Clueless

The reason people do not know much is that
they do not care to know.

― Stephen Fry

I was scammed last week out of $500; a first, for me.

I received an email appearing to come from the president of an association I belong to. 

She asked me, as a favor, to buy $500 worth of gift cards and send them to a veterans charity on behalf of the association. She was supposedly swamped and couldn't get to it. I'd be reimbursed for my out-of-pocket expense promptly.

I helped her out the following day.

As a volunteer on several nonprofit boards, I receive frenzied requests from other association officers frequently.

Hers seemed fairly routine.

Only when I received a second request from her to send another $500, did I suspect a scam.

My credit card issuer has determined I was duped by a "credible imposter," so I don't feel completely stupid; only partly stupid.

By placing a few phone calls, I learned within moments of sensing a scam that the association's leaders knew for days about the imposters, but covered up their activities from the association's members.

They had also—years ago—posted all the members' names and emails on the association's website, making them easy pickings for scammers.

I informed the president she had committed an egregious breach of trust by exposing members' personal information and then covering up the scam.

But she didn't—and doesn't—get it. 

The term breach of trust means nothing to her. 

She only wanted to know whether to cancel my meal at next month's annual lunch, since I was resigning from membership.

Some folks simply have no business running a nonprofit.

If you are asked to do so, I suggest you first educate yourself—just a little.

It's easy!

There are hundreds of free resources at your fingertips.

Show you care enough to become informed.

Or stay on the sidelines.

You have no business trying to lead.

Fat, Dumb and Happy Revisited

I guessed eleven months ago American Society of Association Executives wouldn't contact me after I'd enrolled—even once—until it wanted me to renew my membership. I guessed correctly.

Associations need to do better than that, to stay in business. 

Perhaps ASAE should consult the FBI. It would learn the Bureau frowns on advance fee schemes.

Nonprofits: Running on Empty

Most nonprofits are running on empty, according to a new survey by BDO.

Forty percent have less than six months' reserves; thirteen percent have none.

The financial picture's worse among small nonprofits (those with annual revenue under $25 million).

Loss of revenue can cripple a nonprofit. That's why BDO recommends keeping liquid reserves for at least six months.

Executive directors and board members in a bind over money have a clear choice: they can hide their heads in the sand, or take action now to bolster income and reserves.

The economy's rolling, but the joyride can't last forever.

Pick up the phone an call a few revenue-generation experts today.

You Can Thank Associations for National Days

July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day.

Marked merely to drive product sales—in this case, sales of chicken parts by fast-food restaurants—the hennish little holiday typifies most so-called "National Days."

National Days are PR stunts—or the vehicles thereof—that date back to the Roman Empire, when emperors declared micro holidays constantly, in order to keep the bread-and-circus-loving citizens of Rome satisfied.

Lupercalia, for example, was a micro holiday marked every February 15th. The Romans would celebrate the day by sacrificing goats, drinking lots of wine, and parading around in the nude, in hopes of banishing evil spirits.

We moderns prefer National Days that honor stuff we can buy: consumer goods like almonds, bourbon, cupcakes, eggs, hot dogs, pancakes, spreadsheets, towels, tubas, and underpants.

As of 2017, association marketers have spawned over 1,200 of this sell-ebrations, according to the National Days Calendar.

To apply for your own National Day, all you need do is submit it to the keepers of the Calendar.

"The buildup annually to a National Day is great," the application states. "News stories, increase in product sales, top of mind awareness and much more can be generated annually."

Great, that is, provided you're not a chicken.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

M&A strategist Denzil Rankine told attendees of UFI's European Conference in April the compound annual growth rate of the "core product of exhibitions"—namely, floor space—is limping along at a mere 2%.

Inflation will eat that—and more—for breakfast.

When you consider how complacent most concrete-peddling association show organizers are, the best you can say is they're "whistling past the graveyard."

The idiom has two meanings, one positive, one negative.

