A colleague asked me to rate his organization's events on the 5-point scale I proposed earlier this week.
The events are among the most important, prestigious and successful in the market they serve.
That understood, I gave them a single star.
To recap the rating system I proposed:
1-star events focus on everyday needs, satisfying attendees' needs to navigate without stress through physical space; meet other people and chat; acquire useful information; and talk business.
2-star events cater to fantasy, satisfying attendees' needs to lessen anxiety and escape reality.
3-star events provide cheap thrills, satisfying attendees’ needs to be wowed and titillated.
4-star events provide genuine thrills, satisfying attendees’ needs to be awed by proof of human ingenuity and displays of daring.
5-star events focus on melioration, satisfying attendees’ needs to improve not only themselves, but to better the lives of others.
If you are honest about your own event and can at best award it one star, remember that to earn a 1-star rating from Michelin, a restaurant has to represent, “A good place to stop on your journey, indicating a very good restaurant in its category, offering cuisine prepared to a consistently high standard.”
Like gourmands, event attendees crave a "5-star" experience, and event producers should want to deliver one.
But how do you define a 5-star experience? Or, for that matter, a 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-star one?
To my knowledge, nobody's offered a definition. So I will.
With a nod to Abraham Maslow, James' Hierarchy of Experiences presupposes:
Experiences can be categorized by their capacity to fill attendees' needs, and
Experiences can be ranked hierarchically.
So, from the bottom to the top, here goes:
Everydayness. This term characterizes the experience delivered by the vast majority of successful events; cribbing from restaurant-rating systems, you might label them "1-star" events. Events in this category more or less satisfy attendees' basic needs to (1) navigate without stress through physical space; (2) meet other people and chat; (3) acquire useful information; and (4) talk business. Of course, many events don't meet even this rock-bottom standard: their signage is inscrutable; they over-schedule attendees; they make every session a panel; and they treat suppliers like lepers.
Fantasy. This term characterizes "2-star" events like Mardi Gras, Coachella and Fantasy Fest. Events in this category fill not only attendees' everyday experiential needs (to navigate, converse, learn and do business), but their next-level needs to lessen anxiety and escape reality. Disney has mastered the delivery of such experiences. The more event producers can emulate the company, the closer their events will advance toward "2-star" status. Virtual reality is a quick and dirty way to accelerate that advance.
Cheap Thrills. This term characterizes "3-star" events like Comic Con, Burning Man and Bike Week. Events in this category fill not only attendees' everyday needs and their needs for fantasy, but their needs to be wowed and titillated. Remarkable stunts, goofy sideshows, celebrity appearances, and novel tchotchkes abound at events in this category. Every producer should strive to produce an event that delivers cheap thrills; few do.
Genuine Thrills.This term characterizes "4-star" events like CES, Sundance, and the Indianapolis 500. Events in this category fill not only attendees' everyday needs, their needs for fantasy, and their needs for cheap thrills, but their needs to be awed by (1) proof of human ingenuity and (2) displays of daring. The delivery of genuine thrills is the reason the Colombian Exposition, The 1964 New York World's Fair and the 1992 Summer Olympics made the history books.
Melioration. This term characterizes "5-star" events like TED, SXSW and the Aspen Ideas Festival. Events in this category fill all of attendees' needs, including the very highest-level ones: to improve not only themselves, but to better the lives of others. Maslow would call it self actualization.
NOTE: The termeverydayness is borrowed from the philosopher Martin Heidegger; and melioration, from the philosopher William James (alas, no relation).
