave out crayons. Nothing can link art and children like a crayon. Crayons were given for attendance, participation, and for asking literally any question. At the end of the session, attendees were asked to deposit the crayons in boxes marked with CURE’s logo. For each crayon deposited, Virtustream made a monetary donation to CURE.

 

At the end of the show, the donation totaled $5000.

It is exciting to see one of our corporate partners use creativity and ingenuity to share our efforts with a whole new audience. Many thanks to Jennifer Russo for spearheading this idea and for the entire team at Virtustream for coloring CURE all over the show.