The request was for a three-day meeting in a luxurious setting in Montana for 25 members of the Red Bull Energy Drinks Northwest marketing team.
“Six weeks out, a director flew in to discuss the event,” says Paul Sidoriak, a former marketing/sales rep for Red Bull.
Sidoriak met the director in the executive boardroom of one of the more luxurious chain hotels in Montana. He arranged the room just like the photo in the meeting planner brochure, with plush leather chairs, notepads and candy dishes brimming with peppermints.
They discussed the meeting, the director toured the room and then made a special request.
“He told me to take a long look at the room we were in, memorize everything about the space and then told me it was completely unacceptable,” Sidoriak says. “They wanted a luxury, non-traditional setting where their attendees, many of them Millennials, would feel more relaxed so they could open up and be more creative.”
Sidoriak says they decided to use a series of high-end vacation rental properties for meeting space such as a massive log cabin at the gateway to Yellowstone National Park with Wi-Fi, a massive sunken living room and fireplace and a modern lodge hybrid at Yellowstone Club, an uber-private gated resort, which had chef services and six large bedroom suites, all with computers and printers that allowed for small private breakout sessions.
“In the end, what Red Bull wanted was the meeting space to be unique, innovative and contemporary, just like their brand image,” Sidoriak says. “The meeting was a tremendous success.”