Knowledge Seekers. These attendees want to improve themselves. Content and speakers drive their decision to show up. To woo them:
Target your content to them
Invest in a high-profile speaker
Offer lots of choices
Provide for note-taking and session-materials archiving in your app
Offer creative meeting-space set-ups
Include sessions that feature attendee-speaker interaction
Provide great post-event information
Tech-Savvy Networkers. These attendees value relationships. The volume of opportunities to connect drives their decision to show up. To woo them:
Include features in your app that ease connection
Gamify your event
Provide tons of networking sessions
Offer speed networking sessions
Supply the attendee roster before the event
Keep conversations going post-event
Inspiration Seekers. These attendees crave purpose. The volume of experiences drives their decision to show up. To woo them:
Include motivational speakers and self-help and coaching sessions
Offer brainstorming and co-creation sessions
Offer chances to become immersed in the destination
Use alternate venues that remove them from the traditional one
Offer community outreach or CSR experiences
Social Butterflies. These attendees love meeting new people—and sharing the experience. The volume of meet-ups drives their decision to show up. To woo them, you should:
Offer tons of opportunities for interaction in breakout sessions
Offer informal meal settings, to encourage socializing
Pack your event with entertainment and leisure activities
Ask Social Butterflies to be your advisors
Give them opportunities to be influencers through your app
Reluctant Attendees.These attendees are introverts. Professional obligations—and nothing more—drive their decision to come. To woo them:
Make the professional benefits of attending clear in promotions
Offer ice-breakers early during the event
Include lots of breakout sessions
Point out content that is forward-thinking or research-based
Include ample free- or down-time
Include a recommendation engine in your app
Provide a virtual version of your event
Brand Fanatics. These attendees are devoted followers. Opportunities to get the "inside scoop" drive their decision to attend. To woo them:
Include plenty of gadgets
Provide access to key brand representatives
Offer chances to win exclusive merchandise and experiences
Provide product demonstrations and early access to new products
Hold focus groups to allow them to share their insights and ideas
Luxury retail is dog-eat-dog. Unlike event producers, players in the business must stay ahead of audiences to survive. That's why they're hyper-focused on consumer trends.
To survive in luxury retail, the report says, you must satisfy "individualized and transformative forms of luxury consumption" that deliver a cosmopolitan and existentialist jolt.
"More consumers are becoming aware of the isolating effect of social media ‘echo chambers.'" the report says. "This is accompanied by a growing desire to not only broaden personal horizons, but to find purpose and cultivate empathy for others while doing so."
Consumers' craving for self-actualization manifests itself in these five trends—five trends event producers would do well to acknowledge:
The Quintessential Self.Luxury brands that abet self-discovery are hot. For just $3,500, Maverick Helicopter’s Yoga in the Desert will whirl you by helicopter from Las Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park for a 75-minute yoga class.
No-Frills Chic. Luxury brands that shout "simple" are hot. For just $140,000, Airstream will sell you a camper trailer you can haul into the woods.
Premium Redeemed.Luxury brands that better the planet are hot. For just $2,125, you can stay a night in Nekupe, a posh resort in Nicaragua’s countryside that helps local farmers earn a living without the slash-and-burn technique.
Extravagance on Demand.Luxury brands that harness phones are hot. For just $3, Recharge lets you book a high-end hotel room in New York City by the minute.
Customized. Luxury brands that are personalized are hot. For just $169, DNA Unwrapped lets you plan vacation trips based on your chromosomes.
Tradeshow versus Digital is going to be a slugfest, says event-industry consultant Francis Friedman in his new, 287-page book, The Modern Digital Tradeshow. Nimble contender Digital could handily clobber the out-of-shape champion. Digital has already driven Tradeshow from marketing's "center stage" onto a "specialized side stage," Friedman says; and, unless the latter regains its magic, Digital could win by a knockout.
Friedman prescribes a rigorous, three-legged regimen to help Tradeshow get back in trim:
Transformation.Organizers need to embrace event tech—now. There's simply no more time to debate the topic. "The tradeshow industry must now play catch-up to the changing digital marketing landscape through a fundamental shift in its historical business model and product configurations," Friedman says. Event tech that "animates" events and enables exhibitors to verify ROI will matter most—gizmos like VR, AR, AI, beacons, bots, holograms, and drones.
Rebranding. The event industry needs to discover and express a new and dynamic "personality," or its transformation into a digital player will go unnoticed. "In the current tradeshow organizer model, 'the show' is inanimate, occupying a specific date and time on the calendar of its marketplace and unable to 'act.'" Friedman says. "'The show' per se has no arms or legs, no voice and no ability to act or interact with its market. 'The show' is just booths on a tradeshow floor at a given time and in each place."
Friedman for years—via keynotes, articles, books and white papers—has been prepping tradeshow organizers for the coming match. With The Modern Digital Tradeshow, he's provided the playbook they need to go the distance.
But for the scrappy producer, as Mark Twain said, "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
That breed of producer is testing the participatory "unconference," embracing the design ideas of trailblazers like Adrian Segar.
Segar insists old-school conferences "unconsciously promote and sustain power imbalances"—imbalances anathema to new audiences, who crave equality opportunity with producers and presenters to influence outcomes.
The power imbalances stem from producers' "underlying belief that when you lose control everything turns to chaos," Segar says.
