Archive for the ‘Add Value to the Event’ Category

We solve for X

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

“Daddy, what is X?”
My daughter asked me this while doing her math homework and it reminded me of a thought I’d been incubating awhile.

I was thinking about the challenges that those of us in the events industry are confronting. Aside from a weak and uncertain economy, enormous technological and demographic shifts are happening every day. Some of these changes represent a real threat to us.

Take, for example, the impact that Craigslist had on the newspaper industry. It was an unexpected, unforeseen new-media force that had a devastating impact on the revenue generated for newspapers by classified ads. Newspapers were a traditional institution long used to loyal followers, steady revenues, and unchallenged relevance. Is there a ‘Craigslist’ lurking out there in the events industry?

Craigslist is to Newspapers and Classifieds what X is to Associations and their Trade shows.

We are all working hard at staying ahead of the curve. At Advertising Week in NYC last month, marketers were everywhere – looking for better ways to communicate with their customers as they continue to move billions more into the digital marketing mix. All of the traditional media were there too — newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV, radio, mail, billboard – in their old analog and in their new digital forms. The creatives and the ad agencies were there as well – thanking Don Draper of Mad Men for making advertising cool again! The new distributors and platforms of cable, web-apps, mobile apps, gaming and online video were well also represented. And last, but certainly not least, “New Big Media,” like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter were out in force, making big impressions.

At MediaPost’s Online Media, Marketing and Advertising (OMMA) event, we saw numerous visions of technologies, buyers and sellers converging at incredible speeds, in incredible ways. Interactive, engagement, behavioral, location-based, social – all part of marketing plans.

We think we have a grip on what’s coming and what we need to do – but what if we don’t? In the face of our challenges, and after seeing all that, it is prudent to ask: What if we don’t see ‘it’ coming? Or what if we don’t recognize it? Can we stay relevant? Can we survive? What’s next?

What is ‘X’?

One perspective on that that might be the following:
NM > OM
New-Media is greater than Old-Media.

Another view might look like this:
(Tradeshows + Old Media) = (Not-So-Relevant-Anymore)

For our tradeshows, the clear danger is having exhibitors and marketers equate us with old-media as they plan their marketing spending.   ‘X’ is that new, outside force that diminishes our relevance.

But across all media types – even in the newspaper industry – there are leaders that have embraced the new-media technologies and are successfully staying vibrant with it.

The challenge in the events industry then, is to rapidly and intelligently embrace new-media in order to stay ahead and to stay relevant to marketers.  Our customers demand it.
(TradeShows + New Media ) = (More-Relevant-than-Ever)

To solve for X is to embrace new media technologies – to not only negate X, but to increase the audience, the revenue and the relevance of our events – and, therefore, of our associations.

What is the X that keeps you awake at night?

BTW – I told my daughter that X is often referred to as ‘the unknown factor’ -  it usually represents the answer to your problem.

Posted in Add Value to the Event, Show Management | 2 Comments »

What about the other 360?

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Here’s more new math for new-media.

We recently found ourselves on the other side of the table, as an exhibitor looking at buying one of the promotion options a show organizer was trying to sell us.

We are a small business, with a small budget and a small staff – but with big plans and huge goals. We’d suspect that describes most exhibitors going to tradeshows.

We have a very clear plan of marketing activities that we work on executing every day. When we’re not actually working labor-wise, we do have automated technologies, processes and relationships built that automatically drive our marketing 365.25

Knowing that our customers spend hundreds of hours a year online, we spend a great deal of our time, money and energy into designing, building and maintaining systems to help us understand those customers, build better solutions, extend our brand,  deliver value and maintain relevance. (Actually, we strive to be not merely relevant – but indispensible!)

Our budget for exhibiting at tradeshows is always constrained – it’s competing with so many other things we want to do. So we want to make sure we get the very best results when we do exhibit. We understand that attendees are fewer in numbers, are on tighter schedules, and have more focused purpose than ever. We work hard to make sure we have designed the right messages, with the right presentation, to the right audience – before the event, around the event, and after the event. We use email, social media, landing pages, blog posts, and news releases – on multiple platforms – to engage our audience and prepare for the show. These new-media elements all play into everything else we do year-round. We eat our own cooking and are physical, online and mobile.

We’re also very excited about how we use tradeshows in our marketing strategy, think we make a good appearance, and do a pretty good job of getting real value from them.

