Anagram Events

Ssssssh! The Event Industry's got a Secret!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:57:00 +0000

Twitter. LinkedIn. Facebook.... and the AEO spending vast sums to create research that will make us all rich by "proving" to marketeers that events actually work. Sometimes reading the exhibition media you could be forgiven for thinking that we as an industry have now become internet-obsessed data-intensive web marketeers who are now all using Twitter and Facebook-enabled show wesbites to feed a constant stream of data to our customers as they clamour to calculate the ROI on their exhibition stands down to the last penny.

The reality of course is somewhat different. Many UK exhibitions operate in industries where (believe it or not) the internet is not all-pervasive, and many organisers themselves are rightly more concerned about being plugged into their industries than being plugged into the latest social media fad.

No matter how web-literate the industry in which you operate your trade show, what’s not changed is the importance of the basics – understanding your customers, creating a killer proposition and selling the features (and benefits) of your show clearly. Where we once all used brochures and direct mail, it’s now a website and an email shot, but the principle is still the same.

Isn’t it?

Apparently not.

Based on a survey of nearly 80 websites of B2B shows taking place in the UK between January & May 2010 nearly 40% of UK shows do not think that their show attendance figure is worth mentioning in the “interested in exhibiting?” sections of their show websites.

What’s more, event pricing sees almost as much secrecy as attendance with just under 30% of shows apparently believing that exhibitors have no need to know how much (or how little) it might cost to exhibit.

For some reason in the move from “brochure” to ”website” something very strange seems to have happened to B2B tradeshow sales in the UK. Having a brochure without attendance figures and pricing would have been inconceivable – yet by moving online it’s apparently become commonplace. In making the shift online it’s as if a sizeable slice of the UK exhibition industry have completely forgotten what it is selling when it asks customers to exhibit at its shows.

The list of UK shows with “secret attendances” and “mystery pricing” includes shows in pretty much every sector and in every venue, with all the “major” organisers featuring at least once in the list. Some of the shows in question even provide a range of colourful graphs and charts illustrating in considerable detail a breakdown of the various visitor groups in their audience breakdown – but omit to mention their total number of attendees.

Why is this?

Whether it’s audited or not (and the extreme difficulty of extracting any information whatsoever from the ABC website is another issue entirely) the visitor attendance at a show is the only reason why exhibitors spend their marketing budgets with us? And the price per m2 is also pretty sure to come up at some point in the sales process - isn’t it?

Assuming these omissions are not just down to carelessness and forgetfulness (which is possible – but surely not for 40% of the UK industry?) this would seem to indicate that a significant proportion of UK show organisers have taken a deliberate decision to omit this information – which indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how customer behaviour – never mind customer behavious on the internet - actually works.

So, what possible reasons are there for omitting this vital content?

“I want people to phone my sales team to ask for the information they want”

Ever used the internet to shop for anything online? Did you end up calling the company who’s website had almost no information on the product and no pricing, or buying online from the one who’s site told you everything you needed to know down to the quantity they had in stock and the time of day they could arrange to deliver it? Guess what – your customers think the same way as you and they will expect your website to answer almost all their questions before they are prepared to call you. And just like you, if they find that they need to pick up the phone just to get basic facts (such as overall attendance and pricing) they may well conclude that you have something to hide - and then look elsewhere without getting in touch.

Even the idea of using the phone may be a step too far for many marketers today. In an age of intrusive 24-hour call centers, company switchboards with “no name” policies, 3^rd party opt-out rates touching 50% and always-on Blackberry email addiction the act of calling up and speaking to a sales team also represents a much bigger commitment for many of your customers that it ever did before – and is one they may be unwilling to make unless they feel armed with all the information they need before they dial.

But aside from this basic psychology, a website rich with useful information allows you to improve your sales process in a way which sales calls - and brochures - could never hope to achieve. This is because whenever you are in contact with a customer by phone or face to face, they are very rarely making decisions in a vacuum. Behind every marketing manager your team call up sits a whole network of influencers and budget holders - sales people, senior managers and “Head Office”, PR companies, stand builders, product engineers, designers – all of whom will play some part in the decision to exhibit.

These are people who will never call you up, and who’s names your sales team will never even know. But they can all access your website and use it to form an opinion on your show, which will then feed into your prospective customers’ decision-making process. So, by leaving out key information you are not only discouraging customers to call you, you are forgoing an opportunity to sell to people you would otherwise never reach at all.

“I don’t want my competitors to find out my pricing / attendance figures”.

Is the m2 price you charge really that important compared to all the other elements of the show proposition that it is the only differentiating factor for your customers? Can your salespeople not sell a “quantity vs quality” pitch? The reality is that most UK shows in similar industries are similarly priced – if your show’s price differs wildly from its competitors it’s because either you messed up when you picked the price at launch, or something in the audience and exhibitor profile, history, venue, dates, exhibitor list, organisers experience, association support, sponsors and media partnerships you have can justify a difference – not because you have somehow kept it secret from a competitor who is so incompetent that they have no-one on their staff capable of making a spoof call to your sales team, and who has not one relationship with any of your exhibitors good enough to find out that way either. Otherwise, see point 1.