"Whistling past the graveyard" can mean you're displaying nonchalance in the face of danger.

Or it can mean you're clueless.

Whichever's the case, associations need to find new revenue streams to shore up concrete sales.

They can't just hope shows will return to vitality by themselves, the economy will boom, or that "Millennials will attend when they get jobs."

Young at Heart

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you're young at heart.

— Carolyn Leigh

A former association executive's dream comes true this week when the American Writers Museum opens in Chicago.

The museum is the brainchild of Malcolm O’Hagan, who ran NEMA—the National Electrical Manufacturers Association—from 1991 to 2005.

The museum treats visiting littérateurs to a smorgasboard of great American writers, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harper Lee, Mark Twain to Maya Angelou, Billy Wilder to Bob Dylan.

O’Hagan undertook the project eight years ago, after a trip to the Dublin Writers Museum.

He left the Dublin museum wondering why there was no equivalent among the 17,500 museums in America.

Within a year, he started a nonprofit, whose board would eventually raise $10 million to found one.

Raising that amount was no cakewalk.

During the seven years required, O'Hagan sent over 39,000 emails to donors.

"When I embarked upon this mission I made a ten year commitment," O'Hagan says in an interview with Tin House.

"Nothing worth doing is easy if you want to do it right."

Burn the Boats

Resolving to begin life anew, when the mutineers of the HMS Bounty reached Pitcairn Island, they burned the boat.

Like the Bounty's crew, many of today's publishers and associations must self-administer the shock that flings them into the "conquer or be killed" mindset, or they're sure to wither and die.

Burning the boats—destroying outdated, expensive and unprofitable products and programs—may indeed take a few mutineers. Comfortable execs and boards aren't about to do it.

At Super Niche Media Event this week, I heard that idea expressed by attendees many times.

It may take a new generation to lead these organizations to burn the boats and behave like brands. Provided the ships don't sink beforehand.

Fat, Dumb and Happy. But How Long?

Complacency—the silent business killer—might finally do in associations.

They've been in free fall since the Great Recession, shedding people and programs left and right, as they watch the membership pool evaporate.

It may be only years until they go the way of pay phones, folding maps, and dot matrix printers.

Association executives' self-interest may be the cause of the failure ("No matter the cost, let's preserve my bloated compensation"). Or perhaps it's the fault of hidebound boards.

Whatever the cause, one place that complacency shines is member on-boarding.

A case in point.

Precisely one month ago today, I joined American Society of Association Executives. Since then, I have received nothing from ASAE but for two lame auto-responses confirming my $470 payment.

Do I feel buyer's remorse? You betcha. I wonder:

• Does anyone inside ASAE even know I'm a member? 
• Will I ever be contacted before I receive a renewal invoice in 12 months? 
• Will I derive a single benefit from ASAE, or are my dues merely a charitable donation? 
• Why did I ever part with my money? 
• What am I missing? 

Okay, maybe I'm naive.

In The End of Membership As We Know It, Sarah Sladek writes, “For hundreds of years association memberships have been cut from the same cloth. With few exceptions, people paid dues once a year for access to a full year’s worth of membership."

So maybe my dues payment was simply a toll.

If it was, I've taken the bridge to nowhere.

"Scrappy" for-profits know there are two milestones a new customer must reach:

• She must sign up for the product. 
• She must achieve her first success with the product. 

Customer churn occurs when the second milestone is never reached. To minimize churn, for-profits focus on on-boarding. For example:

• Xero asks new customers to watch a "getting started" video when they sign up 
• PropserWorks mails new customers a handwritten note 
• Trill puts cards on its on-boarding website that explain how its product works 
• Etsy provides a "progress meter" for new customers setting up a shop 
• Dropbox helps you upload your first file 

It may be too late for association marketers to up their game by mimicking their for-profit peers.

But should they at least feel an urge to learn new tricks, I'd recommend signing up with Chris Brogan.

