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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
AEO Conference 2008
I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a panelist at the recent UK Association of Exhibition Organisers (The AEO) Conference in Brighton, which turned out to be a good networking opportunity for me (and for the maybe 50% of delegates from various contractors and suppliers to the industry).
David Levin of CMPs opening session majored on what CMP are doing online, although it was a little overshadowed by the unfolding tragic events in Mumbai, where the company's CPHI and PMEC events were due to open as the terrorist attacks started (both were cancelled, as has been the case with a few other shows in Mumbai subsequently).
David seemed very enthused by the success of CMPs online events, although from what he put on screen they actually looked to be a very simple "exhibit on the web" format supplemented with online chat functionality and unique streamed content (available for a limited time) - which is hardly new.
Its good news to see anyone making more money from any form of events at the moment, however with visitor traffic in the low hundreds to most of these sites I couldn't help wondering if their commercial success was more to do with the sales channel than the product - if you can sell an "exhibit-lookalike" product to the same customers who already buy exhibit products from you, maybe they will pay exhibit-sized prices instead of (response orientated pay-per-click) web prices?
External speaker Guy Levine also covered all things online, and how (event) marketing needs to evolve to become more in step with the various information streams available to businesses and consumers.
Both sessions were listened to attentively, and warmly received. So its interesting to see that a few weeks later a search of the blogosphere for AEO Conference shows precisely one blog post about the event (prior to this one.... ).
Well done John Welsh of CMP!
David Levin of CMPs opening session majored on what CMP are doing online, although it was a little overshadowed by the unfolding tragic events in Mumbai, where the company's CPHI and PMEC events were due to open as the terrorist attacks started (both were cancelled, as has been the case with a few other shows in Mumbai subsequently).
David seemed very enthused by the success of CMPs online events, although from what he put on screen they actually looked to be a very simple "exhibit on the web" format supplemented with online chat functionality and unique streamed content (available for a limited time) - which is hardly new.
Its good news to see anyone making more money from any form of events at the moment, however with visitor traffic in the low hundreds to most of these sites I couldn't help wondering if their commercial success was more to do with the sales channel than the product - if you can sell an "exhibit-lookalike" product to the same customers who already buy exhibit products from you, maybe they will pay exhibit-sized prices instead of (response orientated pay-per-click) web prices?
External speaker Guy Levine also covered all things online, and how (event) marketing needs to evolve to become more in step with the various information streams available to businesses and consumers.
Both sessions were listened to attentively, and warmly received. So its interesting to see that a few weeks later a search of the blogosphere for AEO Conference shows precisely one blog post about the event (prior to this one.... ).
Well done John Welsh of CMP!
Labels: aeo, aeo conference, cmp, guy levine, john welsh
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