The BusyEvent Blog

An interview with BusyEvent President and Co-Founder – Brian Slawin

What is your background that caused you to want to be in the event software business?
In the 90s, I was running the flight instruction department at Parks College of Saint Louis University, looking for ways to provide easier access to the materials our flight students had to master in order to earn their pilot certificates.   With some friends that were in IT, I developed what would now be known as a Learning Management System, but back then were simply an accumulation of downloadable documents and HTML pages.

With more and more students accessing these materials via the university network, my flight instructor colleagues approached me asking if I could put their materials on the network as well.  My job gradually transformed from being a line flight instructor to becoming more focused on the development of the curriculum and the distribution of materials, testing, standards, etc…  Through this time I also was working with the Toyota Air Sports team where I got to learn more about experiential marketing, the importance of data in making marketing and business decisions and frankly, how much fun the events world is.   Blending these two areas of my life, I began developing web sites and other online materials for airshow performers and eventually the air shows themselves.  As I got more involved with the air shows and began to better understand the logistics and how events were utilized as business, communications and marketing vehicles, I became more and more interested in how technologies could solve the various problems that events struggled to overcome; information management, communications, business development and sales, people management, logistics, etc….

That’s when I left Toyota and the University and began working at several event agencies and where I met my business partner, David Schenberg.

How many years have you been in the event industry?
I started in the mid-90s so, it’s going on 16 years.

What is the strangest/funniest thing that has ever happened at an event to you or your client?
I’m not sure how funny or strange this is, because at the time it was sure nerve wracking, but in the end it turned out fine and once again showed that staying calm under pressure, is the best approach.

We were at an event in Barcelona and about 15 minutes before the keynote featuring Sir Richard Branson was about to begin – all of the power to the backstage equipment went down.  It’s where we were stationed and getting ready to run the BeLinker audience response for about 2,000 attendees.  As the clock ticked down, people were running around frantically, throwing circuit breakers, looking for battery backups, trying to figure out what had happened . . . the walkie-talkie traffic was intense.  With the doors about to open and still nothing resolved, the BusyEvent team gathered and began to methodically run through our Plan B.  That’s when I looked over and saw that one of the non-English speaking grips had disconnected our entire system, thinking that it was a non-essential piece of equipment.  In doing so, he also had accidentally turned off the main power switch for all of the backstage power.  I called to the floor director and said “hey, I think I know what happened” and related to her what I was seeing.  About 20 people ran backstage and the poor grip was so startled I’m pretty sure he still hasn’t stopped shaking.

Once the power was restored, all went on according to play, with a few less hairs in everyone’s head.  But, once again it shows that in times of extreme pressure the best thing to do is keep your head and continue thinking and communicating.  As my business partner David says “It’s not what happens, but how you respond to it” and that’s so very true.

What are you most proud of having accomplished with BusyEvent?
One of the things that I am most proud of, is the way our company has continued to keep ‘solutions’ at the core of our focus, rather than developing a thing and looking for a problem to attach it to.

We continue to focus on our capabilities and the vision we had when we started our parent company, Panamedia Group in 2006.  While it hasn’t always been easy, or the quickest path to revenue, we knew that the events industry was ripe for a variety of solutions that would improve communications and make managing and running an event more efficient and ultimately more profitable for each of the stakeholder groups.

By building our expertise in a variety of areas that are parallel to the core of our business (such as developing the software for our Interactive Donor Walls) and gaining experience working with permanent placement hardware solutions, our capabilities to serve our clients’ wide variety of needs and source the appropriate solution continues to grow.

So, what I’m really proud of having accomplished is that most of our clients make us their first phone call . . . even if isn’t directly what we do, they know that we’ll always take the time to steer them on a good path.  The trust that we have earned and the relationships we’ve built are very satisfying and rewarding.

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Well, he’s done it again.

Richard Feldman, has stirred the pot once again in the LinkedIn Virtual Events and Meeting Technology group by asking the question:  Will running an online event in conjunction with a physical event cannibalize my face-to-face attendance or enhance it?