Meanwhile, I'll work on getting my dues refunded.

Yesterday

Does your meeting need a chief experience officer?

Samantha Whitehorne answers yes in Associations Now, and identifies three roles for the CXO:

• Attendee advocate. The exec who spots and fixes "small mistakes that could frustrate attendees."


• Listener-in-chief. The exec who studies live audience feedback and recommends adjustments in real time.


• Brand guru. The exec who polices branding before, during and after the event.

To Whitehorne's list of duties, I'd add:

• Guardian of truth. The exec who goads planners to up their game.

Want the truth? Attendees have zero tolerance for mediocrity.

Salesforce.com proves that fact in its new study, State of the Connected Customer:

• 80% of B2B customers say they expect real-time response
• 75% say they expect providers to anticipate their wants
• 70% say technology makes it easy to take their business elsewhere
• 66% say they'll abandon you if treated like a number

It's easy for planners to pine for yesterday, when the audiences were pliant; the competitors, pipsqueaks; the margins, porcine. But today's audiences want more.

"Excellence, quality and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves," Disney animator Ed Catmull says in Creativity, Inc.

The time is now to appoint a CXO for your event.

Indeed, it was yesterday.

At the Zoo

Are mammoth trade shows dropping like flies?

That's what AmEx predicts in its new 84-page report, 2017 Global Meetings and Events Forecast.

Companies' event marketing spend won't change next year, but where that money's spent will, according to the report.

Event marketers' spend will increase by 1% in 2017, while their participation in big North American trade shows will decrease by 20% (the average event marketer will participate in 8 of those shows next year, down from 10).

Event marketers will spend the money they would have spent on those big events on small, content-rich ones, instead.

Presaging next year's downturn, four flagship shows recently shuttered: ASAE's Springtime, CTIA's Super Mobility Week, FMI's Connect, and NCTA's INTX.

Which big fossils will be next to sing a swan song?

Event-industry journalist Michael Hart recently observed that, right now, tortoise-like associations are exceedingly vulnerable to their hare-like counterparts, the for-profit organizers, as more money chases fewer events.

While associations dither, "Nimble players can swoop in and launch a competing 'pop-up,' worrying little about legacy issues and more about profits," Hart wrote.

It's time for associations to give up the ostrich-act and take the bull by the horns. There's simply no time to monkey around.

Learn to ape your for-profit competitors!

Income Crisis Worries Associations

A UXB lies buried in Naylor's newly released annual study, 2016 Association Adviser Communications Benchmarking Report.

The study finds 54% of association execs think their inability to generate non-dues revenue from communications activities is a serious or significant problem, up from 11% only a year ago.

Most trade and professional associations rely on non-dues revenue to operate. 

According to ASAE, 59% of trade associations' revenue is non-dues revenue; and 66% of professional associations' revenue is non-dues revenue.

If Naylor's study is correct, associations may be facing, if not an existential crisis, a financial one.

POSTSCRIPT: It's time for associations to quit sitting on their assets (pun intended):

• Marketing and membership lists can be profitably rented
• Event content can be profitably livestreamed
• Webinars can be profitably packaged from publications
• Event sponsorships can be profitably sold to "nonendemic" sponsors

Influencer Marketing: Cooking with Gas

“Influencer marketing presents a glaring opportunity for brands to leverage the power of word-of-mouth at scale through personalities that consumers already follow and admire,” says Misha Talavera in Adweek.

Influencer marketing may in fact be “the next big thing,” as Talavera says; but it isn’t new.

In 1939, build-up boy Deke Houlgate worked for American Gas Association when he cooked up the tagline, "Now you're cooking with gas!"

Electric and natural gas stoves were in hot competition at the time. 

The association hoped to persuade homeowners cooking with gas was the best way to get hot meals on the table.

Without funds for ads, Houlgate called Bob Hope's scriptwriters and convinced them to insert his line into Hope's radio show.