“I don’t want potential exhibitors to look at the website, get put off by the pricing/attendance levels and leave without contacting my team”.

Your website is a sales presentation, in just the same way as a call, a face-to-face meeting or a brochure. If you expect your team to be able to sell the features and benefits of your show during a sales call, why would you not expect your website to be able to do so as well? Again, think of your own behaviour when shopping online - all you are probably doing by omitting attendance and pricing information is sending out a subliminal signal that you feel your product is overpriced or poorly attended.

Even if your show isn’t sufficiently differentiated from it’s competitors to justify any pricing or attendance variance, hiding this from potential customers until you can tell them over the phone is unlikely to be any more successful than posting the information online. If this is your genuine concern, really you need to be concentrating on addressing your show’s positioning and pricing strategy, not working out how best to try and hide the facts from your customers.

So where’s all the clever web / internet / social media stuff then?

I’m afraid there isn’t really any in this article. The only real behavioural change the internet has brought in over the era of the brochure and sales call is that your customers now expect to be able to gather more information, not less, before they are prepared to get in touch with you – and will draw their own conclusions if you don’t provide it for them. All the other arguments are just basic business common sense about how to sell and market exhibitions, which are all as true now as they have ever been. No Tweeting, no Linking-In, just moving a brochure onto a website.

But if it is truly this simple, why does it seem that so many organisers have forgotten how to re-invent the wheel when they moved into the internet age?

PE bumped out - good or bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Interesting comment here from Whitestone Communications latest media M&A update:

"July 6, 2009
United Business Media LTD bought the 48% of RISI Inc., the other portion of a joint venture it owned and operated with Pegasus Partners II LP, in a $14.3 million cash deal, bringing the target wholly under UBM’s control and ownership. RISI is an online and print publication that covers pricing, news and analytical reports on the forest products industry. The company employs a staff of 125, based in Bedford, Massachusetts and also has an office in Shanghai as it attempts to collaborate with China’s growing forest products industry. Last year, the company in full generated revenues of £14.4 million.

Lately, joint ventures have been increasingly rearranged as financially hobbled co-sponsors want to dump the asset, even at a substantial discount, to the other entity that supported the company’s structure and development rather than risk failure, or, in some cases, having to re-infuse that company with additional capital to buoy operations. Dealmakers in the space have said that, more often than not, private equity institutions like Pegasus Partners are the sellers, leaving the businesses with which they spent years preparing a new entity for exit or spinoff positioned to take control of a potentially viable entity.

For example, Tata Steel just bought out Ryerson Tulls’ 50% stake in Tata Ryerson, a steel processing joint venture, for $49 million. In April, Toshiba said it would spend about $20 million to buy out Panasonic’s 40% stake in their shared LCD venture, called Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology. And, prior to either of these, a far broader joint venture was announced to be heading to a one-sided ownership system, with Fujitsu buying Siemens’ 50% stake in the Fujitsu Siemens Computers for $450 million.

Wholly buying out a JV brings with it the potential to shift strategy; UBM did just that, appointing Mike Coffey as RISI’s chief executive, succeeding John Day, who was appointed as CEO of UBM Global Trade in May."

There aren't too many PE/PLC JV's in events anyway, but if the principles hold true, maybe we'll start to see PE houses take a back seat in M&A? But with finance still tight, the end result may well be that we see more PLC-PLC JV's formed as they are forced to work together to share risk and cobble together funding to take on acquisitions, even if the multiples fall as PE money drops out of the equation?

However a PLC/PE deal has many attractions - one provides funding, the other provides expertise, and there is a clear timetable for PE exit, and a clear understanding of what each side is looking for.

But with a PLC-PLC JV neither party starts with a clear exit timetable and they can both change their strategies over time - with a high probability of creating a recipe for trouble a few years down the line.

Maybe then what this tells us is that its a good time to invest in law firms specialising in unpicking media company contract disputes!

Stone Cold Calling

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:45:00 +0000

I'm currently doing a bit of sales to help out an organiser I know - and I'm being astonished by the proportion of companies I call who have a policy of not releasing the name of their marketing people.

At times it must be approaching 1 in 10 companies who simply won't divulge this information, never mind not putting me through. And this isn't a "gatekeeper" receptionist who can be worked around - this is a flat "our company policy is not to give this information out, so I cannot give you a name".

Now, perhaps my legendary sales skills have become public knowledge and marketing professionals across the UK quake in fear at being persuaded to throw money away at the mere sound of my dulcet tones, but really.......can there honestly be that many ad-sales calls in a day that 1 in 10 marketing managers believe they cannot function if they have to take the odd phone call during the day?

Or has permission marketing and the online model become so deeply ingrained that the concept of being sold to, or evaluating a proposition based on what you are told rather than what you can find on Google is just too difficult for many people today to cope with?

Either way, its probably good news for big established shows, bad news for launches - and excellent news indeed for the SEO industry.

Oi! Toady!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:48:00 +0000

I'm not sure if the greeting in this email shot I received today from Event UK is over-clever copywriting, or just an especially bad typo...?

The graphic is a frog... but even so, "Register Toady.." isn't the most flattering way I've ever been adressed in a personalised email !

