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Monday, July 6, 2009
Informa Exhibitions
This story on the ever-improving Expo ABC caught my eye last week - Informa Group now promotes it's exhibitions "Informa Exhibitions".
This strikes me as interesting on a number of levels. Informa's busines units have always operated under an astonishing array of different brands and banners, with seemingly little brand consolidation being done with any of their acquisitions so any move to rationalise this is perhaps an acknowledgement that they now see benefits in creating a corporate identity to help through the current economic turbulence.
The story, and the statements from Informa CEO Peter Rigby also point out the financial importance of major events to Informa. But their exhibitions are hardly new additions to the business yet they have seen no reason to organise or brand them as a unit before? One possible conclusion is that their core business of "large numbers of small conferences" is suffering far more than the limited number of globally significant exhibitions they run?
The other interesting element is that the "announcement" appeared on Expo ABC, but not in Informa Group's own newsfeed on the front page of their website. So it was deemed important to tell the exhibition press, but not important enough to inform the City - or the world at large. The new logo has also (as of today) not yet made it onto the website of IIR Middle East's Cityscape or Arab Health - probably the two most important events in their portfolio - so perhaps this is more a boon to business card printers than signs of a structural realignment in the way Informa organises and manages its business units.
This strikes me as interesting on a number of levels. Informa's busines units have always operated under an astonishing array of different brands and banners, with seemingly little brand consolidation being done with any of their acquisitions so any move to rationalise this is perhaps an acknowledgement that they now see benefits in creating a corporate identity to help through the current economic turbulence.
The story, and the statements from Informa CEO Peter Rigby also point out the financial importance of major events to Informa. But their exhibitions are hardly new additions to the business yet they have seen no reason to organise or brand them as a unit before? One possible conclusion is that their core business of "large numbers of small conferences" is suffering far more than the limited number of globally significant exhibitions they run?
The other interesting element is that the "announcement" appeared on Expo ABC, but not in Informa Group's own newsfeed on the front page of their website. So it was deemed important to tell the exhibition press, but not important enough to inform the City - or the world at large. The new logo has also (as of today) not yet made it onto the website of IIR Middle East's Cityscape or Arab Health - probably the two most important events in their portfolio - so perhaps this is more a boon to business card printers than signs of a structural realignment in the way Informa organises and manages its business units.
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