Conference Planners: Make Every Moment Instagramable

Planners, I pity you.

You haven't cracked Gen Y's code yet.

Now you have to wow Gen Z.

The US Census Bureau reports 74 million people belong to Gen Z. In just three years, they'll represent 40% of attendees.

Their intolerance of passivity makes the rest of us look like sheep; so does their penchant for social media activism.

And therein lies both the problem and the solution, says Skift.

No longer can you deliver your grandfather's conference and expect Gen Z to stand for it—or sit through it.

“If it’s not interactive, they’re not going to stay at the meeting,” planner Cindy Lo tells Skift. “They need to be entertained and they’re looking for those Instagramable moments.”

But if you try only to razzle-dazzle Gen Z members, Lo says, you'll fail. You have to razzle-dazzle them authentically. And you have to do it long before they'll even register.

And you have to do it long before they'll even register, because they judge a conference's real values before deciding to engage.

“Gen Z can sniff out fake so fast,” Lo says.

But how do you avoid appearing "fake?"

One way: avoid interruptive calls-to-action like "Tweet this!” in your marketing. Gen Z members understand marketing better than previous generations and abhor tacky commands.

Another: be Instagramable in your marketing. Use tons of imagery to promote your event, keep your copy short, and make both mobile-friendly. You'll not only convert more Gen Z members into attendees, you'll turn them into advocates for your brand.

How to Draw a Crowd

Drawing attendees to events remains producers' runaway biggest challenge, as Sam Lippman's latest ECEF Pulse proves.

Six in 10 producers name attendance acquisition their Number 1 challenge, according to the study, while numerical event attendance has declined three straight years in a row.

That's a pity, because drawing a crowd ain't rocket science. The formula goes as follows:

Step 1. Build an evergreen e-list by promoting your event year-round. Use e-mail marketing and social media. Smother prospects with great content. Supplement those tactics with retargeting. And rent prospect lists, to be sure you're covering the universe.

Step 2. Mobilize your speakers, sponsors and exhibitors to help spread the word. Tap influencers to do the same. Make it easy for them to help you. If some resist, move on: there are more than enough enlightened ones out there to make a king-size dent in your universe.

Step 3. Telemarket VIPs. They merit a special touch. And roll out at the same time some targeted direct mail―attendee marketing's Old Faithful.

Step 4. Hire a decent agency. Attendance acquisition isn't a DYI project. If you want a recommendation, I have one.

Coach

Coaches who love coaching teach players to love learning.

— The Coach Diary

Can you run a successful business from the sidelines?

Absolutely.

That’s the message of Lessons of an Entrepreneur: How to Grow, Take Risks and Survive, the new book by The Expo Group’s chairman and CEO, Ray Pekowski.

Pekowski's 113-page book is full of personal stories and anecdotes, which makes it breezy and entertaining.

At its heart are teachings only a coach could concoct:

• Innovative customer service, not growth, should be your business's goal.
  



• A servant's mentality in a CEO goes hand in hand with steady growth.
  



• Humble leaders are strong leaders.
  


• No matter your specialty, you're really in the training business.
  



• Only leaders who are mentors can influence corporate culture.
  



• Teamwork comes from setting goals specific enough to influence performance.
  



• Plan for failures and mistakes—they're inevitable.

It's little wonder Pekowski has published this little book: teaching and coaching are in his blood (he did both before joining the event industry in the 1980s).

And teaching and coaching underpin nearly all his success formulas.

"If you can teach or coach the group or department that reports to you, then in turn, that group can go out and teach the next group and so on," Pekowski writes. "I called it 'Teach the Teacher.' If you have ever taught someone something, then you are both teaching and reinforcing what you have been taught. It is the transformation of both knowledge and culture."

In this era of narcissistic CEOs, it's refreshing to learn some business leaders still put employees and customers first.

In an interview, I asked Pekowski what he'd be doing, if he weren't running his company.