Given it is repeated in the mailshot, and as the re-scheduled "Event" is another UBM show, could this be the next iteration of a deliberate policy to create memorable advertising following their (arguably) clever deliberate mistake with the Confex '09 tube advert as well....?

It's all beyond me...

Futurology in a niche

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:47:00 +0000

This little story, about a company who organise record fairs around the UK, and who are expanding, struck me as quite an interesting example of how the event industry might evolve in the UK and other mature markets.

This is clearly someone who knows his sector, and has managed to make a business that capitalizes on a global economic trend (here the decline of retailers in his industry) and which serves a loyal audience who presumably can be reached through niche - and hence cheap to advertise in - media.

Shows like this are highly unlikely to ever interest a Reed, a UBM or a Clarion as an acquisition target, but will probably keep whoever is behind VIP-24 ticking over quite nicely.

The barriers to entry in the events sector have always been low, but now the plethora of small-scale venues out there that are more than capable of hosting small niche events seems to be on the rise, with venues in Solihull, Peterborough and Coventry all opening for business - even before you factor in hotels adding space and public sector buildings opening up to try and grab their share of the events market.

Consider also how social and online media is busy creating low-cost marketing channels for event organisers to access many "niche" communities - both consumer and B2B - and the decline of print means it is becoming cheaper to launch an event - no need for an expensive media splash now.

Then add in the end of "jobs for life" and a pensions-crisis (all of which are making working for "The Man" a lot less attractive) and that there is now a market awash with unemployed, experienced organisers and maybe the end result is that these types of niches will end up being better serviced in future than ever before?

Imagine - a future where multiple independent organisers are running small-scale sustainable events in sectors they are attached to - rather than trying to pick the idea for the "next saleable asset"?

Add all this together and perhaps the type of show which will NEVER grow to be on the radars of the big players starts to look like the future of the industry?

Quite a different view to the futurologist who spoke recently at Summer Eventia in Brighton .

But hey, what do I know....?

Informa Exhibitions

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:37:00 +0000

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.

Excite! and Taste of London

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:56:00 +0000

In the last week I've been to both Excite! and Taste of London - 2 very different events, but with something of note at each.

Excite! seemed very much an event for stand builders and contractors to pick up the latest gizmos for enhancing stand look and feel - so if I went, maybe the rebranding worked, as it probably wasn't really for me. However it was also notable for the presence of a good smattering of exhibition organisers walking around, clearly looking for some networking on a warm summer afternoon - so maybe everyone else felt the same?

The organisers had done a good job of nicely dressing up the Brompton Road entrance of EC&O, although there were no signs at the Earls Court Station entrance to the EC&O complex, which seemed a bit odd given the event's website had (of course) simply stated "Earls Court" as the location, not the "we might as well just say it's much smaller than Confex" Brompton Hall!

Excite!'s (is that how you add an 's to the end of it??) 3pm seminars were pretty thinly attended - but glancing in at them it seemed that this may be as much to do with content as timing. Maybe worth thinking that it could be better to have nothing happening than to have "fillers" or to put exhibitors on stage where they will only get disappointed by lack of attendance.

Taste was its usual busy, rain-threatened self, although it was notable for the lack of a few top-end restaurants and a few more mid-market food and beverage brands than in previous years. No Gordon Ramsay, despite him having headlined the launch edition of "Taste" at Christmas - maybe the downside of a solus deal at ExCeL, or just belt tightening at the Ramsay empire?

We were fortunate in that we managed to grab a table right in the middle of the exhibitor area in a section which had been branded quite heavily by British Airways, and which as a result no-one had dared to sit in - presumably on the assumption that it was a VIP-only area (like the other 2 BA-branded facilities at the show. Great for us, but a useful reminder that there needs to be a coherent "fit" in the way you select sponsors and attach them to areas of the show. In this case the visitors clearly had come to the venue with an understanding that BA were associated with bits of the show you could only get into by paying more, and no-one wanted the embarrassment of being chucked out of this particular area! I suppose it showed how effective the pre-marketing had been in establishing BA as a "VIP" brand at Taste, but whether Brand Events sale steam would be bold enough to show BA the pictures of a deserted BA-branded area as evidence of the success of their campaign is another matter...

The other interesting thing to extrapolate from Taste was that the busy restaurant stands were definitely those serving the biggest portions, rather than the most sophisticated and upscale restaurants. Whether this is a symptom of a decline in audience poshness (I hesitate to say "quality!"), a marker for the entire restaurant business or just basic supply & demand economics in action I can't say, but it's a timely reminder that your customers have a keen nose (almost literally in this case) for value, no matter how you try to dress it up.

Excite!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:36:00 +0000

I'm planning on attending the Excite! show next week - several contacts and colleagues have mentioned that they are going, which is quite unusual and is probably as good an indication as anything of the need everyone feels to network furiously at the moment in an attempt to try and work out what's actually happening in the industry.

Everyone knows that Excite! is the new name for the Exhibiting Show. Any organiser knows that new names get applied to old shows only when the organiser is trying to freshen up an event which has started to falter or look tired, so this is likley to be a challenging year for the show.