It’s a great question and a topic that’s been blunting the full-fledged embrace of virtual tools by the events industry.  As we ad smart phone capability to the BeLinker software platform, the discussion of revenue possibilities, profitability and ‘eyeballs’ has been a frequent one with our clients.

Here are our thoughts!

The good news is, there’s already a model for creating virtual access to live events.

• It’s highly successful,
• Massively profitable
• Growing exponentially every year and
• It is a model for the events industry!

Back in the 60s, professional sports leagues were having this very same debate; would televising games in the local city cannibalize attendance?  Some early experimentation led to 72-hour blackouts until it became clear that the answer was NO, it won’t cost ‘onsite’ eyeballs.  Instead, what was found is that adding ‘virtual’ channels and enabling hybrid participation expanded the audience, creating more revenue and turned time-based content into infinitely accessible, monetizable content.

Much like any sporting event, some people will want to go to the live event, some will want to watch it on TV (their computer) and still others will want to pick-and-choose their highlights later.  For each of those audiences, there is a channel (the venue, the web cast + Twitter and then videos-on-demand).

Each of those audiences can be served and each of them bring revenue and marketing opportunities which is good for the attendees (”I was there but didn’t quite hear the presentation”), good for the event producer (creating additional revenue by providing access to content) and especially good for the exhibitors and sponsors (marketing and exposure well past the end of an event plus the ability to generate once and utilize content well into the future).

The hard reality is, if the event producer doesn’t provide a virtual channel, the event attendees are going to create one anyway.  Wouldn’t it be better to promote and take advantage of its possibilities rather than continue to bury your head in the sand, ignoring what’s really going on around your event?

Given our experiences utilizing the mobile BeLinker platform, that question has been asked and answered dozens of times.  In the case of each of our clients, that answer is a unanimous “YES” to hybrid events.

Want to learn more about your event ROA? Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions and take advantage of an event’s hybrid possibilities!

More importantly . . . can you tell when they are because, they probably don’t mean to.

When asked, most attendees will tell you what they hope to accomplish, what they plan to do and how they intend to maximize their event experience. . . in reality, they don’t have a clue.

Ask any exhibitor what they really want to know and they’ll tell you “give me data on what my prospect is actually doing – show me the action”!   An event attendees actions, then, become the true measure of their desires because nothing else matters – not even what they say.

Measuring and reporting on action, calculating Return on Action (ROA) and providing exhibitors with tools to impact their ROA at an event, is the most important aspect that event planners can leverage.  Unfortunately, with a focus on ROI and ROO people get confused by what they’re measuring and what creates value.  It’s time to face some hard facts:

• According to Brian J. Carroll upwards of 90% of event exhibitors don’t have a lead management and qualifications process and simply show up to an event/tradeshow and hope for the best.
• Zadsol Solutions found that 43% of tradeshow attendees received relevant information AFTER a buying decision had been made.
• And the hardest fact of all . . . according to CEIR, 80% of tradeshow leads are never followed up on.

Said another way, “there’s no ‘there’, there”.  Here’s a typical scenario:

1. An exhibitor goes to an event and comes back with 1,000 contacts (RFID hits, bar code scanned list tape, fish bowl business cards, etc..).
2. The old way would say that’s a good thing.
3. However, based on the hard facts, it’s probably a very bad thing. . . . frankly the worst thing that could happen to a sales force because nearly all of those leads are under qualified, acquired by the wrong incentives and are proximity based (rather than action based).

So, what are proximity based leads?

Someone enters an exhibitor’s booth and their badge gets scanned.  Or, someone drops their business card in a fish bowl because the exhibitor offers a prize, there’s a scribbled note (”follow up with Bob”) on the back of each business card and probably the worst offender, the RFID system told the exhibitor that a particular person with a particular title dwelled in their booth longer than the average – is proximity really activity?   Tragically, each of these contacts came to the exhibitor’s booth, soaked up the event specialist’s time, took a brochure and probably ate a few Jolly Ranchers – before moving on with the exhibitor’s time and money and candy!

