08 May 2007

Vegas and Red Bull

To round out my month 'o travel, I had one final trip to Las Vegas, this time for a company training exercise. Vegas, as always, was a whirlwind and fantastic, but also included more thoughtful work than usual.

We essentially had 30 hours to concept, research, put together and present a pitch on a made up product. The key to this presentation, though, had to be deep customer insight on a particular target group. This meant going out and trying to find this person, find out what the people around him thought of him, and figuring out what made him tick. Oh, and we were also given a sin by which this person was driven, in our case, lust.

All which meant we went up and down the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond, trying to put together the pieces. I visited some clubs (for the first time), and a strip club; we went to a Ferrari dealership, a church, and talked to a lot of cabbies. And that was all just in the first 20 hours.

By hour 24, we were all up and raring to put together our presentation. This was at approximately 5pm on Thursday evening. At about 5am Friday morning, we were all in desperate need of a nap. Yes, you read it right...we were up all night. We went to bed for about an hour, but then were up and at 'em again to be ready to present by 9am. Loony toons, crazy time!

Our presentation went really well; we didn't win but I thought we rocked.

I lasted until about 1am Saturday morning, when my body actually started shutting down while I was at a craps table. Who knew I had it in me?!

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