The double-whammy is that a good chunk of the target audience are themselves show organisers, and they will understand that the "positive" rebranding is an acknowledgement of weakness in the product by the organiser - sort of like having a strapline of "Please come, as it was a bit rubbish last year".

To really get the buy-in of an informed and savvy audience like this a re-branding cannot afford to just focus on the name, logo, and graphic design but it also needs to spell out clearly that there have been material changes in the product as well. To be honest, whilst the cosmetic/graphic aspects are definately much fresher, I'm struggling to see much content about such material changes of content in the marketing collateral which has come my way so far...

Whilst "Excite!" definately sounds positive it is also a lot less literal than the old name, and it needs a clear and bold strapline to make it obvious to any potential new attendees that it is about the event industry - again maybe a risky strategy in the current times.

Either way, I'm still going because it's a good meeting place for a number of people I know - but it will be interesting to see if a Excite! 2009 is actually a better show for the exhibitors, or just a more catchy name for an event that just happens to be well timed for visitors to arrange to meet each other there.

Print Media....?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:51:00 +0000

This month's edition of Exhibition News falls plumply onto my doormat, and whilst browsing past all the photos of drunken industry faces at an awards dinner I noticed that this edition didn't contain a single advert from any of the recruitment companies.

That's not to say the book was any thinner - there seemed to be loads of pages taken up by people trying to sell and promote their venues, contracting services and other ancilliary bits and pieces. But no job adverts at all - in a magazine that a few months ago carried little else.

Now, of course there are fairly clear reasons, with an oversupply of candidates and a rather drastic undersupply of permanent jobs being the main two!

But given all the talk about the "structural" factors behind the decline of print media and the "social" changes in the way we consume content that can work against magazines and newspapers, there are still some even more basic facts of economic life hitting publishing owners as well.

If there are no jobs, there's no recruitment advertising. And that's - at a guess - 20%+ of your revenue stream turned off at the tap, instantly, overnight, irrespective of the hit taken by reductions in volumes from your other categories of advertisers. That's got to hurt - and I can't see many show organisers coping with slicing another 20% off their revenues right now, on top of the hits they are already taking.

Exhibition organisers are already counting themselves lucky that they are only suffering the effects of recession, and that our business model is far more immune to substitution from other media than our unfortunatel colleagues in print.

But maybe we should be counting ourselves doubly lucky that the exhibition business model has never been any good at delivering for the recruitment market - or we'd be in real trouble right now!

Moving the goalposts (well, walls...)

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Last week I went to 3 IT shows at London's Earls Court - Internet World, Infosecurity and the Helpdesk & IT Support show.

All of them were buzzing - at least 2 of them have already announced that attendance was in fact up year-on-year, which is great news all round, and seems to confirm that market-leading events (which these three are) will do well in a climate like the current one.

However, visitor numbers alone can't always keep the confidence of exhibitors on the up each year - the size of the show itself is a much more important indicator for confidence, if only because you can actually see it quite easily - if a hall gets cut out, or a wall is moved in, this is a lot more visible than a 5% +/- change in attendance.

Given all three are IT events and thus operate in markets where a high rate of exhibitor consolidation and churn is a fact of life, and where the "new business" to keep the shows growing comes largely from VC-funded IT startups or early-stage companies who use the show to invest their marketing funds in a bid to build market share and profile... and there are clearly a few less of these companies around right now! Given this, I would strongly suspect that all three of them must have seen a decline in sold m2 this year.

So - would this "shrinking" counterbalance the increased attendance, and serve to undermine exhibitor confidence, even though the show would be in fact better (more visitors to go round, and less other exhibitors to share them with?).

Well, absolutely not. Because - for one reason or another - all three shows had changed the halls they were held in since the last edition. Totally different shaped halls, a different exhibitor layout, and therefore making a like-for-like comparison of net sold space was practically impossible even for a seasoned old expo hack like me. Any average exhibitor stood no chance of comparing this years show with the last edition.

In the current economic climate, changing venue may well be attractive for commercial reasons - as almost all venues will be offering keener deals to steal business from each other. But the shows I saw last seek also illustrate really well that organisers shouldn't underestimate the power of a new venue, or a new floorplan layout, to improve - or even just shake up - your exhibitors perception of the show as well.

British Motor Show Cancelled

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:53:00 +0000

The only surprise about this seems to be that its still deemed worthy of front page news in this months Exhibition News.

The state of the car industry is a well known story at the moment, and with new car sales having ground to a halt and the industry queuing up for handouts from the government there is no real prospect of the manufacturers stumping up vast fortunes (of what in effect may well be taxpayers money) to exhibit products they can't shift anyway.

The only real question is whether it will ever come back - and personally I'll be surprised if it does.

The motor industry is comprised of a handful of global maufacturers, and they only need 1-2 shows each year (in Europe, the US and Asia) to gather the world press and launch new products to them. Set against these criteria, the UK simply doesn't make the cut as the European leg next to a French/German/Italian-market friendly Geneva.