"I’d be coaching in the NFL," he said. "That’s what I really wanted to do. I just love coaching and football. After I graduated, I coached in three different schools. But it’s a tough industry—it certainly didn’t pay then what it pays today. I had an opportunity to work for the Chicago Fire—a one-season team in the World Football League—but the job paid less money than I was getting paid as a teacher, and I had two children at the time."

Lessons of an Entrepreneur: How to Grow, Take Risks and Survive is available from Amazon. Proceeds will be donated to charity.

Online's Goal is Offline

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

― Woody Allen

B2B marketers―smart ones―know online must lead to offline.

Because unless prospects experience your brand, there's little likelihood of large sales.

Digital alone doesn't cut it.

Digital's too delible.

As GE's CMO, Linda Boff, told Chief Content Officer this month, "Experiencing a brand versus just seeing something in the media is more and more important. It's more indelible. We think a lot about that. How do we bring the brand to life? And how are we going to show up?"

How will you show up?

You've got an online plan.

What's your offline plan?

Fierce Competition

Are you mad enough to launch an event?

RAI Amsterdam wants to encourage your madness.

Entrepreneurs and would-be event producers can enter its juried competition, Start up Your Event, through early September.

Think Shark Tank for trade shows.

A jury of event professionals will judge the ideas for first-time events submitted in terms of opportunity, feasibility, audience reach, value proposition, brand positioning, innovation, and other success factors.

RAI Amsterdam will award the winner not only six days' free space—2,000m² net for an event in October or November 2018— but, more importantly, free consulting in experience design, community management, and attendee and exhibitor marketing.

The winner will be announced at the mammoth broadcasters' show, IBC, at RAI Amsterdam in mid-September.

"There is definitely room for new shows, maybe not necessarily in the traditional exhibition format that we are used to," says Denise Capello, RAI Amsterdam's head of business development. "The world is changing and innovation rules, so there are plenty topics to be found. You need to figure out the trends and needs. Your destination is just the final piece in the puzzle.

Capello says most would-be producers who fail do so because they lack insight into their audience.

"Over the years, we've seen a number of startups, and find lack of in-depth knowledge to be a key indicator of failure. Would-be producers need to produce better feasibility studies to support their ideas, better event concepts, and better audience insights, which come from canvassing."

To date, three event concepts have been entered into the competition, which was announced in June.

"We've also had a number of inquiries from consumer event producers, whose concepts unfortunately do not meet the entry requirements of the competition," Capello says.

"But they have inspired us to come up with a new partnership model for consumer events, the first hopefully launching in the summer of 2018."

6 Last-Ditch Ways to Sell Out Your Event

If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?

― Joe Namath

When events fail to sell out, resourceful producers pull out all the stops.

EventMB recommends these six last-ditch efforts:

Social media buy. Take out ads on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook that target locals (drive-ins) with an interest in your topics. Cull your database for locals to help you target the buy, and be sure to keep using free social media to chat up your event. Take advantage of past attendees' testimonials. You'll motivate fence-sitters.

Personalized email. Cull from your database locals who haven’t registered and conduct a drip-marketing campaign. Focus on locals who click through and send them additional emails that concentrate on justifying the cost of the event.

Special offer. Email registrants an offer of a referral incentive, such as "Buy two, get one free." Registrants will feel appreciated and help you. Send sponsors and exhibitors the same offer, to pass along to their customers. Sister organizations may also help you spread the word. You can also promote a contest on social media with free tickets as the prizes. Create a hashtag and ask people to vote on line. Contests, well done, are buzz-worthy.

Streamlined registration. Identify any causes of friction in your registration process and eliminate them―even if it means slaying sacred cows. Last-minute registrations are impulsive, and you don't want to deter prospects in any way. And add prominent copy like "Last chance to pre-register and save" or "Only a few seats left."

Telemarketing. The best way to spur last-minute registrations is to call locals, particularly alumni of past events who haven't registered. They know the value you deliver. (If yours is a first-time event, concentrate on locals who have some relationship with you.)

