Integration Partners: The Race For Creative Marketing

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Two years ago, the marketing team at Integration Partners started brainstorming. They worried about the fatigue their vendor partners and customers felt sitting through technical sessions at hotels, and wondered if there was a better way to bring them together under one roof.

The Integration Partners Pinewood Derby was born.

’Engineers like to make things; they like to tinker. And we decided it was the perfect event," said Bill Xydias, director of marketing and business development at Integration Partners.

Participants received a kit to build a small wooden race car, with which they could assemble any sort of vehicle they liked, so long as it came in at less than 5 pounds. The cars were weighed at the registration booth prior to the race.

The racetrack included six lanes of 40-foot aluminum track and had an instant replay camera and laser finish line.

Xydias said the derby was "in the spirit of just building a relationship with our customers and even our prospects."

"It's just an old-school way of having fun and something different," he said, adding that the relationships forged at the derby tend to run longer and deeper than those from traditional meetings.

PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2014