And as a domestic UK marketing initiative in an age of back-to-back car programmes on digital TV, shelves-full of magazines in every newsagent, more comparison websites than even Google can index and every remaining newspaper reviewing cares every week a motor show full of parked new cars you usually can't get into has looked a bit of a dinosaur for quite some time now. Maybe the credit crunch has finished it off, however I suspect the writing has been on the wall ever since Top Gear Live hit upon the astounding innovation of actually having some of the cars driving around at the show!

So, no budgets, no sales generates as a result, no need on the part of the exhibitor community and a host of better information - and entertainment - sources. Time to develop something more focused....

How Senior....?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:31:00 +0000

With increasing numbers of "senior" people now floating around the UK (and I guess international) exhibition scene looking for work, it's interesting that I'm increasingly hearing stories from people who are being turned down for positions on the basis that they are "too senior".

I can see this making sense in more prosperous times, as taking on someone to do a job thats below their pay grade means you are probably taking someone on who will just leave in a few months anyway - which is bad business in any sector, and in any economic climate. But there's unlikley to be a glut of "senior" jobs for a few years in exhibitions.... so the retention argument is surely on hold until then ?

In many other sectors there is probably also an argument about lack of engagement with the job, or it not providing enough of an intellectual or emotional challenge. But surely running tradeshows - especially in today's environment - that is intrinsically a challenging and engaging one - just change the industry you are working in and there is a whole set of new challenges to face and relationships to master. The boredom mostly comes when you stick to running the same show for several years, not from running shows per se.

So, how long before recruiters actually notice that the same climate that is forcing them into laying people off is also one which allows them to pick up highly experienced people to run some of their key shows - at least for a year or two - at a time when that sort of experience should surely be coming at a premium, not a discount?

Frivolous ...?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:29:00 +0000

The last couple of posts have been quite frivolous, however both have a serious side to them.

Starting with Confex, once upon a time a wrong date on a poster or ticket would have been a terrible mistake for any organiser to make. Legions of visitors might well turn up on the wrong day, missing the show and causing problems in all sorts of ways.

However when I saw the 2-dates Confex advert, my first reaction was that I could just go to the show website and find out which one was right.

Visiting a show website before attending has now undeniably become as much a part of going to a show as paying too much for a sandwich (and counting the void areas to see if anyone has dropped out at the last last minute). What's on the ticket or poster is not what's going to make my mind up - but as long as it makes me visit the website, it's done its job.

And the proof of the pudding? Well, for Confex, it's years since I've been. But this time the "confusion" over dates made me MORE likely to visit the Confex website, just to check for myself which was correct. And so making a mistake on their poster may well have increased their attendance this year.

And on the right days as well...

When exactly is Confex....?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:53:00 +0000

It's Confex next week at Earl's Court.

Or is it?

This advert appears on District Line underground trains (so, going past the offices of Reed, Earls Court & Olympia and CMP amongst others).

All well and good, targeted advertising etc etc...

But looking more closely....

That's last years Confex date (12th-14th).

To be fair, the advert also has this years date as well...

But it makes you wonder.

Maybe they are being "Green", and recycling last years advert..?

Or maybe it's a clever trick to make you go to the website to check what the actual dates are?

Going Up....

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:30:00 +0000

Here's the new quiz question for the UK exhibition industry.

"What was 5% in October, 10% in November, 15% in January and 20% in February?"

The answer...?

"the amount which it's considered acceptable in polite company (and among other organisers) to admit that your sales are down year on year".

Interesting times....

Bad Weather....

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Much of the UK ground to a halt this week due to a foot (30cm .... well, its a global business!) of snow, cueing much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands all round as the everyone complained about how "other countries" could cope a lot better.

What's this to do with events? Of course, several big shows - most notably EMAP's Spring Fair - were taking place this week. Something that depresses attendance in the midst of a recession clearly isn't going to help anyone, but personally I suspect that exhibitors are smart enough to take into account the effects of a once-in-20-years event when they evaluate the show, and decide how (and if) they are coming back next year. Doing less business due to snow will hurt, but it's not going to break the basic model.

But the real problem with all this snow is wider.

Something like this that artificially depresses attendance in a dramatic fashion at a flagship event is bad news because it delays yet further the date at which the UK industry can really finally get a true like-for-like comparison on a major show, and from that decide just how badly it will be affected by the recession.

So, we are all literally, and metaphorically, still stuck in the snow...

The Decline of Print

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:54:00 +0000

This week the venerable UK print title - or maybe "institution" - Exchange & Mart threw in the towel on its print version, and is to become a totally online business. Rather sadly for a magazine that was once a byword for classified used car advertising it apparently now can only claim to be the 10th best motor buying website in the UK.

What's this got to do with exhibitions? Well, as regards E&M, very little. But as a litmus paper (ahem) for print in general, if such a well established response-orientated publication can't keep a print run going, things must be getting really really bad for print in general.

And even whilst print media rarely ever made the same margins as conferences and exhibitions, it did deliver one thing which live media needs more than anything else to deliver an audience - fresh, live databases neatly segmented by areas of interest and regularly cleaned by the print media's circulation departments.

So, without print media, where do these databases come from? Most "news" websites have tried at some point or another to require reader registrations - but most have failed and given up, opting instead just to track traffic and charge for anonymous click-thru advertising models.