Retargeting. Retargeted ads can influence sales-resistant locals by making your event top of mind. By becoming ubiquitous, you'll sell out.

Last-ditch don'ts. EventMB warns:

• Don't offer last-minute discounts rashly; you only signal panic, cheapen your event, and train registrants to wait for deep discounts the next time round. ("Loyal attendee" discounts are okay.)
  
  
• Don't go all-serious. Play up the entertainment value of your event (remember, last-minute registrations are impulse buys).
  
  
• Don't go into hard-sell mode across all marketing channels. Concentrate on the ones above.
   
• Don't bury your calls to action in your last-ditch promotions. Big, colorful buttons work.
  
  
• Don't refrain from giving free registrations away, if the recipients are influencers who'll add to the prestige of your event.

Windfall for Event Organizers

Event organizers can expect a windfall as companies boost their spending on face-to-face, according to Reuters.

The windfall comes at the expense of publishers reliant for revenues on companies' ad dollars.

"Organizers of conferences and trade shows are benefiting from a shift in the way marketing budgets are allocated, with companies spending less on advertising and more on events," write reporters Esha Vaish and Noor Zainab Hussain.

Research firm Outsell pegs the spend for B2B events by US companies this year at $28 billion, a 4% increase over 2016. US companies will spend $35 billion on ads this year, a 6% decrease.

"While the battle between traditional and online media outlets has grabbed headlines, companies are often skeptical that advertising with either translates into sales," write Vaish and Hussain. "Hence the shift towards events."

While conferences' and trade shows' prospects are closely linked to the economic health of the industries they serve, the shift of marketers' dollars to events offsets revenue losses due to other factors, such as government-imposed travel bans.

Gamification Supercharges Tradeshow Exhibits

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.

— E.M. Forster

Seven of 10 Americans believe attending events connects them to others, according to a recent survey by Eventbrite.

Among Millennials, that proportion's even higher—8 of 10.

Seven of 10 Millennials also believe events expand knowledge better than online content does, the survey reveals. And 1 of 2 attend events to have experiences they can share on social media.

For Millennials, attending events "is all about projecting to your social media network, and painting a picture of a phenomenal lifestyle," event planner Aubri Nowowiejski told Skift. "They chase experiences over things to get those likes and comments and interactions, and that dopamine fix."

If you accept Eventbrite's findings, exhibit marketers who help Millennials polish their personal brands will come out winners at tomorrow's B2B events.

Gamification is the secret sauce.

By offering them high-yield opportunities to enrich their personal brands, gamification counteracts Millennials’ unfortunate reluctance to engage in the "real world" of sales conversation.

Gamification makes networking fun and unintimidating—and delivers the all-important dopamine fix that comes when a Millennial wallflower can update his social media feeds.

One ready solution for exhibitors is PLAYBOOK, a lead-gen system that marries pre-show marketing with gamification.

With PLAYBOOK, exhibitors can not only attract large crowds of fun-seeking prospects to their booths, but get them to look up from their phones long enough to engage in conversation.

DISCLAIMER: I'm a bit biased in favor of PLAYBOOK, because it's the creation of Bob & David James. Learn more here.

Getting Inside Attendees' Heads

B2B CMOs have struggled to measure events with the same precision they measure digital.

Mobile apps could change that.

Not only do they let exhibit marketers engage attendees and personalize events for them, many mobile apps can be used to track face-to-face engagement, and further nurture customers and prospects.

One example: Showcase XD.

This simple iPad app lets tradeshow attendees explore an exhibiting company's products—through videos, demos, photos, drawings, and other content—while visiting the company's booth.

Meantime, the app is gathering and sending the company "digital brain scans" of the attendee that reveal his or her actual interest in the products.

The company can use the analytics after the show to decide, among other things, what marketing automation score to assign the attendee.

One company isn't waiting for the show to end.