At its core, the old events model is permanently broken due to a variety of influences and the keepers of the status quo are trying to keep it that way.  Whenever you hear someone talk about ‘proximity’ information, which typically sounds pretty cool (”You’ll know exactly where all the people walked on the tradeshow floor”), make sure to ask the business question “how does that help my exhibitor accomplish their goals“?

The silence will be deafening.

– – -  In the first article in the BusyEvent “Fixing the Problem” series (If the Events Model is Broken, What Will Work In Its Place), we focused on where we’ve been. Next in our series of posts on “Fixing the Problem” we’ll address exactly what ROA is and most importantly, what it isn’t!  – – –

Want to learn more about your event ROA?

Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions!

We’ve seen it before.

When the internet first started, every company had to have a web site – until someone finally asked the question “why”?

In marketing, they’re known as early adopters and thank heavens for them . . . because they’ll shake the bugs out of the system and either give it enough breath to live past its early days of growth (Twitter) or kill it and move on to something else (Friendfind).

In the events industry, we’re living in a similar ‘early adopter’ phase when it comes to shiny objects – specifically, mobile and the plethora of applications providers searching for a way to wedge their solutions into the event planners world.

On the opposite side of that gold rush is the status quo (What Part of Status Quo Don’t We Understand?) whose old guard are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their position and keep things the way they’ve always been.

And, just like in real life, the best solution is usually somewhere in the middle – not acting hastily while also managing innovation-stifling analysis paralysis.

Which brings us to Richard Feldman’s recent question on LinkedIn:  TOPIC: Using onsite technology to bridge the gap between physical and virtual events.  I have done some research into vendors in the on-site networking technology space and have found two . . . I have invited both of them to comment on their technology, both hardware and software.

In response to that invitation, BusyEvent CEO, David Schenberg outlined the difference between an event planners goals and those of an event technology provider – and in doing so, overviews the operational and financial reasons to provide your attendees and exhibitors with an onsite technology that allows them to:

• do what they want to do,
• where they want to do it,
• with the tools they choose to use.

————-

Richard – Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

There are a few conversations going on surrounding this topic right now. The hottest one is in direct response to the flurry of mobile tools that have discovered how to play in the event space. In general, mobile assumes the following things are present to be successful:

1. Everyone has a smart phone and is ready to use it at an event.
2. The venue holding the event is cellular accessible.
3. The attendees are tech savvy enough to want to use their smart phone.
4. Attendees want to spend their time “heads down” in their phone building social networking tidbits to contribute to the collective.

If you look at high-profile events like SXSW where some of these “one trick pony” mobile tools were available, they were only used by a small % of the audience.

Which is why a solution looking for a problem, doesn’t work in the events space.  For live event technology to be a success it really should be:

1. Available to and usable by to at least 80% of the audience.
2. On the attendees choice of their device (smart phone, PC) or one offered by the event (ex: BeLinker keyfob).
3. Usable by the attendees without them needing to do anything to get and create value – other than registering for the event – to enable basic participation.
4. Easy to use without creating a “partial attention span” audience.

There are some excellent technologies available in a few vertical markets but integrating 3 or more of those is an event planner’s nightmare.  There are also some well integrated solutions in the $35-$75 per attendee price range, but that may not be feasible for an event of 3,000+ people.

So, there needs to be a happy medium of easy to use, a solid list of expected features and a reasonable price that allows an event planner to provide a good solution and create additional profitability.  Oh, and the data should be usable before, during and most importantly AFTER the event, feeding back into the client’s business processes.

As events look at how to cut their costs and fundamentally re-engineer the flow of revenue from 3rd party vendors BACK into their own pockets, fluffy features that don’t get used and don’t have a business purpose aren’t going to save an event any money and will eventually be dropped because of their shiny object nature.

