Marketing Offsite: Day One

Have you seen the IBM ideating commercial?  Well, there’s some truth in it.  Today my company gathered 25 of the top marketing leaders from across the globe to “ideate”.   We met in a vacation home in the Santa Cruz mountains to brainstorm and participate in strategic planning sessions for an upcoming product launch.  Not that I’m complaining.  It’s beautiful here and is a better alternative to being stuck in a cold, dreary conference room all day.  Check out the pictures…I’m sure you will agree.

After coming up with brilliant ideas for the future, we rushed back to the hotel and quickly departed for our team building/dinner.  I can honestly say I’ve never been to a place like that before (and I’ve run the gamut of team building activities).   We were dropped off in a quaint little area in Santa Cruz.  The group was ushered into an upstairs loft which doubles as an art studio.  The moment you enter, your senses are flooded with a deliciously eclectic environment that is a mixture of odd items, live animals (bird, turtles, hamsters, etc), art supplies, tables, chairs, and waiters.  Very strange. 

Anyway, we proceeded to the back of the loft which was set-up like a small art gallery.   The night began with appetizers and the obligatory “wine” pitch (Californians love their wines).  Since I don’t drink, I opted for the water.  A few minutes later, we were settling down at tables loaded with art supplies and canvases.  As appetizers were passed around, we learned about our team building art project.  Each individual was supposed to create a masterpiece using tissue and a special gel paste (looked like normal glue to me).  Then, each “team” would be called away to work on a larger art project that depicted our company logo. 

I was skeptical at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun.  Pics of my team’s lovely creation are below.  Yeah, they were crappy, but we were proud anyway (haha).  Our logo project was signed by each person, and the finished artwork will be hung up in our office in San Jose, so that will be cool.  I hope it looks better than our individual projects. 😉

All in all, it was a good day, but it’s about 11:15 PT, and it’s been a long day.  I still have work to do, so I’m signing off for now.  I’ll report on “Day Two” tomorrow.