IBM uses mobile apps to track attendees' interests and harnesses Watson to make product and activity recommendations—such as downloading a trial code—on the spot, by comparing attendees' pre-show interests with the products they engage with at the exhibit.

While no one can guarantee a CMO ROI before an event, keeping tabs on attendees' interactions though a mobile app—and using the analytics to feed the company's marketing automation or CRM system—can produce real results.

Our Customers? Who Cares?

On CEIR's blog, adman Gary Slack laments the tradeshow industry's thundering indifference to customers—an indifference, alas, I can vouch for.

"More than any other B2B medium or sales channel, the exhibition industry—meaning trade show producers, contractors, CVBs—is remarkably unconnected with senior B2B marketing leadership, the people who set marketing budgets and make the ultimate decisions on how much gets invested in face-to-face marketing," Slack says.

No matter where or when B2B marketers gather, you can count on the show industry to be a no-show, Slack says.

"Go to any B2B marketing conference and rarely if ever do you hear exhibition industry execs attending, much less speaking or even exhibiting. Yet practically every other recipient of B2B marketing dollars is represented, either in the audience or on the dais or in the exhibit hall, or all three."

This week is bittersweet for me.

It would have seen the inauguration of DARE, a marketing conference I planned with two partners to help bridge the gap between B2B CMOs and the exhibition industry.

We had to cancel the event 120 days out, for lack of sponsors and endorsements by show organizers.

Despite 12 months' effort to reach hundreds of tradeshow industry players, both large and small, only three suppliers—Freeman, Kubik and SpotMe—bought sponsorships before we cancelled DARE; and only one show organizer—NAB Show—endorsed the conference.

DARE sank in the vast sea of indifference to customers.

I'd chalk it up to a severe case of "fat, dumb and happy."

"As long as exhibitions themselves remain so essential to B2B sales success, maybe you don’t have to work as hard trying to grow your slice of the big B2B budget pie," Slack says.

"But by not engaging directly with senior B2B marketers at the events they attend to learn the latest, you are jeopardizing mindshare that some day may be critical to your survival."

There's a melancholic jazz song entitled, "Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Canceled."

It might be DARE's theme song—or, if things don't change, the tradeshow industry's.

DISCLOSURE: I am the managing editor of CEIR's blog. Please contact me, if you'd like to contribute content.

The D Word

Q. What's the fastest way to stampede a herd of exhibitors?

A. Use the "D word."

Drayage.

Its mere mention thrusts otherwise serene folks into fits of apoplexy, turning lambs into lions and Jekylls into Hydes.

"Arbitrary and greedy," they gasp. "A complete scam."

Drayage is the price a tradeshow decorator charges exhibitors to move materials from the convention center's loading dock to the exhibit space on the show floor. Charged by the "hundred weight," it increases as the weight of an exhibit does.

Exhibitors loathe the pricing scheme, wondering where it originated and why it's perpetuated.

You can blame J.W. Midgley.

Midgely was a railroad engineer in the 19th century. He's the man who instituted the "hundred weight."

The word "drayage" comes from the maritime industry, and denotes the transport of goods over a short distance, often as part of a long-distance move (for example, a pickup of goods by truck from a seaport and their delivery to an inland warehouse).

The word's also used to denote the price of the transportation.

Drayage originally meant "to transport by a sideless cart", or dray. These carts, pulled by dray horses, were used to move goods short distances (short because of the physical limitations of the dray horse). Over time, the dray horse was replaced by the delivery truck.

Pricing the service by hundred weight is a scheme that allowed operators of the various modes of transport (ships, trains, carts, etc.) to charge uniformly and treat all users fairly (farmers, for example, paid no more than ranchers, miners, or loggers to have their goods hauled). It also allowed for easy verification of the charges.

J. W. Midgley, although disavowing that he originated the practice, took credit for making the hundred weight a national standard for charging for freight hauling.

Midgley wanted to help harmonize hauling. And that's a good thing, because harmony breeds efficiency.