"Meeting stakeholders and planners typically subscribe to this viewpoint because they can’t conceive of (usually because they’ve never experienced) a form of meeting that successfully uses a different kind of power relationship." It's high time conference producers abandoned that viewpoint.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
― Dave Barry
Why must attendees―and the rest of our species―stultify, when great meeting designs abound?
An "elementary" meeting maps a familiar event onto the meeting. The familiar event―for example, a holiday dinner, a wedding, a court trial, an autopsy, a science experiment, or a club outing―functions like a metaphor.
Participant-driven A participant-driven meeting lets attendees pick topics. Post-Its are distributed during breakfast that let attendees "crowdsource" topics. The impromptu approach may feel chaotic, but 25 years of research has shown over half the topics offered at conferences are irrelevant to attendees.
Small niche
The small niche meeting―the opposite of the industry convention―connects 100 people or fewer through a "micro event" where they don't waste a moment's time navigating crowds of strangers, or listening to motivational lectures they won’t remember in a week.
Short plenary
The short plenary is a TED-style or "lightning” talk. The format is doubly effective when paired with a follow-on breakout (or breakouts) with the speaker. Learning and action
Adding a facilitated, end-of-day roundup to a meeting improves outcomes. It lets attendees recap what they learned, deepen connections with others, and find out what they missed. Popular formats include the "personal introspective" (attendees reflect on the changes they want to make as a result of what they learned) and the "group-spective" (attendees publicly evaluate the event's content and discuss next steps).
Sensitive topic
While a large meeting isn't a safe place for confidential discussions, small peer-groups can be convened to explore sensitive professional topics. Everyone must commit up front to the statement, “What we share here stays here,” and agree others have the freedom to ask questions and speak their minds.
Movement
Ten minutes of sitting slows blood-flow to the brain. Letting attendees move around mitigates the bad effects. Meeting facilitators can lead attendees in fast, frequent stand-in-place exercises; or conduct entire sessions standing up; or lead strolls around the room―or, better yet, through a beautiful spot outdoors (provided it's ADA-compliant).
Surprise
A meeting where significant parts of the program surprise attendees will have better outcomes. That's because they're instinctively wary of new formats and may opt out of experiential learning. By surprising them, they'll discover rewarding new ways to learn and connect.
Solution room
A "Solution Room" runs 90 to 120 minutes. After an intro, attendees are asked to describe a personal challenge for which they'd like peer advice. They then gather at small roundtables and mind-map the challenges on paper. Seat swaps allow each attendee to get―and give―advice. At the start of a meeting, Solution Rooms help groups of six to eight people connect, and are good for introducing new attendees into a community. Meeting Design is free―and well worth a look.
Expect more annual B2B events to market themselves like music festivals, according to Cramer. Meetings once held in convention center halls and hotel ballrooms will migrate outdoors and to hip, alternative venues, offering inspired music and entertainment. "Festivalizing" your B2B event means adding not only rad surroundings and music, but the other hallmarks of a big festival: frictionless registration, entry and wayfinding; a "choose-your-own-adventure" schedule; post-modern structures; exotic food and beverage; cause-related happy hours; playrooms and coffee houses; co-created artworks; social media extravaganzas; and event themes that celebrate coolness, community and creativity, Festivalization's dual goals are "reinvigorating attendee bases and attracting millennial prospects, who prefer experiences, touchpoints and connections at events," Cramer says. B2B event planners are riding a wave. According to Billboard, 32 million Americans attended a large music festival last year.
Before the web, organizing a successful B2B event was child's play, as easy as saying, "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!"
But content shock has made event organizing hard. Really hard.
If you want to attract a content-shocked audience today, you'd better get your own content right, says Ricardo Molina, cofounder of Bright Bull. "Marketing B2B brand events is basically impossible to do successfully unless you have this step done right," Molina says. Your ability to identify content that connects can only come from one place, as Warwick Davies, owner of The Event Mechanic!, says: "Knowing what’s going on in your market from a DNA level." "Imported" knowledge of your market won't cut it. Scratch any failed B2B event and, under the skin, you'll likely find the organizer got the content wrong. "Get your event content straight," Molina says. "Make sure it's the kind of stuff people want to hear about. Make sure you're offering something that's definitely going to drag them away from their desks and into a room with you."
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 execwho 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.
An "aspirational" ad campaign of the late 1960s proclaimed, "You've come a long way, baby." It took event planners a while to catch up.
But they assuredly have, as made clear by Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover's 200-page Experiential Marketing: Secrets, Strategies, and Success Stories from the World's Greatest Brands. No longer "corporate wedding planners," experiential marketers in the 2010s have become marketing kingpins—the drivers and integrators of all the marketing "silos."
