"We'll be judged by our success"

With its own live marketing institute the company Vok Dams from Wuppertal aims to develop new areas of business.

It has now officially been in operation for three months, the Vok Dams Live Marketing Institute intended as another business mainstay for the number one in the event segment in Germany, but operating nonetheless as an independent limited liability company. Time enough for an initial review of what purpose an institute of this kind serves, how differently it can operate in the marketplace from a classic event agency, how the institute and the Wuppertal-based group's other businesses complement each other - and how they set themselves apart.
Describing the baseline scenario, Vok Dams, CEO and founder of the institute, says the start-up was driven by the more clearly emerging trend in the corporate community to seek competent partners as a means of outsourcing a wide range of marketing activities. "Identifying the demand, we augmented our strategic consulting services. For this we exited day-to-day business with the institute," managing director Wolfgang Altenstrasser adds. With a vehicle of this kind both men are convinced that a new dimension can be developed in customer relations going beyond the customary "service provider-client" footing. Complex projects call for trust and a considerable measure of discretion, they explain. The consultancy trade is extremely tight-lipped in respect of its clients and assignments, but the institute staff have by all means succeeded in penetrating this business field during the first 100 days. They point to a client list including such names as ARAG, Mercedes-Benz, Citibank and Karstadt. "This is a new experience for us," Altenstrasser says. "Particularly in the field of internal corporate communications we are involved in highly sensitive issues, be it training, change-processes, strategy and executive conferences or the evaluation of internal communications tools and live marketing efficiency audits."
They adopt an extremely self-assured stance: "We want to be judged by our success, and so for certain projects we offer to make part of our fee conditional on the achievement of a defined target," Dams says.
In so doing they achieve what event agencies are still finding difficult: access to the upper echelons, where the decision-makers are to be found.
Dams has no doubt: "In setting up the institute we have closed the gap between agencies and management consultants, occupying a new business area in the process." After eight years hard work, event marketing has at last been established as a concept in the public perception. "But to our way of thinking the term is not broad enough, we must now take live marketing and live communication forward. This entails far more than the pure-play event," Dams explains the institute's further objectives.
Altenstrasser is not worried about the institute's failing to be perceived as an independent company. "We deliberately used the name Vok Dams as an outward sign of where we have our origins." The institute is open to all types of partnership in the course of its consultancy. "Even companies that do not belong directly to the event segment have no reservations," Altenstrasser is pleased to report.

m+a report Nr.7 / 2005 vom 27.10.2005
m+a report vom 27. Oktober 2005