Runaway drayage has certainly altered the tradeshow industry, causing, most notably, exhibitors' flight to fabric. (I remember a time when US tradeshows were chock full of hardwall).

The industry players point fingers whenever runaway drayage gets mentioned. Exhibitors scapegoat decorators. Decorators scapegoat organizers. Organizers scapegoat convention centers. Everybody scapegoats labor.

But nobody scapegoats J.W. Midgley.

It's high time they did.

It's also time to put drayage into context:

• A woman once asked Picasso to sketch her on a piece of paper. The artist complied, and handed her the sketch. “That will cost you $10,000.” The woman was astounded. “Isn't $10,000 a lot for only five minutes work?" Picasso replied, “The sketch may have taken five minutes, but the learning took 30 years."
  
  
• Hospitals typically charge you $20 for an aspirin. That's because they "cost shift" constantly. They couldn't function if they didn't charge insured patients $20 for an aspirin, because their beds are filled by poor, uninsured patients, as well.
  

• Starbucks charges $3 for a small latte, but a whole pound of Arabica coffee beans costs only $1.50. When you buy a latte, you're also paying for labor, store rent, furniture, and college tuition for 4,000 employees. The beans comprise only 20% of the price.

Exhibitors, sure, you may want to squeeze runaway drayage.

But remember: when you clamp down on one side of a balloon, the other side just gets bigger.

How to Acquire High-Value Attendees

Trade Show News Network asked five marketers how they'd go about attracting "high-value" attendees―influencers―to an event. They advised:

First, identify the influencers. Use markers like travel distance, length of stay, team size, job function, budget, track record, and social media footprint. While spend would be the most telling sign, it's impossible to determine, except anecdotally.

Target young guns. They're the next-gen buyers who assure an event's vibrancy and longevity. They may not display the signs of veteran influencers, but they're critical to your event's success.

Package and promote personalized perks. Provide free or reduced registration, airport transportation, express entry, care packages, onsite concierge services, private meetups, exclusive lounges, free tickets to local attractions, etc. Use big data to personalize influencers' pre- and at-show experiences, but never make anyone feel "stalked."

Have great events. Offer the right mix of exhibitors and convenient show hours. Use event tech to help influencers and exhibitors connect on site, and don't get hung up on appearing "democratic." Break a few rules to make influencers feel appreciated.

Show your appreciation. Send a gift after the event, and celebrate influencers' presence in your blog and other digital properties. Ask exhibitors to do the same. Influencers will return to your event―and draw others, as well.

TSNN interviewed Marlys Arnold, ImageSpecialist; Terence Donnelly, Experient; Ravi Kiran, Dazzletoday; Megan Powers, EventCollab; Walter Winn, Feathr.

BONUS TIP: Reach out and touch influencers. Use pre-show telemarketing to cut through the digital clutter. And I don't mean placing cheesy robo-calls. Orchestrate a high-end, B2B outbound campaign, to assure influencers their time's well spent at your event. Consider both pre- and post-show "courtesy" calls.

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."

Scrapes on a Plane

It's National Etiquette Week—the ideal time to start a midair brawl.

Will the surge in incivility on planes and in airports dampen meeting travel?

It doesn't take much to do so.

The SARS epidemic clobbered tradeshow attendance in the early 2000s. (I can recall vividly that the epidemic was the sole topic of discussion at UFI's 2003 summer meeting).

Unlike SARS, incivility is a uniquely American disease.

When it comes to air travel, it seems we have two modes: fight or flight.

But there are other options.

According to Expedia's 2017 Annual Airplane Etiquette Study, the 10 leading causes of scrapes on a plane are:

• Rear seat-kicking
• Inattentive parents
• Odiferous passengers
• Audio-insensitive passengers
• Intoxicated passengers
• Incessant chatting
• Queue jumping
• Seat reclining
• Armrest hogging
• Smelly food consumption

How do American passengers respond? According to the study:

• 62% alert flight attendants when provoked
• 33% endure the offense in silence
• 13% video-record the offender
• 10% confront the offender
• 5% complain on social media
• 3% shame the offender on social media

10 Must-Try Meeting Innovations

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?

