Cattle Drive

These executives came expecting golf - but Cleveland, Ohio-based meeting planner Todd Schwartz suprised them. "We put them on a cattle drive," he laughs, but he is serious too. His high-flying, much-traveled group is definitely of the "been there, done that" breed - this was a global crowd pulled into a U.S. western location from origination points as far away as New Delhi, Singapore and London. In years past they'd golfed a lot, and they thought they had the meeting routine down pat. Not this year, when they gathered in the Southwest: "In their rooms they found cowboy hats and bandanas, and we were ready to ride," reports Schwartz.

A plus here: this jaded group was non-plugged. "They did not know what was happening next," says Schwartz, who says the client company sparked the ideas that turned into a cattle drive where these executives rode horses amidst a large herd of cows. "The company told me they wanted creative thinking, that everybody was tired of another golf meeting."

The client wanted a different, offbeat meeting, but the client also set out welldefined goals:

1) "They wanted to communicate that this is a team," says Schwartz. And how better to prove that than to force people to herd unruly cattle together? Teamwork definitely was required to get the cows into the corral.

2) "They wanted to give their people the opportunity to bond," says Schwartz. And where better to bond than over beers and steak after a tough round-up?

"Right after the cattle-drive, we had a real cowboy cook-out, outside under the stars," says Schwartz. But it wasn't just chow. "We had a John Wayne lookalike ride in and deliver a pep talk that underlined the company's goals," says Schwartz. It's one thing to blow off a VP's sales speech; it's entirely different when the Duke is explaining reality to a group of greenhorns.

A lesson to draw from this meeting: "Do something outrageous - that's a wake-up call, and it increases memorability, because it gets people talking," says Susan Kearney, a Falls Church, VA, sales consultant. Kearney stresses that unpredictability can come with a small pricetag too. She recallls one meeting she designed when, at a break when everyone was outside, a sky-writing plane flew overhead and slowly wrote out a message that gradually came into view; "Take Out ABC" [the company's prime competitor]. Did people holler with surprise? You bet - and in that moment, that became a meeting people would remember.