"Live experiences have ignited a marketing revolution in which brands around the world have committed to upgrading their marketing strategies, budgets, and platforms," Smith and Hanover write. "And that revolution has driven a much-needed evolution of the marketing channels and silos used by brands for 50 years."
The heart of the book lies in Chapter Four, "Anatomy of an Experiential Marketing Campaign," where the authors describe the 11 "Experiential Pillars" underpinning the channel.
"As with a great recipe in which the ingredients are blended together to create a unique flavor, these pillars work together to optimize engagement and will allow you to achieve the brand-building, value-creating, clutter-braking power of experiential marketing," they write.
They base the chapter not on hard knocks or gut feelings, but an analysis of the 1,000+ winners of the Ex Awards, the annual awards competition for live events they've produced since 2002. And the events they consider take not one form, but many, from PR stunts, in-store events and road shows, to trade shows, user conferences and sales meetings. Reading Experiential Marketing tempted me to update my recent post, "My 5 All-Time Favorite Books on Marketing," because the book has the same quality as the "mind-blowing game-changers" I listed there. No matter how much you've dabbled in event production, the authors give you a palpable sense while you're reading the book that you're on a path of discovery; that you're like one of those "Pioneers of Television" who's in at the inception of a powerful new medium with a yet-understood capacity to build large audiences and fundamentally reshape worldviews. Buy it. Read it. You've come a long way baby!by JustAnotherJester
A trade show can amaze you or afflict you. Most do the latter. Consider how stressful shows are. Exhibitors zip in minutes before opening, travel-worn, ill-prepared, and often resentful of the fact they're being denied time with their customers back home. Attendees arrive in warmer spirits, happy to be away from the boss and harboring notions they'll be entertained. But they quickly discover the exhibit halls are about as navigable and hospitable as downtown Tokyo on a workday. The trade show maze is the full catastrophe—and acutely stressful. Research scientist Esther Sternberg has made a lifetime study of the connection between the built environment and the human brain's stress response. In her latest book, Healing Spaces, Dr. Sternberg distinguishes between mazes and labyrinths. Complexes such as hospitals are mazes, built to accommodate equipment, not alleviate illness. They trigger stress responses in patients' brains that make them sick, instead of well. Complexes such as Disneyland, on the other hand, are labyrinths. They're built to help you walk about calmly and mindfully. They trigger floods of dopamine—the stuff that drives engagement. "Labyrinths are calming," Dr. Sternberg says. "Mazes are stressful." What's your trade show like? A maze that afflicts? Or a labyrinth that amazes?
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
— Warren Buffett
Bundled tips. Distilled solutions. Condensed books. Expert panels. Industry roundups. Sound like your conference? You're preparing attendees for the last war. But they need to wage tomorrow's. "Traditional conferences focus on finding solutions to yesterday’s problems," says conference designer Jeff Hurt. Smart attendees (that's redundant; stupid people skip conferences) don't need more packaged information; they need results (remember, the word event comes from the Latin for result.) "People no longer come to your meetings to get information," says planner Holly Duckworth. "They come to make sense of the deluge of information they already have." If you're not transporting attendees to a future world, helping them adapt to new realities, and equipping them to thrive, you're not offering results. To put it another way, if your event isn't eventful, it's just another meeting.
"Meeting people in real life remains the most effective way to build a successful business," says Inc.columnist Helene Olen.
But how do you build a successful meeting? Olen thinks these three tools are essential:
Influencers. Attendees need to know they'll encounter up-and-comers at your event. Before they'll register, they'll ask, "Is this a network I can reach out to in the future?"
Underprogramming. Elbow-rubbing with influencers won't happen if you overprogram your meeting. Be sure to carve out generous breaks.
Starter packages. If you attract influencers, it's guaranteed: you'll be suitcased by entrepreneurs who believe they can't afford your event—nor afford to skip it. So offer price options for the tight-fisted.
"Dreamforce epitomizes a new breed of user conference," says Emily He on the DoubleDutch blog.
That new breed of conference "looks beyond the horizon to build a community that focuses on honoring your customers’ and prospects’ needs and desires," He says.
Honoring attendees' desires means delivering "all of the content they care about, whether it involves your solution or not."
How many corporate event producers look past their company's present horizon?
Not many.
I know one major cloud computing company that nearly scrapped its mammoth annual event, "because we have nothing new to say."
