The overheated criticism of legitimate corporate meetings and events had a devastating effect across the United States. The travel industry was estimated to have lost $1.9 billion in January and February alone due to cancelled meetings and events.

TBA Global designed a grassroots, viral marketing program – Keep America Meeting – to bring attention to this issue by giving the entire industry a unified voice. We hoped to deliver two messages to the media and our government: Meetings and events help to build successful businesses, and that meetings and events are a critical part of the American economy.

We drove this message through social media. We first created a Keep America Meeting website and online petition, then invited industry media, organizations, and companies to join the effort as ‘official endorsers’ and asked them to promote the campaign to their networks via email campaigns. These partners blanketed the industry with requests to sign the online petition.

All of these communications drove to our Keep America Meeting groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We provided daily tweets, articles and comments to keep the conversations going about the importance of meetings and events.

Our Keep America Meeting campaign succeeded in galvanizing the entire meetings and events industry around this critical issue.

Within 45 days:

• Received more than 21,000 signatures, the largest show of force in our industry
• Garnered coverage in all major industry publications, including international coverage
• Earned 23,170 mentions online, many from individual blogs, including Bill Marriott, chairman of Marriott Hotels
• May 13th, 2009: The signatures were delivered to the Senate Commerce Committee asking for support of meetings, events and incentive travel
• September 9, 2009: The Senate passes the Travel Promotion Act with an overwhelming vote of 79 to 19.

“During the worst crisis in the history of our industry, the Keep America Meeting campaign was the first life preserver,” said the Senior Vice President, Public Affairs, U.S. Travel Association. “It galvanized our industry by giving individuals a collective voice to speak out about the importance of meetings, events and incentive travel programs. Within one week, it was effectively seeded throughout the entire industry.”