It became one of Hope's signature lines, and soon spread in use by other comics, jazz musicians and cartoon characters.

American Gas Association was hardly Houlgate's last hurrah.

During World War II, from inside the Pentagon, he used his magic to popularize the unpopular B-26, a bomber so crash-prone it was nicknamed by fliers "The Widowmaker." 

Houlgate also helped glamorize WACs, to encourage enlistments.

Event Sponsorship: On the Trash Heap?

"Event sponsorship does not belong to the 2010s," says Julius Solaris on Event Manager Blog.

If you produce events and your notion of sponsorship amounts to little more than "brand exposure," your notion's due for a check-up.

Indeed, past due.

"Sponsorships featuring logos, eyeballs and impressions don’t carry the same value they once did," says Velvet Chainsaw's Wendy Holliday.

Sponsorships that don't pluck heartstrings, produce leads, and persist beyond the event belong on the trash heap. (Two sure signs your sponsorships are outdated, according to Velvet Chainsaw: 35% or more go unsold; 75% or more aren't renewed.)

The $64,000 question you must tackle: Why should any company buy your sponsorship, when it can stage its own event? How can you compete against that?

Solaris provides the answer: A proprietary event is inherently lopsided. No matter how you shake it, the private event is biased—and yours isn't.

If you have a genuine reputation for authority, you have an insurmountable advantage.

"Some events are born because they are the expression of a community," Solaris says. "They are a movement. 

"These events are built from the bottom up, their main objective is to get together, be entertained, network and learn. 

"Sponsors should fight with each other to sponsor such events."

Capturing Millennials

The American Society for Association Executives this week shuttered its decades-old "Springtime in the Park" and announced a new un-expo, "The Xperience Design Project."

The move typifies every event producer's urge to capture Millennials, who'll comprise half of all prospective attendees by 2020.

Like event producers, travel companies are "scrambling to capture the business and loyalty of this new breed," Jordan Forrest says in Forbes.

Forrest notes five ways Millennials differ from their predecessors:

They travel. Millennials average five business trips a year, compared to only two for older professionals. They're also more likely to extend a business trip into a vacation.

They tinker. Millennials "expect mobility and crave convenience," Forrest says. They're more likely to use apps to book business travel and streamline travel plans.

They splurge. Millennials have expensive tastes, "as long as they’re not the ones paying." They're more likely to spend company money on fine dining and room service than seasoned colleagues.

They freewheel. Millennials are far more likely than older colleagues to book trips and change travel plans at the last minute. In response, "many airlines and hotels have begun offering last-minute online travel deals targeted at digitally savvy Millennial travelers."

They grouse. Millennials trust online reviews and aren't shy about posting negative ones. "It’s no wonder that businesses are eager to meet Millennial demands," Forrest says.

How to Handle a Hard Presentation: 22 Sure-Fire Tips

Marketing maestro Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps corporations and organizations generate publicity about their activities and shows leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

What’s the most important thing you can do if you know that you will be making a presentation to a skeptical audience, at a challenging venue, or in an otherwise difficult situation? 

In a word: prepare.

While it is impossible to ensure that every presentation will go smoothly, there are definitely steps you can take to help stack the deck in your favor.

Here’s how:

• Don’t accept speaking invitations for which you are unqualified or unprepared. Don’t let your ego get in the way.

• If you spoke to the same tough group or in the same difficult setting before, ask yourself: What did I learn from the experience?

• Think twice about giving breakfast speeches if you are not a morning person, or evening presentations if you like to retire early.

• Do your homework about the audience (demographics, knowledge of the subject matter, special interests or concerns, etc.); ask the sponsoring organization if there are any red flags about the audience you should be aware of (forewarned is forearmed).

• Ask others who have spoken to the organization what it was like, and what you can learn from their experience.

• If you accept the speaking invitation, know what you want to accomplish with your remarks.

• Know the basics about the speaking opportunity (format, length of your presentation, time, location, etc.).

