Planner Resilience: Heidi Baillie-David, Creative Group, Inc.
Read how meeting and event planner Heidi Baillie-David of Creative Group, Inc. became innovative in surviving and succeeding during the Covid-19 pandemic.
How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?
We have been working at home since Covid-19 hit a year ago. At first we were dealing with the sudden switch to everyone working at home. We had been able to work from home in the past but never everyone at one time. The cancellations and rebookings of our client programs had started the month prior but really geared up. We had to manage a new way of negotiating with suppliers. We had never had so many programs making these types of drastic changes at once.
In order to keep providing a service to our clients, we made a quick switch to offer virtual meetings and merchandise and individual travel and rewards. Creative Group has been offering merchandise rewards and we were lucky in the sense that we offer diverse solutions to our clients. Our quick pivot to virtual was a game changing and we managed to work with our clients and helped them stay in front of their people with virtual our virtual and merchandise solutions.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where we celebrate the positivity and optimism shown by planners across the industry when navigating the turbulent waters that COVID-19 has brought the meetings and events industry. Keep an eye out as we release more stories like this over the next few months.