Concept Summary

Background
The CLAAS Season Kick-Off is an annual event for CLAAS’ own sales division, salespeople and the press. It took place during the course of 11 event days - spread over a period of more than one month - with 100 guests per wave.
"We enable farmers to be the best in their field" - the CLAAS mission statement is the basis of all communication and also reflects the relationship between the brand and the end customer. Sales personnel play a particularly important role as the \"face of the brand\". It acts as an essential communication channel for existing and potential customers. It is therefore important to adapt products and services to the needs and requirements of the target group and to provide sales with the best possible tools and communication strategies. This is exactly where the Season Kick-off comes in.

Task
To create transparency about product- and customer-oriented activities and above all to ensure a consistent product positioning across all sales levels, CLAAS implemented a yearly planning cycle. This planning cycle should enable an optimized matching of product values and customer reasoning to contribute to a strong and homogenous CLAAS brand and product perception in the markets and for customers. To hand over the first set of aligned Go-to-Market Plans (as excerpt of product multi-year planning) to the sales organizations, the Season Kick-off has been created for CLAAS’ most important multipliers as major bullet horn. Main goal for the event was to support the sales force by providing them with all necessary information with respect to new and not so new products in due time for the upcoming sales term. Additional objectives were strengthening the CLAAS brand and an emotional boost of motivation to kick-off into the new season.
Based on this briefing, we developed an event that focused in particular on the customer perspective and staged the season kickoff as an innovative, highly captivating and dynamic brand experience.

Creative Idea and Execution
How do you create an annual kick-off for sales, trade partners and the press that focuses entirely on the end customer with all their requirements for modern agricultural machinery, individual needs and their constantly growing challenges, without being present themselves? From here, we developed a format that breaks completely new ground and is unparalleled in the industry. Instead of a very classic brand and product show, we developed a multimedia-staged play that staged strategy, product highlights, features and solutions in an inspiring and captivating way. Unseen. Surprising. Convincing.

From the perspective of the end customers, we staged the digitalization of agriculture driven by CLAAS as a generational conflict. With a good dose of tongue-in-cheek. Father and daughter, boomer and digital natives set off together on a journey of discovery into the interconnected world of CLAAS products and services. As a live show in front of a 20-meter-wide LED wall. With impressive, photorealistic 3D scenes, rendered in real time. Live performance and multimedia staging provided the perfect stage for numerous new products, which were presented in a highly dynamic and dynamic way.

Results
The CLAAS Season Kick-off was the most successful event in the company's history in terms of guest satisfaction. It was rated by guests with the highest scores for information, show, product presentation and relevance and received an average score of 4.5 out of 5 possible stars.