But when examining the promotion options offered by show organizers to their exhibitors, we are disappointed by advertising options that, to us – are not only very different from the vast majority of other elements in our marketing mix  – but don’t integrate with or add much synergy to our overall marketing strategy.

More disappointing still, the options seemed geared toward sponsorships by larger exhibitors, cost real money and had the shelf-life of a fruit fly.

These promotions work well while at the event, but what about the other 360?

And what about us small exhibitors? We need good promo ops too. We’re all here because we believe the event will bring the right people together to meet us. We want to meet new prospects, establish relationships and renew friendships. But we need to amortize the benefits and have access to this audience year round  -  and we want the organizer to make it happen for us. We want this show to be a success – so much so that we’ll be back every year!

We encourage all event organizers to ask themselves: “What are we offering to all our exhibitors that adds value to everything else they are doing year-round.”

Here’s a good post from Michelle Bruno at TSNN that provides organizers with a good blueprint.

If you agree with Michelle, we know a great vendor to help you!

Posted in Add Value to the Event, Exhibitors | No Comments »

Mobile Awesomeness – They said it.

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

You Are Here Mobile App for Tradeshows, Events, Meetings

We can’t help but be proud that one of our recent You Are Here Mobile deployments is getting good marks!

Our mobile app for Surf Expo has recently been posted to Mobile Awesomeness – a website featuring mobile websites with ‘awesome’ design.  Check it out on the Mobile Awesomeness site .

Also, you can go pull up m.surfexpo.com on your mobile and see it for yourself!

For especially the wired young attendees at this event, Surf Expo needed to provide these multi-screen consumers a multi-platform solution.

For show management, the last thing they needed was yet another technology layer. So they picked a solution that works online, on the floor, and on the fly.

Thanks to Mobile Awesomeness for the recognition!

Awesome!

Posted in Add Value to the Event, Show Management | No Comments »

Changing Direction – What’s the Difference between 360 and 365?

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

‘Doing a 360’ is a phrase I’ve often heard when people talk about changing directions. It’s not really accurate though, because if you did turn 360 degrees, you would only be spinning around – and end up facing the same way. That’s not changing direction.

‘Doing a 180’ would be a complete about-face. While a more accurate indicator of a change of direction, how often do we really want to go in the exact opposite direction?

As professionals in the events industry watch other media types struggle to maintain relevancy, it is clear that big changes are happening, and more changes are coming – whether we’re ready or not. Media consumers and media buyers are increasingly finding new ways to connect, have dialog and create relationships.

Face-to-face media still plays an important role in business as buyers and sellers still want to actually meet each other. Prospects still want the experience of immersion and participation in an active marketplace of competing ideas, products and suppliers. Vendors still value tradeshows as an arena for competition, for meeting new prospects, and for contact with customers.

But many of the event’s non-essential attributes are under enormous pressure as new-media, digital options and new technology platforms encroach on traditional face-to-face events.

• Attendees and exhibitors both, are increasingly utilizing other media options for research, education and information gathering.

• Changing demographics and new technologies bring new demands and represent real challenge – but also create a unique, but poorly understood opportunity to advance the state-of-the-art in events.

• The economic pressures of the recession are contributing to an accelerated drive of travel and marketing budgets toward alternative media.

Clearly, tradeshow organizers need to rapidly change some of today’s standard practices. But change what? Do they ‘Do a 360’? or a 180’? Of course not. But they do need to change their mix of technologies, processes and behaviors to keep their core product exciting, novel and necessary.

The event can no longer remain its own media silo – it must actively integrate with its attendees and exhibitors and with other media types.

In today’s atmosphere of broad reach, constant contact and continuous engagement – expecting your customers to alter their normal dialogs, to change their marketing activities to meet your specs, and to pay for short-span sponsorships is not a path to the future.

The modern event will encourage all participants to leverage their own content, contacts and social networks – and it will enable it on an ongoing basis. It must put a special emphasis on facilitating the conversation among attendees and exhibitors by becoming an integrated part of the marketing mix of the modern enterprise.

What events need now is not ‘Doing a 360’ — but ‘Going 365’.

When you add it all up, the difference between 360 and 365, is success!

What changes has your event tried? Have you found your best direction?

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Posted in Add Value to the Event, Show Management | 4 Comments »

A great coach always improves on the basics.

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Did Yogi Berra predict the event industry’s current behavior?

