When Dillian Fenty Waldron, director, mark- eting and programs, Human Resources Planning Society (HRPS), went to Tucson for a site visit, she liked what she saw. Yet, she was concerned that this destination might be a hard sell. This annual global conference had never met in Tucson and she was worried that potential attendees might be deterred by the city's lack of direct flights from New York (where the society is headquartered).

Nonetheless, Waldron, along with her colleagues, forged ahead and booked the meeting at the J.W. Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa, creating a marketing campaign that capitalized on the newness of this destination. The result? The conference, held in April, attracted 650 attendees -250 more than the previous year.

"We worked with the Tucson CVB throughout the marketing effort since this was a new destination for our group," Waldron said. HRPS gave the newness of the destination a positive spin by emphasizing to the group that it held "a lot of promise and possibility."

A desert plant inspired the theme for the meeting. The message HRPS strove to get across is that the conference would speak to its members' business challenges … "and that you can create something beautiful in an environment that seems barren," Waldron said. The conference program was named "Adapt and Thrive: Aligning, Engaging, and Leading in Challenging Environments."

"We created a lot of anticipation for this program," she explained. "We kept our attendees engaged month after month with a series of e-mails. We used viral marketing to encourage attendees to bring others to the conference." Since attendees to HRPS's global conference are high-level HR professionals, directors, and above, Waldron said, "some of the things that might be an incentive for others wouldn't work for this group." One incentive the society did provide was a significant discount if an HR director wanted to bring his/her team to the conference.

HRPS made a deliberate effort to provide opportunities for attendees to connect with each other prior to the meeting. "We asked them to let us know if they were struggling with a particular issue, and we would put them in touch with other attendees who were facing the same challenges. We set up networking before the conference. Topics for discussion were posted on our Web site and attendees with common interests and concerns could interact with each other."

Waldron believes this active engagement prior to the event was crucial in attracting 250 first-timers to the meeting, who felt part of the community before they arrived on site.

"Our message was that we were meeting in the 'authentic' desert and the location gave a kind of renewal and retreat atmosphere that we made sound very appealing," Waldron said. "We did several keynotes around the theme of thriving in a difficult environment and coached our speakers very carefully, so that whatever they were speaking about tied into this theme," Waldron said.

Michelle Russell is editor of Convene.