Event Marketer Spring 2022 - 67

REED
BRAND: Zendesk
CURRENT TITLE: Senior Director-Global Strategic Events
DREAM TEAM TITLE: VP-Global Event Strategy &
Communications
WHY WE WANT HER: For her ambassador's spirit
and talent in moderating and hosting. " She is quick to
take someone's experience or topic and make it clear,
relatable, and accessible to everyone, " her peers say.
As a former chief of large-scale call centers,
an industry expert on the customer experience,
and now a strategist for customer-service
software brand Zendesk's global
events, Sarah Reed is in a unique position
to address evolving attendee expectations.
For Reed, who originally studied to
be a news anchor and brings a wealth of
communications experience into her role
at Zendesk, the future of b-to-b is more
empathetic and spontaneous.
" We're in a noisy space, and it's harder
for all of us to keep the attention of audience
members. It was hard pre-pandemic
because the space was so crowded, but now,
with the pandemic, it's even worse because
everyone with a Zoom account can technically
throw an event, " Reed says. " So,
to figure out how to cut through all of
that noise, it really requires event marketers
to think more strategically about
how we attract and retain someone's
attention. And that means we have to
switch stuff up all the time. "
Reed joined Zendesk to run its editorial
brand Relate, what would become the
namesake of the brand's global user conference.
She now puts her content, logistics
and operations skills to use to strengthen
that event. She also manages the brand's
multi-country Showcase event series for
customer service executives. More recently,
she managed virtual and hybrid pivots,
which involved reimagining the traditional
customer touchpoints.
eventmarketer.com
CAREER
HIGHLIGHT:
The moment 150
members of the San
Francisco Gay Men's
chorus surprised 2,000
Zendesk attendees with
a performance that
left not a dry eye in
the room.
" It was hard enough in-person, but
what I could do is take you by the hand and
walk you over to a demo booth, I could
walk you over to an executive, I could
have you meet a partner in person, and
suddenly, you feel more invested in taking
action, " Reed says. " Now, you're like, 'Eh, I
can just shut my laptop down. I can close
the browser. I can just walk out of the room.'
what's now becoming equally as important
within her organization is building loyalty
and infusing less " tangible " topics into the
experience. " It's now OK for b-to-b marketers
to talk about empathy in their events.
It's actually a good thing. We should be
bringing in topics of social impact, topics
that were once thought of as 'soft' and that
belonged in HR land, " Reed says. " Now, we
are realizing that our audiences want that,
because that's how they create a connection
back to us. "
Sustainability is a corporate pillar for
Zendesk, and the events organization conducts
painstaking analysis into the planning
process to anticipate waste and find
ways to mitigate it
through donation
programs, charitable partnerships and
sponsors who can help offset the costs
to do it. By showing real numbers
and the potential impact of how their
involvement will mitigate that, sponsors
see the value and everybody benefits,
Reed says.
" I hope that we give our audiences
For us, we have to continuously be thinking
about how to make you feel like this is an
action you need to take right now. There's
an urgency we're trying to build. "
While pipeline and bookings numbers
are still as important as they once were,
the benefit of the doubt that they're going
to want to come along on something new
with us, " Reed says. " That's how we're actually
going to start to change how events are
run, how we can actually do this job better.
Let's improve the experience, improve
the content, make networking fun. They're
going to show up. "
Sign us up, Reed. Welcome to the
Dream Team.
SPRING 2022 EVENT MARKETER
67
http://www.eventmarketer.com
Event Marketer Spring 2022

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