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.

Tackling the Stack

Events may at long last have the CMO's attention—deservedly so, since they consume up to 60% of the marketing budget at most B2B companies.

That's because event tech is transforming the analog meeting into a full-scale "digital production."

So much so, CMOs now face a formidable "event tech stack," a digital gauntlet comprising CRM systems; email delivery platforms; event websites; online communities; registration systems; event personalization platforms; onsite networks; session scanning and survey tools; audience engagement, second-screen, and polling systems; beacons and sensors; games; event apps; lead retrieval systems; learning management systems; social media suites; analytic suites; and vendor sourcing and travel management systems.

That's a ton of tech to choose from and "B2B marketers sometimes need 12 different tools to run an event," says Alon Alroy, CMO of Bizzabo.

A new conference launches this month to help marketers tackle the stack.

Transform USA promises to help attendees develop a "coherent data and digital strategy," according to its founder, Denzil Rankine.

Geared to event producers, Transform USA offers "practical takeaways for their strategies for their organizations, and for the partnerships that they should be operating," Rankine recently told Convene.

Transforming a meeting into a digital production sounds really sexy. And the big-data metrics, personalization and amplification event tech can provide are long overdue. 

But without a strong business-first philosophy—asking of every piece, "How does this serve our marketing goals?"—a CMO could easily find herself overpowered by the event tech stack.

HAT TIP: Gary Slack inspired this post.

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.

Blaming the Weather

You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

— Abraham Lincoln

Fyre Festival fooled a lot of people.

So do a lot of events.

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Serial scammer Billy McFarland, who The New York Times called, "Gatsby run through an Instagram filter," when confronted with accusations of fraud, blamed Fyre Festival's epic failure on the weather.

“I cannot emphasize enough how sorry I am that we fell short of our goal," he said in a statement in May.

How hauntingly similar that sounds to the statements made by many association-show producers after their events fail to attract buyers.

"We're disappointed by the attendance, but the industry's facing a cyclical downturn."

"Yes, we're disappointed by the attendance, but terrorism has deterred many travelers."

"Sure, we're disappointed by the attendance, but everyone knows the US economy's soft."

"We're deeply disappointed by the attendance. The weather is to blame."

Truth be told, you may never be able to draw enough buyers to satisfy exhibitors.

But are you even trying?

• Do you assume (pray) attendees will just come?
• Do you depend on email to promote your event?
• Do you neglect to issue newsworthy product announcements before your event?
• Do you believe your primary job is to sell booths?
• Do you think of exhibitors as the "wallets" who underwrite your conference?

Too many association-show producers "working hard" with "producing results."

Producing results today means innovating. Do you:

• Add novelty and value to every aspect of your show, year after year?
• Respect the fact exhibitors need results—and help them?
• Organize your event to maximize exhibitors' face-time with prospects?
• Lead your industry by applying new marketing tactics and technologies?
• Copy concepts from industry-leading shows like CES and NAB Show?
• Know more than your attendees and exhibitors about your industry's path forward

Or, when attendance flags, do you—like the organizer of Fyre Festival—keep calm and blame the weather?

NOTE: Billy McFarland was arrested yesterday and charged with wire fraud.

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.

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.

Cashing in on Events

Bloomberg is doubling down on events, according to Politico.

The business media giant has hired veteran exec Stephen Colvin to expand its two-year-old global events division.

"As with many media companies striving to develop new revenue streams, events are becoming a more prominent component of Bloomberg's journalism lineup," says Politico's Joe Pompeo.

A spokesman for Bloomberg says the company is "well positioned to be the leading convener of business and financial events around the world."

Sponsorship revenue from Bloomberg's five events is up 30% from 2015.

When will associations cash in on events?

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.

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.

Face Up to the Fact: It's a Jungle Out There

I'm appalled by most tradeshows I visit.

While every other offline marketing medium has transformed itself in the past 40 years, shows have stagnated.

They hardly differ in the main from the very first ones I visited (working as a decorators' laborer) in the early '70s.

Indeed, those shows were better. Exhibitors used to unveil new products at them, and a large number displayed the products in pretty "hard wall" exhibits.

The next-level event has eluded most tradeshows,

Of course, organizers are quick to point out the medium doesn't need innovation. "Face-to-face" is all about faces, after all, and those haven't evolved much in 200,000 years.

That's like arguing the web is "all about electrons;" or direct mail, "all about stamps."

The real reason shows haven't improved lies in organizers' obsession with audiences.

