How to Use a Back-stage Blog & Virtual Community Networking to
Maximize Your Road Show's Impact

CHALLENGE: "God forbid you actually get out and speak to customers
in person and hear what they say," laughs Chris Grams Senior
Manager, Marketing Communications, at Red Hat.

18 months ago, the Red Hat team did just that. Four staffers drove a
souped-up RV across America, stopping in diners and coffee shops to
meet casually with users of their technology who they'd emailed
invites to along the way.

The tour was such a success that the team decided to do it again for
2004.

But in the intervening time, Red Hat had changed dramatically. Now
it was a $115 million year company with enterprise customers
including Morgan Stanley and AOL, many of whom were outside the US.
How do you impress clients and prospects in suits, while remaining
true to your t-shirted fans in the user community?
Plus, what's the best way of handling the internal politics of a
worldwide road tour, with HQ's team dropping into regions run by
local offices?

Last but not least, how can you get the most bang for your road tour
buck? Are there ways to use technology to reach more people than
merely whoever you can squeeze into the meeting rooms?
CAMPAIGN: The tour took place from March 9th to April 1st, with
formal gatherings in seven cities on four continents. First in
February Grams posted an invitation in the company's email
newsletter 'Under the Brim'. Local offices were also asked to help
out, choosing venues, and emailing their own regional lists to
invite attendees.

The team held three separate meetings in each region to please each
constituency. First they did a presentation and Q&A for staff at the
regional office. Then they held a presentation for enterprise
clients and prospects at formal venue such as the Park Hilton in
London. Then, often the same day, they held a user-group meeting
either at the same venue or at a local university hall.

Every presentation began with a showing of Red Hat's official
company video -- it's under five minutes long. Next there were a few
canned presentations, and then loads of Q&A.

Different speakers -- Red Hat execs plus execs from tour co-sponsors
IBM and HP -- met the main team of five guys at each stage of the
show. This helped keep everyone's energy high, and ensured that even
canned presentations didn't sound canned the way they do when you've
given the same speech too often.

Also, the team made a point of learning about their local office
members in the first meeting, and then spotlighting them in client,
prospect and user meetings afterwards. So, presentations always had
a local angle and flavor rather than just focusing on HQ.

No matter how successful you are at getting people to sign up for
your road show, your reach is obviously limited. Grams and the team
used three outreach tactics to extend reach exponentially:

-> Outreach tactic #1. Write a Back-stage Blog (Link below)
A big part of Red Hat's brand is that it's an open source company.
Grams took that to mean that communications should be as open,
honest, and even human as possible, rather than "corporate-sounding."

"I want to give people the sense that Red Hat is made up of real
people. You're not talking to a building, you're talking to an
individual, and some pretty darn smart individuals at that. We're
proud of that.

"I really believe if you talk in a real person's voice, you reach
people in such a deeper way. We try not to make the message so
watered down and so enterprise antiseptic that it appeals to no one.
We may make at least a couple of people mad, but I'm hoping an
enormous number of people feel a deeper connection."

So he set up a Blog (web log) on the site, and encouraged each of
the five team members to post their daily impressions during the
tour. He also invited guest bloggers to post, including speakers and
local staff.

"The first internal reaction was, 'It doesn't sound enterprise
enough.' People worried." But he persisted and got permission to
test the project. "We posted whatever we wanted to. We had lucid
moments and less than lucid moments."

Posts included everything from event Q&A session highpoints, and
snapshots of local staffers, to jetlagged musings about how hard it
can be to find the right hotel room in Boston.

-> Outreach tactic #2. Video the Entire Tour
The team also brought a videographer on the road with them for the
entire tour, who shot almost 80 hours of meeting and backstage
footage. "We didn't want to have the tour result in just us five
guys knowing a lot about the state of Red Hat around the world."
Most important - after every session they grabbed a few attendees
for one-on-one on-camera discussion, sort of like running an
informal global focus group. That footage is currently being edited
for sales training and product development brainstorming.
When Red Hat's rarely-seen founder arrived unexpectedly at one of
the events, the team videotaped a 30-minute interview with him too.
"We'll probably be using that footage in company presentations for
the next 50-years," Grams says happily.

-> Outreach tactic #3. Use Online Social Networking to Extend Your
Reach

A few weeks before the tour began, the New York Times ran an article
on how US presidential candidates were using an online social
networking service called MeetUp to grow community and launch local
real-world events.

Inspired, the Red Hat team decided they should try the system out.
So, on March 1st, they launched the MeetUp Red Hat community and
announced a "Global Meeting Date" of April 1st.

Anyone in the MeetUp free registered member base could sign up to be
added to the list. Then as soon as five or more members emerged in a
particular geographic location -- such as Brisbane Australia or New
York City -- they were asked to choose a location for their meeting.
Because meetings were to take place anywhere in the world where
there were five interested MeetUp members, and the meetings all took
place at 7pm local time on April 1st, it wasn't possible for a Red
Hat staffer at attend most of them.

However, Red Hat HQ hosted their own local group, plus the company
site and email newsletter plugged events.

RESULTS: The total cost was "about 1/5th of what having a presence
at a major trade show would be," notes Grams. But the impact was
enormous -- all told an estimated 1,500 customers, prospects and
users attended the formal tour events.

Although on average roughly 50-75% of RSVPed people actually
attended the tour events, in some countries such as Asia and
Australia, attendee rates ran over 100% because so many people
brought along friends.

Unexpectedly, many of the corporate suit-types who attended the
"enterprise" meetings decided to follow the team to the user-group
meeting, spending four-to-seven hours attending presentations and
Q&A sessions. That's why you'll see suits and t-shirts mingling in
the snapshots posted to the Blog (link below.)

An average of 3,000-5,000 people per day read the latest Blog
entries. The "honesty" in the Blog entries made a few folks at HQ
nervous, especially those who'd previously worked at more formal
enterprise software companies. But the readers themselves seemed to
appreciate the voice. And now other Red Hat execs, including the
CEO, are planning to launch their own Blogs.

As of this writing more than 1,400 fans have joined Red Hat's MeetUp
community with the express intention of attending local meetings
around the world. MeetUp events lead by local volunteers went as
scheduled around the globe on April 1st.

Grams was fascinated to see fervent interest in cities in India,
Korea, Malaysia, and other places the world tour never touched. It's
definitely affecting his route ideas for future tours.

Only next time he'd like a little more time to put the tour together
-- this time the team pulled it off with just three months' warning.
"Ideally I'd love to plan something like this a year out."

Useful links related to this article:
Red Hat's Blog for the World Tour:
http://www.redhat.com/worldtour
Blog entry with photos
http://blogs.redhat.com/archives/000049.html#more
Moveable Type - the low-cost software Red Hat used to power the Blog
http://www.movabletype.org/
Red Hat's MeetUp page:
http://redhat.meetup.com/
MeetUp
http://www.meetup.com
MarketingSherpa's past Case Study:
"How Red Hat Has Kept its Email Newsletter Open Rates Higher Than
Average for Four Years in a Row"
http://library.marketingsherpa.com/b...ContentID=2385
2002 Road Tour Journal featuring Red Hat RV
http://www.redhat.com/roadtour/