Haute’s Rules to Engagement
Haute’s guide to making your content connect
What’s your challenge?
Engagement. Rules.
What does it take to make an impact in an environment that still feels the ground beneath it shifting? It takes a genuine human-to-human connection to keep people’s attention and turn it into something more—a lasting relationship.
Look, you can put the right people in a room and talk at them for hours on end. We’ve all been at that conference or product launch where we’re sitting face forward, heads tilted down and staring at our phone screens. Why not skip the PowerPoint slides and create a connection that leads to that spark of inspiration?
At Haute, we believe that engaging the right emotions in a shared experience drives meaningful connections that ultimately drive business decisions. And we’ve created Rules to Engagement as our guiding principle to help customers smash the ordinary and deliver experiences that deliver just that. They’re our unique code, and we apply them for ourselves and deliver them in every piece of work we create for clients. In this series, we’ll be diving into Haute’s Rules to Engagement to discover how we apply our code of creativity to real-life clients as we create meaningful and unforgettable experiences.
Rules to Engagement
- Forget formulas. Never deliver something run-of-the-mill. Create unique, custom-made experiences that match your challenges so that you’re not just engaging—you’re engaging in a way that makes sense for you and your customers.
- Use entertainment as a keystone to education. Good sales enablement and customer engagement always include some form of fun and excitement to reinforce content and deliver it in an interesting way.
- Make each mile of the journey meaningful. Capture the attention of difficult-to-reach prospects—and keep them interested with universal “human” hooks that unite. It’s not about wowing them from the start—it’s about continuing to delight with every piece of communication.
- Meet your audience where they are. Customers and sales makers are inundated daily with marketing and messaging. Deliver the messaging to them in a way that’s convenient and unique to increase engagement.
- Embrace experimentation. Don’t shrink away from a great idea just because it’s new or different. A lasting impression requires big, bold moves—moves that haven’t been made before.
Case in point
The Heist: Dell’s Latitude Launch Program
Didn’t we say we never deliver something run-of-the-mill? The Heist perfectly illustrates our Rules to Engagement—our devotion to designing experiences that are completely unique and utterly engaging.
The Heist was created as an escape room learning experience designed to train sales teams in 22 countries across the world. We created an unforgettable learning experience for sales reps for the new Dell Latitude lineup and feature set. Haute approached the challenge to engage, entertain, educate, and light a spark for sales enablement using multisensory touchpoints. Rule #1: Forget formulas.
The story: Overnight at Dell, the unthinkable has happened. The new Latitude 9000 has been stolen by an international crime syndicate collecting the world’s most valuable treasures. Sales teams played the roles of law enforcement assigned to use the key features of the new product to recover the stolen goods and catch the thieves. Rule #2: Use entertainment as a keystone to education.
Intricate props including evidence containing clues to the Latitude were embedded into the crime scene and police briefing rooms in the form of extensive dossiers and notes on suspects. It was up to the sales team to study the clues and solve the crime, be it in a converted conference room or mobile trailer detailed to look the part – all in a race against time. We created intrigue, heightened emotion, and pulse-quickening excitement to build awareness, learn intricacies of the product line and solve a major fake crime. Rule #3: Make each mile of the journey meaningful.
Haute designed, staged, and managed the “burglary”. Remember, this was all designed to be repeated for Dell sales teams around the globe! To broaden the reach and add an extra touchpoint, Haute concocted a custom board game for the sales team members who would not get the full build-out of the experience. Leave no audience behind! Rule #4: meet your audience where they are.
The Dell sales team is trained on new products almost weekly. Knowing the launch of this latest product was a large piece of the quarterly launch portfolio, we were able to experiment with a new learning format to drive engagement, intrigue, and information retention. Rule #5: Embrace experimentation.
Are you connecting?
We connected the business end of what drives our markets to the emotional side of what makes us human. We made connections that created these experiences, and that community grew exponentially during the pandemic. We invite clients in to assess and solve challenges together. They know we’re not going to offer up a menu of pre-packaged options and let them pick. Haute doesn’t operate like that. First—there’s no thrill. Second—it doesn’t bring results.
Our community is as vast and strong as it’s become because we insist on pushing boundaries on comfort zones and bring our community members along with us. We invite clients in to assess and solve challenges together. They know we’re not going to offer up a menu of pre-packaged options and let them pick. Haute doesn’t operate like that for one, because there’s no thrill, and two, it doesn’t bring results.
What’s next at Haute?
You can experience what it feels like to put all five Rules to Engagement together into one event at Flashpoint. Flashpoint is your opportunity to join 80 industry pros to partake in educational peer-sharing sessions (a.k.a. Spontaneous Think Tanks) that will spark your mind, activities that will spark your spirit, and make connections to spark your business. Oh, and did we mention it’s in the Bahamas, January 18-21, 2022? We curate our participant list for optimal conversation and problem solving, so request your invitation today at www.flashpointsummit.com
Coming up in our next piece:
Choose your own adventure, live skits, science experiments, and recipe challenges, oh my! When the pandemic hit the globe, Dell Technologies was left with an interesting challenge—how would it continue its event marketing and sales enablement efforts? Be on the lookout for our next piece to discover how Haute leveraged our Rules to Engagement to deliver digital delightfulness in the form of “edu-tainment” for Dell salesmakers with It’s LIVE! And how they “forgot formulas” with a unique approach to gamified sales training..
Haute helps clients engage more meaningfully to make a lasting impression. With unique Rules to Engagement, our team delivers targeted, customized, and highly creative marketing, sales, and event services designed to foster meaningful connections. To learn more about our extensive list of client services and capabilities, visit WeAreHaute.com
Let’s Work Together
Spark your mind at Flashpoint
Flashpoint is your chance to engage with thought leaders, change-makers, marketing mavericks, and rebels against the status quo. We curate the participants to ensure a balanced ratio of suppliers and brands. January 18-21, 2022, Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas. Request your invitation today!