"Most organizers are so focused on getting people into the venue that they have hardly skimmed the surface of understanding and influencing buyer behavior," says Stephane Doutriaux in a new white paper, The Smart Event.

Is that about to change?

Experience designers and event-tech suppliers insist it is, because the technology's costs have hit rock bottom.

I'm not so sure.

Technology doesn't deploy itself; it takes staff to oversee it. And audiences are as time-consuming to attract as they ever were, if not more so.

Time is the enemy.

But organizers need to face up to the fact: it's a jungle out there.

If you don't transform your show into a "smart event" now, you can bet a competitor will transform hers.

So get off your duff. Time's a-wasting.

When there's less of a cushion between you and failure, innovation becomes a necessity.

CMO, Want to Avoid Extinction?

No CMO wants to be left on the sidelines. Sidestepping the confines of traditional marketing to deliver a more relevant and integrated customer experience will ensure the future of the CMO on the digital playing field.

— Accenture White Paper

Dear CMO:

Afraid you'll be banished to the North Pole?

Ready to declare every conventional marketing tactic passé?

Well, be warned: your rush to "embrace digital" is abominable.

The reason's simple.

Just like people who use an online dating service, B2B customers use digital to eliminate you from consideration. They don't use it to start a relationship.

Relationships come from face-to-face.

And relationships are the wellspring of growth, the most valuable off-balance-sheet asset your company has.

So why on earth would you "sidestep" face-to-face?

Do you want to avoid extinction—or accelerate it?

Your Trade Show Makes Me Sick

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? 
 


HAT TIP: Bob Hughes inspired this post.

Foxy Photo Sharing

Cybersecurity pros are clever. It's not easy to outfox them.

But Brian Reed has the animal instinct.

Reed is CMO of the early-stage social media security company ZeroFOX. His firm protects innocents from becoming prey to hackers, spammers and scammers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and dozens of other social media platforms.

Reed has tamed social to romance the cybersecurity pros attending mega events like Black Hat, SecTor and RSA Conference, and transform them into advocates for his scrappy new brand.

"Our participation in security-industry events like Black Hat and RSA represents a substantial business investment," Reed says. "So we have to do interesting things wrapped around those events to achieve the maximum results."

Reed believes social media today is all about pictures.

So before a recent event, he bought a Snapchat Geofilter, branded it, and hired a troupe of actors to pose with attendees for snapshots. Thousands of snapshots.

"Social media engagement is now largely photo-driven," Reed says. "That's why we make sure to arrange our participation at all large events around photogenic spots, bring backdrops and props, hire and costume an actor as our mascot, and have photographers at the ready."

Reed customized the Snapchat Geofilter with his company's graphics and tagline for the event, "They've weaponized social media." He also embedded hashtags in the filter, and in all his other social media outreach, to drive sharing.

"We leverage social media at all events where the audience is heavily Millennial," Reed says. "Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all allow geotagging and audience engagement."

At past events, he has also deployed video walls on site, to billboard the thousands of posts generated. And when the organizer has its own video walls for social media, Reed's team leverages them heavily, to drive on-screen promotion of his brand.

Reed's antics aren't contained to the convention center. At a Skyfall-themed after-party at Black Hat, he set up photo booths replete with a cast of James Bond characters, who hammed it up while attendees posed with them for shots (photos, not Tequila). The photo booths automatically added hashtags to every photo and printed funny signs that displayed the hashtags. Attendees could pose holding the signs, and further drive sharing and engagement.

"I like using social around events for a number of reasons," Reed says.

"First, it's purely user-generated content, so your investment in creative amounts to buying a filter. The rest comes from team engagement and creativity.

"Second, social extends the value and shelf-life of the events you participate in. A conventioneer actually will engage with your brand and help you grow it.

"Third, while you're aiming to reach non-attendees, attendees feel good about your brand, because you help them make new connections on the floor. 'I saw you with James Bond last night," a total stranger will walk up and say to someone. "That was awesome!"'

Reed has advice for convention center and hotel operators, based on his recent successes.

ZeroFOX's obsession with photo-sharing means the marketers at the company now choose booth locations, popup meetings and activities, and party rooms based on how photogenic the backgrounds are.

"There's no reason a venue's signage, lobby art or building features couldn't be part of that background, even if it's just part of a portable photo backdrop," Reed says.

"When I do site walkthroughs, I'm always looking at the visuals for social photo engagement. I encourage all event professionals to consider this a whole new way to market your space. Venues should become more open to thinking about the cross-promotional opportunities we can bring them."

NOTE: You can find Brian Reed (aka ReedOnTheRun) on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.