By partnering with a company that has decades of event experience, rather than a technology provider looking for a problem to solve, an event planner will find a specific solution for their event, and the event industry’s need.

– - -  In the first article in the BusyEvent “Fixing the Problem” series (If the Events Model is Broken, What Will Work In Its Place), we focused on where we’ve been.  Next, in the first of a series of posts, we turn our attention to measurement and the false expectations that a focus on Return on Investment and Return on Objective create.  – - –

Want to learn more about your event ROA?

Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions!

If you follow the #Eventprofs chat on Twitter for even a few days, you’ll quickly see that some of the smartest people in the world (not just the events world) are looking at how to use tools and new techniques to re-invent the events industry, in real time.

As a company that uses enabling technologies to execute solutions, take advantage of opportunities and solve problems, we’re big fans of industries and companies that have faced what the events industry is facing, figured out a way to ‘re-engineer’ themselves and grow to even greater heights.

Examples such as our client Domino’s Pizza and their “New Pizza” campaign, Amazon.com with their ‘never say quit’ attitude, Twitter with it’s significant outage issues early in its growth and others certainly have great lessons to learn from.

It’s also intriguing to watch an industry as it re-invents itself right in front of our eyes, much like what’s going on with the traditional media and newspaper industry, the venture capital markets, the auto and financial industry and so many others, today.

In his Writings About the Internet Blog, Clay Shirky provides some interesting insights from the newspaper industry that parallel the events industry of today in his post: “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”.

Below, excerpts from his article edited with an events focus (our edits in parenthesis).

“If the old model is broken, what will work in its place? . . . “To which the answer is:  Nothing.

Nothing will work.  There is no general model for (events) to replace the one the (economy, technology, social networking and the need for efficiencies) has broken.”

“With the old economics destroyed, old (events) practices perfected for an era of big budgets and marginal returns have to be replaced with those optimized for a new economic, social, cultural and technological era.   It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about an (events) industry, because the core problem (events) solve — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of (meeting people and engaging with other people) — has stopped being a problem.”

“When someone demands to be told how we are going to (revitalize the events industry), they are really demanding to be told:

1. That we are not living through a revolution.
2. That old systems won’t break before new systems are in place.
3. That ancient social bargains aren’t in peril.
4. That core institutions will be spared and that
5. New methods of (meeting and engaging) will improve the previous practices rather than upend them.

In essence, they’re demanding to be lied to.

For the events industry to weather the current storm (which started at least a decade ago), learn the necessary lessons from it and to once again thrive, initiatives like “Keep America Meeting“, the flood of smart phones, or simple devices that don’t generate anything other than an electronic list, proximity without any Return on Action or worse yet, simply a map, are stop gap.  They certainly won’t be enough.

Why?

Because the events industry won’t ever look like it once did.

• Improved ROIs, will have to be there.
• A focus on ROA (Return on Action) rather than proximity or expression of interests, will have to be there.
• Real engagement, will have to be there.
• Events will have to transform from 3 day ‘occasions’ to year-long face-to-face and virtual sources of opportunity and
• the costs, like drayage, shipping, outrageously priced services, etc . . . that’s all going to have to change.

Those that are ready to answer that call are what the future of the events industry will be.  For those stuck in the ‘old way’, or for those driving so far ahead of the rest of the crowd that they can no longer be seen, the march of the dinosaur’s has already begun.  Rather than a clarion call or siren’s song, what we’re hearing in the wind is our clients telling us that we’re going to have to be better for them and for the future of us.

With our focus on what the future holds and our experience implementing solutions to event industry issues, yes, we’ve got ideas (for instance, the BeLinker).

In our next series of posts we’ll be sharing what we’ve seen work in both the near term as well as for the long term future.

Watch this space for the series titled: “Fixing the Problem”.

And, if you’re interested in learning how to maximize your event ROI, reduce costs by up to 50% and produce a better event?

