The Copy-Paste Roadshow Audit
Objective: Given a three-city roadshow plan with declining attendance, diagnose which elements were wrongly centralized (guest list, invite framing) versus correctly centralized (venue booking, follow-up template), and identify who actually owns each event.
You're the regional marketing lead at Wise reviewing a struggling three-city executive dinner roadshow. Attendance dropped each city: Austin 22 RSVPs of 40 invited, Chicago 14 of 40, Denver 8 of 40. Sales is asking why the program is fizzling.
Classify each part of the roadshow plan as correctly standardized or wrongly centralized, and check who owns each event, then explain the attendance decline using the lesson's framework.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
No cost, sufficient for a single-program audit
The process
2 steps
Step 01 of 02
The right split is a shared skeleton with local muscle: standardize venue-booking process, invite templates, budget approval, and follow-up sequence centrally. Leave guest list curation, the specific pain point framed in the invite, and which sales rep hosts the table to the regional owner who knows their market.
Below is how the Austin, Chicago, and Denver dinners were actually planned. Classify each element as correctly centralized or wrongly centralized, given the framework.
Procedure
- List the 5 planning elements as executed: venue booking (central events team, same steakhouse chain in all 3 cities), invite copy (central events team, identical email in all 3 cities: 'Join us for an exclusive dinner discussing digital banking trends'), guest list (central events team, pulled from one national contact list with no city-specific filtering), which sales rep hosts (central events team assigned whoever was 'available' that week, not the account owner), follow-up email template (central events team, same template for all 3 cities, sent within 48 hours)
- Mark each element as 'should be central' or 'should be local' per the lesson's framework
- Compare to what actually happened
- For each mismatch, note the likely consequence visible in the attendance data
Element Who Decided (Actual) Should Be Verdict Venue booking Central Central Correct Invite copy Central, identical Local WRONG, generic pain point framing Guest list Central, national list Local WRONG, no city-specific ICP match Who hosts Central, 'whoever's free' Local WRONG, not the account owner Follow-up template Central Central Correct Attendance trend: Austin 55% -> Chicago 35% -> Denver 20%. Each city's guest list and invite copy got progressively less relevant as the 'template' aged, and no local account owner hosted to make it personal.
Healthy
Venue booking and the follow-up template stay identical across cities with no attendance cost, because logistics genuinely don't need local judgment.
Unhealthy
Guest list, invite framing, and event host all being decided centrally with no city-specific input, which is the exact 'spray and pray' failure mode the lesson names.
What this means
The declining attendance isn't random fatigue, it's 3 out of 5 planning elements being wrongly centralized, compounding city over city as the generic list and copy age further from anyone's real market.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance drops city over city on a multi-city roadshow using the same materials | Hand guest list curation and invite framing to a regional owner before the next stop, keep logistics central | half day |
| The event host wasn't the account owner for that city's guest list | Reassign hosting to the sales rep who actually owns the top accounts being invited | 30 min |
Step 02 of 02
Field events report to, or sit shoulder-to-shoulder with, the regional sales team, because a field marketer in weekly pipeline reviews knows which accounts are stalled and which region needs a push. Corporate events optimize for reach and brand lift instead.
Given the roadshow was run entirely by the central events team with no regional sales involvement, is this program actually field marketing, or a mini corporate event wearing a field-marketing label? What changes?
Procedure
- Check who owns the program: the central brand/demand-gen events team, with no named regional sales counterpart
- Check who curated each guest list: the same central team, pulling from a generic CRM export, not a rep's account list
- Compare to the field marketing definition: relevance to a specific region and proximity to sales pipeline reviews
- Classify the program and recommend the structural fix
Classification: This is a corporate event with a regional label, not field marketing. Evidence: No named regional sales owner per city; guest lists pulled from a generic CRM export, not an account owner's target list; nobody in the loop attends weekly pipeline reviews for Austin, Chicago, or Denver. Fix: Assign a named regional owner per city who sits with that region's sales team, curates the guest list from their own stalled/target accounts, and hosts the dinner personally.
Healthy
A program labeled 'field marketing' has a named regional owner per market who is close enough to sales pipeline reviews to know which 15 accounts actually belong on the guest list.
Unhealthy
A program labeled 'field marketing' is run entirely by a central team with no regional sales counterpart, which makes it a corporate event in disguise.
What this means
The label on the calendar invite doesn't determine whether something is field marketing, ownership structure does. Fixing the roadshow means assigning real regional owners, not just renaming the initiative.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| A 'field marketing' program has no named regional sales owner per city | Assign one before the next roadshow stop and have them curate that city's guest list personally | half day |
Final deliverable
A one-page audit memo classifying each roadshow planning element as correctly or wrongly centralized, with a program-ownership diagnosis and a specific fix for the next stop.
See a reference example
HelloFresh Regional Dinner Program Audit (excerpt) FINDING: 3 of 5 planning elements were wrongly centralized (invite copy, guest list, event host), correlating with a 55% -> 20% attendance decline across 3 cities. CLASSIFICATION: Program has no named regional sales owner per market, making it a corporate event with a field-marketing label rather than true field marketing. FIX FOR NEXT STOP: Assign a named regional owner in the next city who sits with that region's sales team, curates the guest list from their own top 20 accounts, and hosts personally. Keep venue booking and follow-up template centralized.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly identifies which of the 5 elements should be centralized vs. local
- Connects the wrongly-centralized elements to the attendance decline
- Correctly diagnoses the program as lacking a real regional-sales ownership structure