Scaling Dine’s Biggest Events

Let’s zoom out for a second. As a director of three major brands with national events that must WOW attendees (franchise owners) with solid content and programming that would get them fired up for the work ahead, Mia had seriously high stakes for IHOP and Applebee's event presentations.  

Similar to an annual sales kickoff, these corporate conferences often serve as the critical opportunity to get everyone onboard with organizational priorities, new product updates, and aligned to a greater vision. Oh, and it’s supposed to be exciting! Exhilarating! 

Knowing the huge implications of these communications, GhostRanch dove in—and went deeper than simply making slides pretty. As Mia said of GR:

“They weren't just executing graphics, but they were invested in the brand and the storytelling and the culture.”

Before partnering with a dedicated event presentation partner, things could get convoluted and confused. Mia’s team would consistently run into a handful of major pain points from different vendors over the years, including:

• Chaotic organization 
  • When version control isn’t under control, slides get missed and multiple people have different decks. Eeek!
• Missing the big idea
  • Mia said “the narrative would be off” with previous partners. Maybe they were more focused on shine, rather than the substance of the story at hand.
• Lack of cohesion
  • Recycled slides and inconsistencies would often result from a lack of one central owner of the presentation body of work’s greater vision with the event execution.
• Onsite access & deliverables
  • If Dine execs showed up and the slides weren’t right onsite, making edits in real-time made things messy (not to mention stressful).

As anyone that’s planned an event knows, there is a LOT of upfront work and preparation. Lists upon lists and meetings upon meetings. One or two cats to wrangle as well. We're here for it.

With a pile of presentations to conceive and customize to each individual speaker's liking, GhostRanch worked directly with each executive far ahead of the curve, so by the time they walked into the Dine office for the corporate rehearsal, they had the confidence to nail the walk-through. Best of all? Their GhostRanch presentation designer was also right in the room to make live edits and tweaks in-person, on the spot.

Because we believe so strongly that presentations are more than just “pretty n polished slides”, we embedded ourselves into the entire planning process:

“It has just been an extremely symbiotic relationship between GhostRanch and our third party planning agencies—specifically from the production and tech side… GhostRanch is able to speak the language and walk the walk, they have willingly joined our production calls. We have gone back and forth on lingo and they have weighed in on edits for graphics.” 

GhostRanch has now been onsite as a “Presentation Partner” for 7 conferences that Dine Brands produces. This typically includes a range of decks, production assets and materials all within the right brand guidelines. 

Putting together big events can be unpredictable! Being onsite has allowed us to roll with the punches as well—right alongside the Dine Brands teams. 

Mia said that not only did she like the GhostRanch good vibes at the event but being able to make changes or edits as needed, in real-time was invaluable:

In just a few years, Dine Brands + GhostRanch have now spent over 3000 hours together. 

That’s 75 full-time weeks’ worth of time that Mia’s team was freed up—imagine the possibilities!

Let’s take a look at how a few more of our outputs stack up:

• 60+ session decks
  • From pre-production to the final click
  • IHOP’s fall conference averaged 45 slides per!
• 7 master templates, including audits, logos, and theming sessions
• Production materials galore
• Over 2 weeks’ worth of onsite support and on-the-go edits, including 7 rehearsal days 
• 5 award decks (template design and last minute populating)
• 2 photo montage presentations
• Last minute event graphics / slide tweaks, on lock
• Lots of food cravings, one or two DOLLARITAs consumed (purely for R&D purposes, people!)

We ask everyone this question and we genuinely appreciate the honest feedback. 

The GhostRanch Guiding Lights include setting the bar high (and going above it), being responsive and producing world class work. And because our team wanted to respond to the pain points that Mia and her team experienced before working with the Ranch, this type of feedback is truly our lifeblood. 

On communication: 

“Oh, wow, they do what they say they're going to do. The communication from the very start was flawless. It just has been a five star experience through and through, by way of, having a partner who acknowledges your request, and who sends back almost exactly what you need, 100% of the time.”

On organization:

“Accessible assets have been the best part of this entire plan and partnership with GhostRanch.”

On keeping a keen eye and delivering world-class work:

“I think what, kind of, alleviated our executives’ nerves, and instilled confidence in us using GhostRanch was the fact that GhostRanch caught it all, and made improvements before we needed to suggest it.”

There’s a reason why GhostRanch dubs themselves “dedicated presentation partners.” We are with you every step of the way—from planning to pre production to onsite event support. 

If you need help executing your story and elevating your presentations, we’re there for you.

We’re honored to share that Mia’s team at Dine Brands has now incorporated GhostRanch into their annual budgets.

“After going through the process, the first year, and then seeing the value in what GhostRanch provided. Now it's a non-negotiable when we put together the budgets, it's worth every penny and one of the things that I think GhostRanch did really well is you guys gave us a budget and you stuck to a budget, you were really transparent.”