KIMBERLY-CLARK | Conference Concept/Branding

CHALLENGE: Kimberly-Clark’s CEO wanted to ensure that the strategies discussed at his annual conference were not immediately forgotten when attendees returned to work.

SOLUTION: What’s a surefire tactic to ensure the CEO’s strategy is understood? Retained? Ownable AND scalable? Good questions! And the SPARQ Summit (Smart People Asking the Right Questions) will have dozens of them.

Questions will be our delivery system—with an award-winning “questionologist” teaching us how to ask the right ones. We’ll hear the “best questions” (and smart outcomes) from game-changers inside the corporation AND outside the industry. And we’ll award colleagues whose “right questions” led us to solve old problems in fresh ways. All the while, infusing the corporate culture with a new curiosity.

• STAGING & ENVIRONMENT: To emphasize the “questions” theme, attendees will be virtually submerged in them—through the use of decals that extend across floors and walls; giant LED graphics, quotes, videos, and more.

• CONTENT DELIVERY: All content will start with— and emphasize the power of—questions (in live presentations and video interstitials).

• PRE-SUMMIT TACTICS: Attendees will know this is not the same old Summit the minute they get a “teaser” version of the strategy (via branded thumbdrive) a week prior. It will provide the time to formulate the right questions. And they’ll be asked to submit one prior to meeting.

• QUESTION BUTTON: Sitting at center of attendees’ small tables, device will allow for Q&As around specific strategy points.

• GUEST SPEAKER: The key to innovation is not gathering more data but asking the ambitious, frame-changing questions that send companies down unexpected paths of inquiry. So argues business journalist WARREN BERGER, author of “The Book of Beautiful Questions.”

• SPARQ VIDEOS will feature game changers from inside the corporation AND outside the industry, including “House of Cards” show-runner, MELISSA JAMES GIBSON (pictured), whose big question wasn’t, “How do we survive the loss of our show’s star?” But rather…

• SPARQ EMPLOYEE MICRO-SITE: Site will extend “Asking the Right Questions” mindset to the K-C workday (with leadership answering a set number weekly).

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