The Field Program Build: From Side Project to Core Motion

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Events & Experiential Marketing

All projects·From: Field Marketing: Regional and Local Event Programs

CoreSimulation· 50 minutes

Airbnb

Objective: Play out building a regional field marketing program from a single pilot city through a multi-city expansion, deciding at each checkpoint whether to hire dedicated regional owners, when to expand, and how to report pipeline contribution so the program survives its next budget review.

You're launching Airbnb's first dedicated field marketing motion: 6 regional dinners approved for the year, no dedicated regional owner hired yet, and a sales team asking you to just 'wing it' centrally to save time.

Every choice routes to a consequence grounded in the lesson's core-motion-vs-side-project distinction and its 90/180-day measurement framework. A shortcut at launch measurably weakens the numbers you'll need to defend the program's budget.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeTrack per-city qualified meetings, opportunities, and confirmed vs. automated attribution

No cost, sufficient for tracking a program across a handful of cities

Paid upgrades (optional, faster/deeper)

HubSpot CRM(optional)

FreemiumTag event attendees at RSVP and run automated influence attribution as a starting point for sales to confirm

Removes manual RSVP tagging once a program spans several cities and dozens of attendees per quarter

No access? Google Sheets with a manual RSVP tag per attendee, cross-checked with sales in a recurring call

The process

Simulation

Launching the Program

Quarter 1, Day 0

Budget for 6 regional dinners is approved for the year. No dedicated regional owner is hired yet. Sales wants dinners running now and suggests the central events team just handle all 6 cities directly.

Sample output

Budget: 6 dinners approved | Regional owners hired: 0 | Cities queued: Austin, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Boston, Miami

Spend to date:$0

Budget remaining:Full annual field marketing budget

How do you launch the program?

Final deliverable

A quarter-by-quarter build log showing the launch decision, the expansion decision, and the day-180 attribution report, with qualified meetings and confirmed (not automated) pipeline contribution at each checkpoint.

See a reference example

Sample output

Chewy Field Marketing Program Build Log (excerpt)

Q1: Hired a dedicated Austin regional owner before launching. Pilot dinner: 14 qualified meetings, 6 opportunities from 18 attendees.
Q2: Expanded to Chicago and Denver using Austin's documented playbook (central logistics, local guest lists). Combined qualified meetings: 34 across 3 cities.
Q3, Day 180: Automated attribution flagged $2.1M in influenced pipeline. Sales rep confirmation reduced this to a verified $1.3M, which held up in the budget review and funded the remaining 3 cities.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Chooses to hire a dedicated regional owner before or during the first expansion wave
Recognizes that standardizing logistics/follow-up while localizing guest lists is what let the expansion scale without quality loss
Chooses to confirm automated attribution with sales reps before reporting a pipeline number