If you lack marketing imagination, don't give up the ship. Take direction from trailblazers like Salesforce, He suggests:
Feature diverse speakers. "Think beyond your industry’s usual guest list," He says. "Your attendees care about more than their jobs, and they want to hear from people who’ll change the way they think about the world at large."
Elevate attendee engagement. Deliver a memorable experience through parties and concerts. Facilitate workshops and small gatherings throughout your event. Provide an app that lets attendees make impromptu plans to meet up and amplify their experiences through social media.
Exploit your content.Videotape the best presentations and target people unable to attend the live event. Curate event content as e-books and blog posts. Ask top presenters to join you on a road show. "While a stellar live event can be a large investment, it can be extremely effective in fueling your pipeline," He says. "A single successful event, if done right, can power your entire marketing strategy for the year to come."
Create "micro experiences" within the experience. Take a page from consumer festvals like SXSW and introduce things like rock climbing walls and Ferris wheels.
Become "one with the destination." Don't go to a killer host city, then lock your attendees in a hotel ballroom. Make your meeting a microcosm entwined with the location. Provide local musicians, performers and food.
Offer a "next-gen environment." Don't just brand the space, tie every part of it to your organization's purpose. Introduce collaboration walls and local artists who custom-make takeaways tied to your product.
Design with courage. Quirky and unexpected moments can go viral. The G2 Conference lets attendees climb above its floor, circus style, and hold meetings while suspended in chairs.
Deliver on your theme.Use a "message map" to assess every aspect of the meeting, to assure they all articulate your theme. Every physical and digital touchpoint should carry the theme. Embrace event tech. Livestreaming, virtual reality, the Internet of Things, audience response, directional audio, and attendee tracking should all be deployed. Cultivate communities. Think beyond "technical support." Your users want to know where their industry and your brand are heading. Offer the sparks needed to launch new communities around new ideas. Provide platforms for continued content creation, conversation and collaboration after your meeting. And be purposeful and exclusive. Learn from startup events. Go back to your roots and original purpose. Experiment with fresh formats. Show users you're listening by treating each one as an early adopter. And, last but not least, spend wisely. Resist the big-name speakers, lavish parties and flashy moments and emphasize instead networking, conversation and opportunities to collaborate.
Once upon a time, a hotel ballroom sufficed to fill the conference producer's need for a space suited to parking 300 butts, and maybe 30 booths, for a day or two.
But Millennial attendees have crabbed so much, for so long, about B2B events' blandness producers are rethinking venue, hoping to provoke a wee more wow. According to Skift, B2B events are now being situated in many privately owned "alternative venues," including factories, warehouses, mansions, museums, boats, restaurants, cocktail lounges, wineries, art studios, work spaces and incubators. (Aside: With my partner producers, I just chose the latter type of venue for a new conference myself).
But blocking the way to wow is convention. For decades, producers have worked cozily with hotels.
"They’ve always met in the same hotel meeting rooms with the same carpet and the same white walls,” says Jan Hoffmann-Keining, CMO of an online matching service named Spacebase.
Producers' cherished comfort comes at a cost—to corporate innovation and creativity.
"People are realizing that if you keep meeting in the same rooms and thinking the same thoughts, then it’s going to be hard to find that innovation and creativity,” Hoffmann-Keening says. Patric Weiler, Head of Strategy for American Express Meetings & Events, thinks more producers will gradually buck tradition.
“The meetings industry is changing, and the classic silos are breaking up about how to plan a meeting,” he says.
Room-sharing represents the ultimate way for event-goers to personalize business travel, says company exec Chip Conley.
While she once aspired to stay in a predictably clean and conveniently located hotel, today's event-goer seeks “discovery”—a craving Airbnb satisfies by providing rooms in every sort of neighborhood.
The company fills a need that's not without precedent, Conley says:
Home-swapping dates to the 1950s, when the Dutch teachers' union suggested members could swap houses to save on vacation rentals.
VRBO web-ified peer-to-peer vacation rentals in 1995.
Boutique hotels surged about the same time, proving “there was a growing number of customers for whom predictability and ubiquity were not the right model."
Airbnb targets “customers who are a little adventurous, especially in locations that they know already,” Conley says.
To accommodate event planners, Airbnb is hawking widgets planners can embed in their websites. The widgets link attendees to blocks of Airbnb listings available during the event's dates and in proximity to the event's venue. Following in the footsteps of Amazon and Netflix, the company plans to use algorithms to become a global hospitality giant, according to Conley.
