Long ago, consultant Tom Gilb coined the term “mythodology” to describe erroneous but commonly held beliefs about how something should be done. Here are nine mythodologies about conferences.
Mythodology #1: We know what our attendees want to learn about.
I was the head of corporate events and travel for a tech company in Silicon Valley in early 2000. I managed a global team of professionals who managed over $5 million a year in event spend. We did great work, were paid well and, for the most part, loved what we did. When the internet bubble burst and 9/11 happened, we were forced to let droves of people go. My entire team was dismantled. I was crushed. Between survivor’s guilt and the uncertainty of the company’s future, it was a difficult time.
When you’re promoting a corporate event you can’t just take a bigger budget and throw it at the wall, hoping it’ll stick. Instead, you have to try to think beyond your comfort zone.
Having a strong strategy for promoting your event is critical to your success. You could have the best event in the world, but if your prospective audience doesn’t know about it, you - and they - will miss out.
So recently at Confex, we had a great panel of techxperts, hosted by James Morgan of Event Tech Lab, presenting a quick-fire round of 10 Top Tech Trends in Exhibitions, Awards, Galas and Corporate Events. My focus was on Exhibitions and I had 60 seconds per slide. I’ll try to summarize, in as few words as possible, to share some different perspectives for you to explore.
10. Marketing as a Service
Event technology is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of different technologies - think event management platforms, ticketing solutions, digital signage widgets and apps, beacons, virtual and augmented reality apps, AI-powered event chatbots, and more. Technology is literally shaping every aspect of the event experience.
There’s, however, one prevailing problem with new and innovative event technology and that is adoption. In order to reach meaningful adoption levels, event tech needs to satisfy the needs and expectations of both the organizers and participants.
For many corporate marketing or event departments, getting approval to add employee headcount is close to impossible. You may only have enough work to justify a part-time resource, or your events may be seasonal. Hiring a contract event manager can be a great way to make sure you get what you pay for, without excess overhead.
What — you have some doubts? Let us guess: “But will they do as good of a job?” “How hard will they work, if they’re not officially part of the company?”
“We bend over backwards to make our clients happy.”
How many times have you heard that saying? And what does it really mean?
Assigning actions to these words is vital to a company’s success. At the end of the day, after the work is done and the event is over, people don’t remember the technology or equipment you provided, they remember how they were treated. That’s why it’s so important to make customer service a priority.
This is the final piece in a three-part series recapping a conversation I had with Sue Falcone, Founder and CEO of Remarkable! A Speakers Bureau on how planners can strategically build relationships with speaker’s bureaus. Part one introduces the value of the speakers’ bureau, and part two talks about event speaker trends.
The best events transcend engaging the audience – they make the subject matter and entire experience come alive. An increasingly popular method is projection mapping, a technique that upends all our memories of flat-screen home movie projections and creates 3D experiences like those at the Courtyard by Marriott Super Bowl Sleepover in New York City.
The Millennial audience is a subject of interest and wielder of influence for good reason. A Brookings Institution study predicts that Millennials will account for 1 in 3 American adults by 2020 and up to 75 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2025.