Contact BusyEvent CEO David Schenberg
eMail: dschenberg -at- busyevent -dot- com
Direct Phone: 888.788.4896 x111

I’ve recently had the pleasure of speaking with Warwick Davies from the Event Mechanic.   It’s impressive to find someone with so much knowledge of the events industry who so willingly shares it without a quid pro quo attached.

Without getting hung up on the latest ‘shiny object‘, Warwick outlines how he makes use of technical (and non-technical) solutions to real-world event challenges.   And, the guy’s got GUTS . . . I’ll let him tell you some of his stories because I could never do them justice.  Suffice to say, he’s a great example of the kind of event professional we value working with because his focus is on selecting solutions that 1) Drive the business goal, 2) work and 3) are within the budget or even better, can save money or drive revenues.

Which is why I’ve recently added his Event Mechanic blog to my must read list.  It’s refreshing, it’s always topical and his ability to pull in events-industry-relevant content from a wide variety of non-event-industry resources, is impressive.  When you read his stuff you’ll see that his knowledge casts a wide net over the things that are right and also those things that need fixing, in the events industry.

Which is what was so intriguing about the blog post that he found on the New Media Hire blog, 9 Social Media Topics That Need To Die.

It’s not necessarily about how to use Twitter at your next event, or getting the most out of your Facebook relationships, it’s not even about how to drive traffic to your next event and yet, it’s about all of those things.

Enjoy!

#eventprofs #twitter

Recently, the Tarsus Group’s Stephen Nold asked that question in the  International Association of Exhibitions and Events™ (IAEE) LinkedIn group. There were many good responses ranging from tips-and-tricks to actual case studies of expectations and experiences.

Since BeLinker, our event networking platform, focuses on closing the “last foot gap” between people, products and information our thoughts were focused on execution.  And frankly, that’s what we see most events struggle with; executing their social media strategy.

For most, I’m going to guess, their social media strategy centers on getting people interested in their event enough to attend.  And while that’s a laudable goal we could be doing more.

We could be focusing on creating more value in both the virtual and face-to-face interaction.  Events, really, should be the start (or continuation) of a conversation that attendees have with each other, with exhibitors and with speakers.

Unfortunately, most producers are so busy working the nuts-and-bolts of their event that they aren’t spending enough time integrating the wide variety of social media tools into a consolidated platform.

In our opinion, the successful use of social media (which for this discussion is the ‘content’ element of social networking) focuses on the entire event; from marketing to registration to pre-event through the event through post-event and then around again to the next year.

BeLinker focuses on maximizing the face-to-face interaction that event attendees could have if they could figure out how to get together and then providing them the tools needed to carry that interaction into their real world.

The first thing events could do better is help you meet the right people; exhibitors meeting qualified buyers, attendees meeting the right speakers/other attendees and making sure all of that is done quickly and in real-time. While our focus tends to be on a technology solution to enhance the opportunity for this to occur we’ve helped other successful events do ‘round tables’ where people meet in rooms focused on their topic of the moment – in effect, crowd sourcing.

Second, we encourage our event clients to focus more on exhibitors and their needs and using social media to do so.  The recent LinkedIn thread started by Dana Freker Doody is emblematic of the issue.  In the more than 100 responses to the question Do you think the current tradeshow model is sustainable? most people focused on the cost side with little attention paid to the value side. Why?  Because for too long the industry hasn’t been delivering a tremendous amount of value as compared to the cost.

Sure, it’s a pond full of fish, butwhich fish?  And, how do I get at them?  Which attendees would raise their hand if they knew they’d be counted? If I’m attending an event I WANT to be approached by the right person with the right message at the right time.  Social media tools and channels can help those people self-identify more easily so they can receive the right customized message which equals the highest value proposition.

Third, event producers have a great opportunity to tap into the secret conversation at their own events and monetize that. It’s not about Twitter or Facebook status updates, it’s about understanding what is going on in real time and proactively engaging the attendees.  For example, a speaker has been hired to deliver 3 sessions and their first session receives terrible feedback.  Effective use of social media tools (like the BeLinker audience response system) would help the producer know what went wrong so they could provide that information to the speaker who could then ‘fix’ the issue before session 2.