• Arrive early so you can get a feel for the room where you will be speaking, greet and chat with people as they arrive, etc.

• Make sure that the layout of the room is to your liking and meets your needs (classroom-style, theatre-style, roundtables, etc.).

• When you arrive, check with your host to ensure the arrangements, purpose and topic of your presentation have not changed.

• Know where things are, such as lights, microphones and audio controls, AC and heating controls, water, restrooms, etc.

• Ensure that you and your audience will be comfortable by checking the heat or AC settings, microphone settings, lighting levels, extraneous or distracting noise, etc.

• Check out any that stairs you must climb to get on or off the stage. This will help you to avoid tripping over unfamiliar steps.

• Don’t tell jokes unless you’ve already proven that you can tell jokes well. There’s nothing funny about no one laughing at your jokes.

• Make sure your audience can see you. Don’t hide behind the podium.

• Do not hide your gestures. Keep your hands up where your audience can see them!

• Maintain a good posture when standing or sitting. No slouching!

• If audience members do not have access to a microphone, be sure to repeat questions before answering them. This helps ensure everyone in the room hears what was asked.

• Respond honestly to questions. It’s okay to say "I don’t know."

• Don’t allow one person to monopolize the session. ("Let’s meet afterwards to talk about this.")

• Summarize/rephrase lengthy questions for the audience. ("Let me make sure that I understand what you are asking...")

• Do not allow Q&A sessions to drag on. Signal to your audience that the session is almost over. ("We have time for one more question.")

Your Ex-Spouse and Your Event Have Something in Common

April 14 marks the first-ever Global Meetings Industry Day.

The event-industry advocacy group Meetings Mean Business joins forces with the Convention Industry Council to celebrate meetings with rallies, proclamations and social media storms.

April 14 is also set aside for National Ex-Spouse Day, National Pecan Day, National Support Teen Literature Day and National Dolphin Day.

Busy day.

Does the Events Industry Have Any Political Influence?

Michael Hart contributed today's post. He's a business consultant and writer who focuses on the event industry.

Everybody’s heard at least a little bit of the political chatter over restrictions on LGBT people in Georgia and North Carolina lately.

A week or so ago, Georgia’s governor rejected a bill the legislature passed that would have allowed businesses not to serve gay people if it conflicted with their religious beliefs. About the same time, the North Carolina state governor said of a similar bill—this one creating a law about which public restroom people are supposed to use—“Bring it on!”

According to Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau CEO William Pate, the billion-dollar business the events industry brings to Atlanta every year had something to do with the Georgia governor’s decision. In North Carolina, a statement from the High Point Market Executive Committee made it clear customers are already starting to pull out of its event later this month—and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory isn’t budging.

So, did lobbying on behalf of the events industry make a difference in Georgia, but not North Carolina?

The truth is that it’s hard to know. While those of us who run tradeshows, conventions and conferences feel like we’re pretty important people—especially when we bring a citywide to town—the reality is that, compared to other industries, we’re small change.

But our customers are the real thing. And the fact that companies like Disney and Coca-Cola feel a need to take a political position in order to retain their customers tells you something about how much the way they approach their businesses has changed over the years. They aren’t just merely responding to markets anymore; they’re responding to the sentiments of their customers in ways that go beyond whether they’ll pay a certain price for a certain product.

Nothing in business is as simple as it once was—and that applies to the events industry as well. Yes, there are show organizers who still get away with selling their quota of 10 x 10s every year and creating a lineup of PowerPoint presentations by sponsors that they then call a conference program. But their days are numbered.

As customers in every part of the business world change how they do business, so must event organizers.

Chili Pepper Burns

Mary Boone co-authored today's post. She is considered a leading authority on the design of meetings to incorporate engagement.

Bob:

For as long as I've been involved in event promotion, I've been stymied by the ubiquitous chili pepper brochure.