I’m not sure where my current déjà vu is coming from, but we’ve definitely been here before. And to really torture the sports metaphor in this season of March Madness and spring training, I’m thinking about the importance of blocking and tackling, of sticking to game plan, keeping your eye on the ball, of the lessons from the real Great Race – The Tortoise and the Hare.

I’m thinking about the rush many event professionals now have toward the rapid embrace of anything social, mobile, virtual or hybrid. I’m a big fan of most all of that myself – and my company brings a lot of these new technologies to the game – but still…

While all this interest and energy is exciting – and important – I’m sensing it could be coming at the expense of the core elements of the event.

I’m afraid that being lost in all this emphasis on the virtual and social aspects surrounding the event, is that the ‘actual’ participants – the actual attendees and the actual exhibitors – the ones who actually travel and attend – might be getting short thrift.

Today’s press is full of stories about exhibitors finding their voice and taking more control over their relationships with events – and with their customers (a.k.a. the attendees!).

The current Trade Show Week features a story about just that – exhibitors demanding more from show organizers – and staying away when they don’t get it.

The New York Times recently wrote about the rise in outboarding. That story highlights the hotel industry’s dilemma, but what is also in there is that ‘exhibitors’ are increasingly taking control over how they reach customers.

And it’s not just the exhibitors. Last month’s real-time morphing of ASAE’s Tech10 Conference into #untech10 demonstrated an incredibly rapid example of ‘customers’ taking control.

To get a good sense of what the new gameplans look like, make sure you read this CEIR report: “Power of Exhibitions in the 21st Century”. It not only covers what attendees expect around the event – but what they demand at the event.

While pre-show planning, online agendas, social networking, mobile access, post-show web tools – and even hybridization – are all part of today’s and tomorrow’s events, organizers must still master the basics and remember: the floor is still core.

Are we doing enough at the event and on the show floor to keep our attendees and exhibitors coming back for more?

Adding value by providing an enhanced experience, better connections, great traffic with great leads, and a good return on investment will result in a win-win-win for everyone.

Show organizers need to keep focus on the playing field and stay true to the actual event.

“It’s like déjà vu all over again!” just as Yogi predicted.

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Posted in Add Value to the Event, Connect Attendee and Exhibitor, Enhance Experience, Show Management | 7 Comments »

Directories and Dictionaries Going Green

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

My family likes words. We work and we play with them. We write and edit at work, and do crosswords and play Scrabble at home.

Our family is known for having rather sharp elbows when it comes to our gaming style. In Scrabble especially, we allow (encourage?) leeway to argue for one’s word entry. Can you convince fellow gamers of the legitimacy of your slang? Is the Euro-spelling of colour allowable? Is the Latin form of an English word? How about dis and app – are they partial words – or real words so new that most dictionaries don’t yet include them?

To help settle these debates, and limit bloodshed, we consult the dictionary – a lot. Or at least we used to. It was over this last holiday season, with family fiercely examining their tiles, that I noticed something new had crept into our lives – and I’m guessing it has into yours too.

We have a very large, leather-bound dictionary that we’ve used for years. I can’t begin to count the times we’ve all paged through it looking for a gem. But this year, no one used it. Competitors were armed with their own arsenal of word tools.  At the first sign of a challenge, out came the notebooks and handhelds. The Official Scrabble website, Merriam-Webster Online, Dictionary roll-ups, even Google itself, were all brought to bear on reaching a decision.

Which brings me to my point here – finally. When was the last time you actually opened those resource books on your office shelf? Especially that cumbersome trade show directory you lugged back from the conference last fall. It’s the one with all the exhibitors that came to your industry’s annual event. Remember, you were going to refer to it regularly over the year. Have you? Or have you made fresh searches online? Or gone back to the event’s website?

If you are a show organizer agonizing over how to cut costs, or how to go green, or add value to your attendees and to your exhibitors, 2010 might be the year to say goodbye to the printed show directory and deliver it all online. Can you wait any longer to go digital? Your attendees and your exhibitors are online – are you?

As much as I miss the substantial heft, the tactile feel – even the bookish smell of our old Dictionary – I just don’t see us going back to those days – unless the power goes out and the candles get lit.

BTW – I have a seven-letter-word I want to play:  D  I  G  I  T  A  L

What’s your entry for a game-winning strategy for the new year?

____   ____   ____   ____   ____   ____   ____

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Posted in Add Value to the Event, Go Green, Show Management | 5 Comments »