It’s not about monitoring the social media conversation, it’s about being part of that conversation to proactively and as a partner provide the greatest amount of value possible to their event stakeholders.  Or, as Arron Coole said: “Stay social, be helpful, ask questions, listen and nurture and ensure your event reflects the issues raised by your audience.”

When done correctly, there’s a lot of revenue that can be generated for the event such that most social media tools and the effort required to nurture them, can become a profit center.

Finally, with all this talk of value and technology, let’s not forget that it’s humans we’re talking about and the bottom line for most people is that they like to have fun.  Maybe not Domino’s Pizza kind of fun; for instance, I like a great and mind-bending conversation every now and then. Successful social media needs to identify and foster that through learning games, competitive games, just plain fun games or an opportunity to just sit and talk.

In our opinion, a successful social media strategy builds a community that is ongoing and lasts beyond the end (and precedes the beginning) of an event and provides the community with tools, the content and the reason for staying involved.

Having fun, is a critical element of that.

10 Ways to Better, Cheaper, Faster and Greener Events in 2010 #eventprofs

For the events industry, 2010 will be a year of resolutions. It seems the harder times become, the more we resolve to do something about it. And like many New Year’s past, we already know what to do.  We just get complacent and forget. This year we don’t have that luxury.  The old way of operating an event, expo, congress or trade show will be left behind in the 00’s.  Skip the fad diets that promise to deliver quick results and quirky technologies that promise success. Here are our 10 best ways to make your events better, cheaper, faster and greener in 2010 and beyond:

1. Use technology, but only as a tool. There are several technologies that can help create better event communication and connectivity, but you must have a solid foundation of information.  It is this information that allows your attendees to come back and connect with people, products and ideas they found useful.  People vote with their eyes and mouse clicks and the sooner you can capture this information, the sooner your sponsors and vendors will pay you for the opportunity to connect with the right attendees using the right messages.
2. Knowledge is power. Events are all about information. How many came, who liked the speaker, is this room big enough?  What if you could get your data in real time to improve an event in progress?  For example, if a speaker is presenting three times and after the first time you get useful feedback, wouldn’t it be nice to make some adjustments before the other two presentations?  Your attendees decided to come to your event this year, reward them with the best event experience you can create.
3. A list is just a list. Since when did a list of names constitute qualified leads or interested people? Scrutinize any area of your event that does not return some level of qualification information.  Start by looking at how attendees connect with one another and see if there’s a way you can help facilitate those connections. Look at social networking tools. It’s the best place to see benefit from this emerging trend.
4. Eliminate paper and become smarter. The only brochure that tells you it’s being read is the one on-line. Going green is more than saving trees, budgets, and reducing carbon footprints.  Electronic materials are a critical component of the qualification process for expo vendors, speakers and sponsors.  Look for ways to make it easier to engage with your event without the bag of paper. On-line information tells us who, what and when which leads to why and how.
5. Events are no longer controlled by the event producer. Every attendee and exhibitor has a public voice (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that can turn a small incident into a catastrophe or a nice event into the best conference ever. By being engaged and nurturing the communications going on in the background, you can encourage event participants to help sell and promote “their” event by owning a part of the conversation and creating a more meaningful experience.