In Meeting Design, Adrian Segar outlines 10:

Elementary

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.

Participation-rich

A participant-rich meeting substitutes experiential learning for the "expert broadcast." Attendees interact with each other, rather than listen to a speaker. Popular variations include the affinity group, roundtable, fishbowl, pair share, seat swap, guided discussion, and World Café.

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.

Trade Show Organizer: Is Your Agency Giving You a Bum Steer?

March's edition of Trade Show Executive includes an article by a marketing agency head who claims direct mail, the perennial attendance-acquisition "workhorse," is dying.

"Direct mail isn't dead," she writes. "Yet. Savvy event marketers are, however, anticipating and preparing for the moment the direct mail death knell finally rings."

In the same edition of the magazine, another writer claims, "Telemarketing as a marketing tool appears to be on its way to the 'outdated' bin."

Direct mail dying? Telemarketing outdated?

Rubbish.

In terms of marketing spend, in fact, both channels have held steady during the past four years, according to the latest survey of organizers by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research.

During the same period, the survey shows, email's effectiveness as an attendance-acquisition tool has declined.

Wrong-headed pronouncements like these―regardless of the intentions behind them―pose a real danger to any show organizer who buys into them.

They amount to what our grandfathers and great grandfathers would have called a "bum steer."

That expression―meaning bad advice intentionally given―came into fashion during World War I, when American troops fought alongside Australian ones on the Western Front.

Australians would call defective advice (which "steered" you) "bum," an Old English word referring to the buttocks.

Trade show organizer: Beware the bum steer.

B2B Events Get Hip

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.

The Truth about Trade Shows

Last evening, I watched an old rerun of The X Files. The entire episode is a flashback to a time before FBI Agents Mulder and Scully are partners, and is set inside a trade show in Baltimore in the year 1989.

It was a kick to see how many everyday objects have changed in a quarter century. Men's suits. Women's dresses. Cameras. Computers. Telephones.

But not trade shows.

The imaginary 1989 trade show looked just like a 2017 trade show.

The truth about trade shows: they're lodged in the '80s. We still need them now, but we need them to deliver something new.

With buyers' ranks thinning, web content exploding, and pre-released products the norm, '80s-style trade shows are obsolete.

Yes, we still need to meet face-to-face, take the pulse, and wave the flag, but why "flash back" to do so?

Maybe it's time for organizers to flash forward, to think badgeless and boothless and begin to craft experiences matched to today's need to gather and do business.

The answers are out there.

Unkind Cuts

A telling statistic lies deep within CEIR’s new report, Cost to Attract Attendees.

It could in part explain why association-owned shows have recently seen a falloff in attendance, exhibits and income.

Association organizers, according to the report, have cut their marketing spend during the past four years.

To learn more, read my post on CEIR's new blog, Event.

Events are for the Rest of Us

Most companies aren't great; indeed, they struggle to stay "good."

And that average ordinariness is what events are for.

Gartner Group upset the apple cart in 2011 when it predicted that by 2020, thanks to martech, B2B customers would manage 85% of their relationships with suppliers without ever interacting with a human being.

But in the years since, the event spend has grown by double digits. Last year alone, it grew by 6% (today, events are used by 73% of B2B marketers.)

So did Gartner get it terribly wrong?

Advocates of events say, yes: Gartner's prediction will never come true because we crave contact.

Advocates of martech say, no: martech adoption is merely lagging Gartner's prediction.

I think there's another reason for B2B events' enduring popularity.

The reason's economic, and lies in average ordinariness.

While the owners of the overwhelming majority of companies would love to lay off everyone, they can't afford best-in-class martech. They're good, but not great.

But the overwhelming majority can afford events... and that's okay.