From time immemorial, every event planner who's ever held an event of any size anywhere in the American Southwest, it seems, has illustrated the cover of her promotional brochure with a chili pepper.

I understand why a B2C event planner might use the tactic.

But why—when attendees are time-starved, budget-conscious and results-driven—do B2B event planners persist in the belief that destination matters? That destination influences prospective attendees' decision to attend a B2B event, or prefer one event over another?

The answer: DMOs.

Destination Marketing Organizations (in quainter times called "Convention and Visitors Bureaus") have brainwashed two generations of B2B event producers.

And not for the better.

In the drive to "put heads in beds," DMOs have propagated the myth that B2B events are just a form of tourism.


Their sway over B2B event planners has cost the planners dearly—in attendance, income and career.

That's why I insist chili pepper burns.

Mary:

I don’t think the answer to this situation is to dismantle DMOs. I think the answer is to raise awareness and educate.


Imagine this. An event planner is putting together an event. She is trying to figure out, among a million other details, where to hold it.


What if she knows the “Flo” (think Progressive insurance) of DMO professionals? She calls Flo. “Flo, I need to hold this event somewhere and I’m not sure where.”


Flo: “Tell me more about the objectives of the event. What’s your organization trying to achieve? What type of environment is going to support those objectives? Tell me more about the culture of your organization…”


Then, after a great conversation, Flo says, “You know, I’d love to be able to say that Chili Pepper, Texas, has the perfect venue for you, but this one time I have to admit that Vancouver, B.C., might be better.”


Shock and awe. So this time Flo doesn’t get the business, but guess who our planner is going to call every time she needs help?


If DMOs are educated to be consultative, client-centric, and business-focused in their interactions with planners, they can be deeply essential to the process of strategically selecting a location that matches the needs of both the event and the business.

2 Huge Mistakes that Will Sink Even Your Strongest Event

Warwick Davies contributed today's post. With 25 year's experience running conferences and trade shows, he owns and operates The Event Mechanic!

Having been around in the business a while, I have had the luxury of watching great shows come and go, like watching cruise ships in the harbor. 

What are the critical factors that will hasten the decline of an event? I’d boil them down to two:

1. Losing positive engagement with your key stakeholders, who are: 

• Top 10 sponsors
• Top 10 content drivers or thought leaders
• Top 10 attendee groups
• Top 10 suppliers (hotels and general service contractors)

Someone has spent years building the relationships that grew the event to be a market leader. As the event grew, you may have started to take things for granted or gotten greedy, with large profits rolling in, and forgot the nuts and bolts of keeping relationships healthy and mutually profitable. As the market grew, your competitors became hungrier than you, and started treating your stakeholders better than you, and they started to drift.

2. Not knowing what’s going on in your market from a DNA level 

Is your knowledge of your marketplace ‘imported?” Are you part of the market or just serving it?  If the latter, how do you know which innovations to feature without being too forward or not forward enough? 

That’s the bad news. How do you reverse the trends? Just do the opposite of the above: make a commitment to keep all your relationships healthy and your knowledge current and relevant. Resting on your laurels in this business is going to eventually end in disaster…

Conference Producers: Have Faith in Fun

No friends to controversy, conference producers like safe.

Safe speakers. Safe subjects. Safe surroundings.

But safe's also stodgy.

Safe doesn't leave room for fun.

Education researcher Dorothy Lucardie interviewed 50 adult students and teachers and discovered fun boosts leaners' motivation, concentration and engagement.

By injecting fun into classrooms, "more adults are encouraged and motivated to participate in learning with enthusiasm for the journey and optimism for the outcomes," Lucardie says.

If your only goals as a conference producer are to herd attendees between sessions and ensure the pastries are peanut free, your goals are obsolete.

As app designers know, fun is the new professional. Just as the lines between "business" and "casual" have blurred, so have those between "serious" and "fun."

Updating the way you design conferences may send chills up your spine.

But, as fun theorist Bernie DeKoven says, "Have faith in fun."