Mass e-mail campaigns may be cheaper to deliver than direct mail, but if the "good" sources of data start to dry up exhibition marketing managers may start having to open up their spam-filters to track down those enticing "100 million e-mail addresses for $49.99!!" offers. With worse quality data comes increased wastage - and then the cost equation starts to look a little more ropey.

Right now the rapid demise of print may well be comforting to those running events businesses - as for once the grass is greener on our own side of the fence. But how long until the loss of the print media's function as a "free" list building engine that drives the event industry starts to be felt?

The real questions then are how will event marketing plans replace those "easy" data sources and "no-brainer" 9m2 contra booths with online advertising that needs to be paid for in hard currency, and how can event companies generate brand engagement for their events in the raft of different online communities their audiences participate in?

The answer to the first question is simply through spending more money. The answer to the second may well be to employ some new staff with "editorical" skills. After all, there are probably a few out there on the market right now...

Apple pulls from MacWorld

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:56:00 +0000

So, it's finally hapened. Apple have announced that they will no longer be exhibiting at MacWorld.

Apple's participation at the IDC-owned MacWorld has always sat - somewhat uneasily one might say - somewhere between trying to turn the event into a vendor-owned in-house promotional tool designed to serve a specific role in Apple's ongoing product launch strategy, and a "genuine" trade show where suppliers and buyers operating in the "Mac" ecosystem get together in an environment designed to allow them all to do the most business.

These two types of event are quite different - and so trying to fit them together in one show always needed a degree of compromise to make it work.

Clearly Apple now feel that their product development strategy and product launch cycle would be better served without tying themselves into a relatively fixed set of dates and venues and sharing the limelight with other companies who operate in (or on the margins of) their "Mac ecosystem" - but that's their decision to make.

I'd also suggest that Apples shift to getting more of their revenues from ipod/iphone is another factor here. The Mac computer needed to stimulate a large, diverse and vibrant 3rd party developer and peripherals market in order to be succesful, so Apple needed a show to help make that "ecosystem" grow and flourish. No 3rd party software and peripherals and the business model of their main/only product line suddenly becomes fatally flawed.

But now, the ipod & iphone are core product to Apple. Yes, the ipod also has lots of add-ons and peripherals, but I can't see Apple really caring that much if there are 2 or 200 different manufacturers of day-glo neoprene skins for iphone. The "ipod" ecosystem is much more simple, lower value, not vital to the core product and available in a high street near you for $4.99 retail. So who needs a show for that?

This decision looks to me like the right one for Apple based on their current positioning and strategy, and Apple are a company which has an almost unique relationship to "their" tradeshow - even though they don't own it. They are also fairly unique in having a substantial global retail presence in which their prducts and brand are promoted in high profile fashion. But their decision to pull macWorld is not a pointer to IT trade shows, or to shows generally.

The one thing it does do is say Apple is perhaps cutting adrift its support for the "Mac" ecosystem - but that's a discussion for another blog, not a Trade Show one.

AEO Conference 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:17:00 +0000

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!

Credit Crunching

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:25:00 +0000

Expomedia's announcement on the 10th November came as a timely reminder - if anyone needed it - that things are getting tough out there. However it contrasted sharply with Reed Elsevier's announcement a few days later saying they expected their exhibitions division to be on track.

From these two, short announcements it's impossible - of course - to draw clear conclusions about the fundamentals of either business, and I wouldn't want to. What it does highlight however is that the economy as it relates to events (or as it relates to confidence in events) has got sharply worse in the last 6 weeks (since Expomedia's last trading statement on the 22nd September) and this decline has hit some parts of our industry very hard indeed.

If you look for clear and obvious differences between the two businesses Expomedia of course has its UK-based Homebuyer consumer events - but whilst that sector has of course taken a big hit, that happened months ago, and also the 2008 events all took place before the end of September anyway, so this is probably not where to look for reasons or conclusions.

Two other areas of difference are that Expomedia has a proportionally greater exposure to emerging markets and also a proportionally greater exposure to conferences than Reed. Would it make sense to look to these to try to explain the differences in the two statements ?

Well, if a marked decline in confidence has been seen very recently you could expect it to hit hardest in events where revenues and bookings are secured late in the event cycle, or where there is a short event cycle.

The first may well apply to Expomedia's emerging market events, and the latter would apply to their conference business.

Established B2B events with a long cycles operated in more established markets tend to have more advance bookings than those in emerging markets - and find it easier to get the cash in well in advance. Such events may well have had the momentum to make it over the (budgetary) finish line even though confidence has dipped - and this model sounds more like a typical Reed show.

So, some pointers, but too little data for any clear indicators for the sector as a whole.

The next milestones will be when some of the big conference companies start to report, and we start to get updates, forecasts and statements from some of the expo-led companies with year ends sometime in 2009.

Virtual Trade Shows

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:16:00 +0000

With "Green" and "Credit Crunch" beating us all up on a daily basis, it's only a matter of time before the old chesnut of "Virtual Tradeshows" rears its head again.

So to get in first, here's my view:

"Virtual Tradeshows" that rely on exhibitors/booths to draw in traffic are IMO often little more than online directories with an appalling site navigation system bolted on the front - they miss the entire point of a trade show, which is to meet people face-to-face and eyeball/touch/taste/smell their products.