6. Content is King. Virtual and web-based events are competing more than ever with live events. Work with the subject matter experts to deliver high-quality content and a unique event experience. Get the speakers involved early and make them part of the online conversation. Invite them to participate in the event social network and set up a method for them to meet-and-greet attendees. And most importantly, make sure you’ve spoken with and coordinated your speaker’s needs to eliminate the last-minute fire drill.
7. KISS (Keep it simple). People gravitate toward simple and easy things that are worth the effort. For example, many people have a LinkedIn or Facebook profile that they keep up to date. Tools that make use of existing information make it easier for people to participate. High levels of participation in social networking lead to better and successful events.
8. CFOs are your new marketing partner. If you can’t prove it, it won’t get funded. You should be able to communicate the types of return on investment created for each stakeholder group. Then align yourself with the venues, vendors, participants, exhibitors and attendees who are looking for the types of ROI you can provide. Solid partnerships based on shared expectations is a recipe for great success.
9. Monitoring other people’s costs. You’ve worked hard to cut costs and be frugal around your event, but what about the vendors? If 300 vendors in an expo are going to spend $300 to rent a piece of equipment that generates a list (and you know how we feel about lists) ask yourself what would $90,000 spent differently do to help the vendors and the event.  By eliminating paper brochures you run a greener meeting, but you also trim an average of $5,000 out of each vendor’s costs for design, printing, shipping, drayage and storage the average materials sent to a show. Multiplied by 300 vendors that’s $1,500,000 in savings in your event alone.
10. And now a word from the sponsors. Sponsors are the ones who make up the difference in dollars between the event you can afford and the one attendees want. Those sponsors want many of the same things as the other groups.  As you make better habits for gathering real time event information, the opportunity to turn that information into sponsor revenue is the next frontier.  Simply placing logos on signage isn’t going to get the sponsors to keep stepping up. They want more of a partnership with the event and a relationship with the attendees.  The more you know about your event, the better equipped you will be to offer sponsors the custom programs they desire.

#eventprofs #tradeshow Are We Still Complaining About That?

The value of tradeshows, relative to their costs, was the topic of a recent blog post by Chris Valentine of the T3 Expo.

In it, Chris overviews an article written by Thomas Powers of the Chicago Tribune who looks at a survey of 210 exhibitors at the National Food Processors show and found that 58% considered not exhibiting the following year, while 25% had already decided to drop out of subsequent events because of costs.

Sound familiar? Ironically this article was written on July 18….1971!

To Chris’ point, “Since then, the options for marketing dollars have expanded exponentially and here we are 38 years later hearing the same comments“.  And, if you click through the link above, you’ll get to participate in a short survey that asks which items you’d like to see improved to make tradeshows more valuable.

If Chris had asked us, which he didn’t, we’d add another ‘answer’; “Create real ROI“.

The real question then becomes, “How?” . . . here’s an example:

Recently, along with our partners at the Creative Producer’s Group, we completed an event for 3,200 attendees.  As part of the checkin process, each attendee was provided a beLinker.  Throughout the 3 day event, attendees beLinked each other, the exhibitor booths and the products they were interested in, participated in audience response and were able to beLink the sessions and have access to the information presented without having to carry home big bags of printed documents or scribbled notes on the back of business cards.

Here are some numbers:

• 3200 total attendees, 3 day event, covered 500,000 sf of meetings space using 12 bantennas (see what a beLinker Bantenna is – see that little grey thing on top, that’s the wireless transceiver, 9 feet off the ground).
• Number of messages processed by the beLinker system during the event: ~265,000
  • That means on average, each attendee sent 83 separate messages using their beLinker, to beLink a person, a product/exhibitor booth/breakout session materials and participate in ARS.
• Total number of beLinks between people (making social networking connections, person-to-person): ~153,000
• Total number of beLinks to companies (attendees beLinking acompany to access their information) : ~90,000
• Total number of audience response question votes: ~17,000
• The average attendee beLinked:
  • ~45 other people
  • ~28 companies and their products
  • Interacted with 9 breakout sessions (to download or have access to the presentation materials) and
  • Answered 22 questions
• The attendee with the most beLinks made ~1200 people-to-people connections.
• The average company was beLinked to by 424 people (that equates to 424 active and qualified leads for each and every company at the event).
  • The company with the most beLinks had ~1500 qualified leads.
• The session that used audience response most effectively had ~2200 ‘answers’ during their ARS.
• The dozen members of the Executive Team each had more than ~1700 beLinks to their profiles.

