LIFETOUCH CASE STUDY

Client Background

Founded in 1936, LifeTouch has long been a leader in the school portrait and yearbook industry. More specifically, the company is the largest employee-owned photographic corporation in the world. Based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Lifetouch prides itself on the ability to touch lives through pictures and to affect lives through corporate values.

The Challenge

Despite leading the industry, Lifetouch wanted to ensure that the sales force, photographers, and operations staff were still being challenged to find new ways to approach their customers. In addition, executives worried that sales and account executives were not efficiently approaching their customers as a team. With a vision to inspire, the LifeTouch executives began searching for a training and entertainment organization that would respond to their concerns and reflect the appreciation they felt for the company's highly valued employees. In addition, they needed a company capable of simultaneously engaging and training nearly 1,600 employees who were leaving snowbound Minnesota to attend the company's winter meeting in Florida.

The Brave New Workshop's Role

Hoping to make an impact, LifeTouch executives selected the Brave New Workshop (BNW) to help them achieve the training and entertainment goals they had set. In order to understand the learning points most important to the LifeTouch team, the Brave New Workshop creative director interviewed key executives. Eventually, together the group selected improvisational exercises specific to selling as a team and responding innovatively to change - regardless of what that change might be, such as a customer relationship, industry trend, or volatile marketplace. Much to the delight of participants and planners alike, these learning points were then successfully reinforced in the hour-long training session.

Now comes the hard part, how do you get 1,600 people in one room to experience the training with the same potency as a smaller group. Drawing on their roots in theatre, the Brave New Workshop trainers instinctively knew how to involve the entire audience in creating an improv-based environment that delivered a positive and impactful message. Proof of the BNW's ability to reach groups both big and small was clearly evident in the 1,600 person standing ovation that followed the training session. Equally evident was the Brave New Workshop's ability to purely entertain as the 45-minute improvisational comedy show performed the next day for the same group also received a standing ovation.