Today, corporations are competing on an international scale, colliding with each other with an ever increasing cacophony of messages. The corporate story must be told quickly, clearly, and with maximum impact. In such an environment, EBCs (Executive Briefing Centers) take on a broader and more integrated role in the process of transmitting the corporate vision and product message.
The EBCs briefing programs are delivering a much more sophisticated message. It’s all about telling the company story. Today’s customers are more sophisticated and are not as easily impressed. To do their job, briefing programs and briefing facilities must not only impress, they must communicate.
EBCs are effectively communicating their company’s mission and message, so the people who visit them are often treated to a remarkably high level of presentation sophistication. It’s combining that Wow factor with the insight that allows customers to quickly see and understand how they might solve a problem using our products.
In the Silicon Valley, it’s not uncommon for people to fly in from another country and visit 10 or 12 different briefing centers, so companies have to do something to stand out.
To these folks, developing such storybook presentations is their job, and executive briefing centers – a catch-all term for a wide variety of corporate facilities designed for the dual purpose of hosting high-level executive meetings and articulating a company’s vision in often breathtaking architectural splendor – are where those presentations take place.
“Briefing centers are designed and built to support a company’s strategic goals,” explains Frank Boschi, executive director of the Association of Briefing Program Managers (ABPM). “They do that by providing an ideal environment for companies to showcase the best they have to offer, in a highly customized way, to anyone with whom the company has an interest in doing business, be it executives from another company, current clients, potential clients or even dignitaries from other countries.”
In each case, these briefing centers have been designed and built to embody and communicate the spirit of the company itself, while still functioning as an effective sales and marketing tool. Striking this delicate balance of vision and practicality is not an easy task, however, particularly if the company building the center doesn’t have a specific vision of how its corporate vision should look in brick and mortar.