But, they also miss the entire point of the internet as well.

When I want to use the internet to find companies or products I want to do so on a site with a quick, easy indexing system with flexible search options. Forcing a tradeshow metaphor and 3-D virtual-booth based navigation onto an online directory is totally insane - it's like Amazon.com replacing its "search" function with a linear graphical display featuring just the spines of all the books in the world - yes, it would make it look more like a "real world" bookshop, but would also throw away all the advantages of the online medium at the same time!

Those online "events" that do work (for me) major on interactivity, using online-specific tools like discussion forums and blogs, have rich content available on-demand in multiple formats - from downloads to video webinars. They are however something quite different - and complementary - to a physical tradeshow, with different benefits and features.

If you are doing an "event" online you should be exploiting the advantages of the online medium, rather than trying to hamstring that medium in order to give a look and feel of something quite different.

This isn't to say that there is no competition between the two formats - and I'd actually include a third, "online sourcing" through properly designed and managed directories as another alternative - but each will be best suited to specific industries and products.

Commoditized items favour online directories. Things that need to be seen - or where the buyer needs to meet the seller - will work at traditional trade shows. Industries where online-savvy people want to exchange ideas globally will suit online (interactive) tradeshows. Fairly simple really...

But I don't see many sectors where someone not web-savvy enough to type into the search box on Google will be happy to spend hours clicking through a 3-D representation of an exhibition hall, just so they can eventually see pictures of products and maybe send an email to the manufacturer or supplier.

It's Google!!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:57:00 +0000

Ever heard this one before ?

"Exhibition organisers need to do more to provide exhibitors with more ways to easily measure their ROI - otherwise we will lose out to Google and other online media - which do offer more measurable results".

But what's always puzzled me about this is that I can see nothing inherent in the exhibition model that means exhibitors can't track ROI for themselves. They can work out the cost of participation (much of which the organiser never sees anyway) - just like online. They can count the leads they generate - just like online. They can track those leads and see which turn into sales - again, just like online. So what's the big deal?

I've been playing with Google Adwords for a few weeks now (and how many tradeshow executives have actually done that themsevles I wonder?) and as a result I now have a slightly different opinion on what the diffrences between online and exhibitions actually are.

Google Adwords (for those of you who don't know) lets you create the adverts that appear on the right hand side of any Google search results - Google for "flights" and any number of airlines adverts will magically pop up next to your results.

Because Google want the ads to be clicked on - so they get paid - they give advertisers access to a huge range of tracking data. You can set up dozens of slightly differently worded adverts, you can make them appear at different times of day, in response to different search terms. There are lots of clever features, but the beauty of the system for an advertiser is that you don't pay each time your ad appears, but only when someone actually clicks on it.

In exhibitions terms this is like exhibiting at a highly focused event (your ads only appear when relevant search terms are keyed in) AND paying a variable space rental rate based for the leads you generate on your stand.

So again - what's the big deal? Focused events? We already do that. Payment on results - well, it does sound scary - but frankly, it wouldn't be impossible for an organiser to deliver something close to this sort of model if they really wanted to, would it? There are plenty of automated lead capture systems out there. Offer exhibitors the option to either pay rack rate, or opt for a lower base price per m2 with a variable supplement depending on leads taken? Hard, but not impossible.

So what stopping us delivering ROI just like Google? Is there something else?

I think so.

With Adwords the real USP isn't that you pay per click. It's that you can create and run loads of different variations on your advert all at the same time. You can try different sets of wording, you can change when and where it appears, you can even specify sites where it won't appear. But by trying them at the same time you can see how each variant alters the response rate instantly, so you can then make modifications "on the fly" improving your campaign as you go.

This sort of iterative, incremental and "market-tested as you go" design philosophy is pretty much mainstream business practice in many sectors of the economy. Have you noticed how often each model of car gets a "facelift" these days? Read any management books where big retailers talk about empowering local management to run local initiatives in-store? Ever accessed Wikipedia, or added an application to your own homepage on Facebook? It's the norm in all sectors - not just media and marketing.

But it does however sit rather uncomfortably with the annual tradeshow. Have a poor tradeshow and even if you know what went wrong, it's probably at least a year until you can try and fix it. As an exhibitor, all your investment is committed up front to just one booth location/stand design/staffing plan - which you can't change once the hall doors open ("sorry sir, health and safety, you can't bring a trolly in nw the show is open...").

But this again is not really an online-offline thing. If one of our exhibitors runs their own series of experiential roadshows - or hosts their own expo-sized event - they can make changes to the model whenever they want - even overnight if they need to. They choose when next to run it again, what themes and formats to keep, what things to ditch.

The difference with booking a tradeshow is huge. It starts to look like the buying process we require customers to go through is sitting increasingly uneasily alongside the iterative, incremental just-in-time philosophy that many other forms of marketing are gravitating towards right now.

So, are we in danger of missing the point of what makes e-marketing such a compelling proposition to some of our lapsed customers? Will offering better data, and helping them measure ROI make much difference anyway?

Providing our customers with more data is only part of the solution. But it's nothing unless we also understand how our customers want to apply that data.