Now, post event, all of this information is now being accessed online and for the past 3 weeks, the beLinker System has seen:

• ~24,000 individual logins by more than
• 2,200 attendees leading to more than
• 15,000 individual downloads and links to products, presentations and other marketing materials with
• More than 800 secure messages sent by people through the system, to each other.
• More than 6,200 additional connections (this is after the event has concluded) to people, products or other information using their virtual beLinker tools.

So, what’s the ROI?:

• More than $50,000 in savings relative to printed materials.
• A massive reduction in the carbon foot print of the event.
• A private social network has been created so that attendees can continue to connect, share and communicate.
• The opportunity for exhibitors to generate a real ROI for their efforts.
• Active information, rather than passive, available in real-time, that allows event producers to act and improve their event as it occurs.
• Capturing event information that can be monetized both currently and into the future.
• More revenues to the event venue owner without more costs to the producer or attendees.
  
• Interaction and activation.
• Fun, Fun and more fun!

Interested in learning how to maximize your event ROI, reduce cost by up to 50% and produce a better event?

Contact BusyEvent CEO David Schenberg
eMail: dschenberg -at- busyevent -dot- com
Direct Phone: 888.788.4896 x111

What the Wiggles Can Teach Us #eventprofs #tradeshow #assnchat

Luckily, perhaps, my family escaped the “Wiggles” phenomenon.  But after reading what Max Kalehoff from MediaPost writes about his recent experience, it’s clear these entertainers “get it”, when it comes to how to successfully utilize social media – and the excitement of their fans – to help market their brand.

One of the unfortunate turnoffs of big entertainment acts is the accompanying rules that forbid audience recording or broadcasting. Such policies cast a negative tone even months before the event. Consider the ubiquitous “NO CAMERAS/VIDEO/RECORDER” warnings that boldly talk down to fans on Ticketmaster-issued tickets.

Which is why I was delighted by my family’s recent experience with The Wiggles, the hugely successful rock band for preschoolers, from Australia.

Our two-year-old son Julian is a passionate Wiggles fan, and has every single Wiggles concert and musical episode saved in our Netflix streaming queue. So when the band announced its arrival in the New York area, there was no way we weren’t going. I wasn’t losing sleep over The Wiggles, but Julian was.

My expectations were low, and driven lower by having to listen to them during the entire car ride to the show. We paid more than a few good dollars to hear a bunch of middle-aged men in neon, skintight shirts perform rock-n-roll versions of nursery rhymes — alongside Captain Feathersword, Dorothy the Dinosaur, Henry the Octopus, and Wags the Dog.

But once they came on stage, with thousands of preschoolers screaming with anticipation and joy, my feelings toward them changed. After introducing themselves — “Hello everyone, we’re Jeff, Murray, Anthony and Sam” — the first thing The Wiggles did was establish their policy on recording and broadcasting.

Unlike most other big commercial acts, they asked all the children and parents to please take as many photos and videos as they could — and to share them on the Internet, on places like YouTube. The more the kids and parents shared, the more others around the world be able to join in on the experience. After that policy establishment, cameras and camera-enabled mobile phones started going off everywhere.

That policy is smart. For one, it says that The Wiggles genuinely want to please their fans — to let them do what they want to do. Second, that policy encourages fans to further immerse themselves in the experience and become more loyal. Third, encouraging concert attendees to capture and share their experience with the world automatically turns their million of fans into an even more powerful, mega marketing machine. The more people who join in on the experience, the more enjoyable the whole act becomes.

The immediate result for us? My son walked out and soon purchased more Wiggles albums, and insisted I commit to taking the family to see them again in concert. This is all a self-fulfilling prophecy. Despite mesmerizing songs and performances, this policy helps explain why The Wiggles made an estimated $45 million dollars in 2007.

Without a doubt, The Wiggles can teach most dull marketers a thing or two on how to be successful: be authentic, let go and engage your fans. And don’t insult those fans with policies that forbid them from sharing the experience.