ACENTECH RAFFLE
January 2023
Goal
The purpose of this project was to create service design solution to improve the experience of interactions between our company and potential clients at in person events. Throughout this project, I worked with the marketing team and the consultants to discover pain points with our current set up, and to create a solution that would be more productive as well as cost effective.
Background
During my time on the marketing team at Acentech Incorporated, an acoustical engineering consulting firm in Cambridge, MA, I was often tasked with designing print materials for the in person events that the company attended. In person events such as conferences, trade shows, and career fairs were a great way for us to showcase our projects and skills as a company as well as connect with future clients and potential employees. At the start of the new year, our marketing team came together to assess our current performance at these in-person events and brainstorm ways we could improve our presence at upcoming events. Some of the concerns that arose within the marketing group were:
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Physical branded merchandise such as water bottles, mugs, and notebooks, were not being taken by the clients, or they were just thrown away after, creating excess waste
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Branded merchandise was not interesting and enticing enough to make people want to stop by our booth
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Flyers and booklets proved to be informational, but they doubted that everyone who collected them would actually end up reading through them and then consulting our website
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We were losing money by ordering physical merchandise in bulk when it was not being used
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We were losing money by printing large amounts of booklets and pamphlets when they were not all being collected and read by clients
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There was a lack of contact information being reported to us from the consultants who attended the events.
In order to gain more insight on this problem, I decided to survey the consultants who were physically attending these events. Because our company was transitioning to a seller-doer model at the time, many of our consultants were new to networking at in person events, and needed a more structured system to organize client contact information. The main concerns that arose among the consultants were:​​
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Consultants were meeting so many clients at the events that they were not able to collect everyone's contact information.
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Many attendees who stopped by our booth would take our company's information and neglect to contact us after the event.
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Over the last few years, physical business cards have become less popular and have been replaced by QR codes that add contact information directly to the phones of our consultants, which then became difficult for our consultants to find, organize, and report back to administration.
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The consultants also stated that because many of the events we attend are related to sustainability in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, conference attendees feel discouraged from giving out or taking physical merchandise and paper materials because they contribute to environmental waste.
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Bringing a lot of physical merchandise to conferences created unnecessary shipping costs and more work for the consultants to pick up the merchandise and haul it to and from the conference with them.
After discussing this issue with both the marketing team, administration, and the consultants, I gathered that the main pain-points I needed to address through my solution were to reduce excess spending and waste on physical merchandise and printed materials, improve the process of collecting contact information from clients, and create a more interesting and enticing booth experience for conference attendees
Solution
Surveying different members of our company on their in-person event experience gave me a lot of insight into what was not working with our current set-up, which proved to be very beneficial when brainstorming a solution. So, I brought my findings to the marketing team and discussed possible solutions that we could execute within our budget and short time-frame.
The solution that we all agreed would work best was to raffle off a pair of acoustician-approved headphones in exchange for entries in the form of business cards. We decided on this solution because we felt that as an acoustical engineering company, we should provide our clients with a piece of "merchandise" that aligns with our functions and values as a company. And what do we know better than anyone else? Sound. So we chose to have our consultants choose a pair of headphones to raffle off and provide an explanation as to why they are acoustician-approved. We also felt that although we would have to spend money from our budget on a few pairs of quality headphones, we would still be saving money by not ordering the usual branded mugs, water bottles, and notebooks, and they would not be going to waste either.
Although we had decided on a solution to improve the pain-points regarding over-spending, merchandise waste, and making the merchandise at our booth more enticing, the headphone raffle did not solve the larger issue of providing information about our company and gathering contact information in a seamless and organized manner.
This is where my raffle card design comes into play. In order to make the raffle work seamlessly, I designed a perforated bookmark that tears into two parts, one on which the client write down their contact information on, and then tear off to keep as their raffle ticket, and the other that the client gets to keep which provides a brief summary of our company's services as well as a QR code to our website's "about us" page. I felt that the prize being a pair of valuable headphones would also encourage the client to hold on to their half of the bookmark because they would be interested in knowing the results of the raffle. Additionally, having each client that visits our booth write their information down on the card prevents the issue of people not having physical business cards to give to us. Having everyone's contact information written in the same format would also make it easier for our administrative team to add the contacts into the company's database once our consultants return from the event. Finally, a perforated bookmark is a fairly small item to print which would save us money and reduce paper waste, and could easily be modified and reprinted depending on the event we were going to attend.
First Draft of Design
Second Draft of Design
Once I created the initial card design, I brought it to the marketing team as well as several consultants at the company to test out. The main piece of feedback that I received was that the area of the card to fill out contact information was too small and difficult to read. Additionally, members of the company thought there should be a greater variety of images on the other side of the card to showcase more of our company's projects.
© 2023 Acentech Incorporated, Cambridge, MA. All rights reserved. Artwork designed exclusively for Acentech Incorporated under a work for hire. All rights, title, and goodwill remain the property of Acentech Incorporated and use of the artwork is limited to the designer's portfolio only.