The harsh truth is that redesigning the tradeshow business model to accommodate this new, iterative approach to marketing that Google and the other online media have made possible will require a far more fundamental rethink of the expo business model than just providing audited visitor numbers and some barcode scanners as part of the booth space price.

"Kids Today"

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:12:00 +0000

The event industry (or certainly the UK one) often laments about the dearth of keen, eager and bright-eyed new blood coming into the industry - and staying there.

All too often the new "marketing exec" arrives one year, and the next they disappear either on a gap year or drift off into another industry entirely.

Even worse is the recurrent shortage of motivated sales people. Once there was a steady queue of graduates lining up for media sales and expo sales jobs, hungry for the chance to earn commission levels that gave them decent salaries straight out of college, and eager to use sales as a step into a career.

The PlayStation generation now seem to regard anything that involves "ringing people up" as being tantamount to a call center job - which is of course beneath them - and with the print media industry in decline as well finding young sales talent is harder than ever.

But now we are diving head first into a recession.

Graduate jobs with career paths and training courses will suddenly become scarcer than "use-only-once" grey carpet tiles in a trade-show aisle.

Tarquin and his 2.2, returning from his gap year surfing in Antigua may well find that his ability to pick and choose jobs is now restricted to being rejected after filling in a McDonald's application form or a Burger King one.

Will this means exhibition organisers suddenly find themselves a far more attractive proposition for the next set of graduates to hit the market?

Will hard times lead to more and more hungry potential sales people answering that "A Career in Media (ahem, shsssshhh, it's that dirty word, Sales)" ad in the Guardian instead of flicking over it?

It will be an interesting test indeed.

In theory, supply and demand will work in the industry's favour.

But even with less alternatives, there must still be a significant chance that the "me first", "OK-magazine" generation may still prefer to wait for jobs in organisations and industries they will actually have heard of, where they can see they could gain some transferrable skills, and still get home comforts like training - and not be exposed to the performance-scrutiny of working for a small privately owned entrepeneurial firms where the owner/CEO watches their impact on revenues and costs on a daily basis.

Time will tell, but it's by no means certain that supply and demand will in itself be enough to make our "invisible" industry of SMB employers built on the backs of results-driven sales jobs attractive to "kids today".

Exhibitor & Visitor Surveys

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:04:00 +0000

Everyone's done them - and everyone has seen the results. Those interminable surveys that we inflict on exhibitors and visitors either at show or post show.

"What did you think of... ?"

"Whats were your reasons for... ?"

"Next time, will you be more likely, less likely or about the same to ... ?"

"What things would you change about.... ?"

The thing in common with all of them is that we are asking visitors and exhibitors to help improve our product - "the event".

But are they the best people to be asking?

Visitors and exhibitors are not sophisticated consumers of our industry's product.

They probably only attend a handful of events each year (at best).

Their experience is highly subjective - what products they are selling, how well their booth is designed and staffed can make a huge difference to how they see the event.

And they often have little - if any - understanding of what we as organisers actually do behind the scenes to make a "good" event work.

If you want to know how to make your tradeshow better, of course you need to know how your customers are feeling about it - but if you want real insight and truly constructive input you need to be asking people who do understand the business - but who simply have a different perspective to yours.

In this context the "experts" you should be asking are either other tradeshow organisers - or your own staff who work on other events in your portfolio.

So, who's doing that then.....?

The Event Industry & The Cold War

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:00:00 +0000

I recently visited the Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition "Cold War Modern", which covers the role played by art and design during the Cold War.

One of the central claims of the exhibition is that both the Russian/Communist governments and the Western/US governments overtly and deliberately promoted their own culture's excellence in design innovation as part of the ideological clash of empires taking place during the 50's-70's.

As well as this being interesting in itself, the topic of exhibitions kept cropping up throughout. Exhibitions were the key cultural battlegrounds where East & West showcased their brightest talents in a bid to show the world that their political system was delivering the brightest future to their citizens.

Admittedly some of these events were events staged purely for political reasons, and some were "World Fairs" where national pride is always at stake. However there were also events who's names are familiar to us today, such as Germany's building fair "Bau" where showcase constructions from some of the giants of the architectural world set the tone for a generation's buildings.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism the need for ideologies to do battle for hearts and minds has of course receded, and with it the funding to make it happen - and the exhibition industry has also evolved over this period as well, driven to deliver more value for its paying customers at every edition.

But a part of me couldn't help feeling that today's "sales & marketing"-driven exhibitions, where "ROI" is - quite rightly - the mantra of exhibitor and organiser alike, have also lost something in the process of evolution.

Events still deliver as a marketing medium, but the battle for hearts and minds is now being fought in other forms of media - and it's hard to see many of today's shows ever being seen a battleground for ideologies, whether Communism vs Capitalism ..or even Coke vs Pepsi.

But, is that because the paying customer has found better media in which to wage their ideological wars - or because the trade show community has lost the imagination and lacks the aspiration to deliver a product that is anything more than 3-D cost-effective lead generation?

And if an organisers had the vision - and budget - to turn their event into somewhere where the critical ideas of their industry were debated, what would that do for attendance and ROI ....?