More on James' Hierarchy

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.”

Even celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants all don’t have a Michelin 1-star rating.

James' Hierarchy

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:

1. Experiences can be categorized by their capacity to fill attendees' needs, and
   
2. 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 term everydayness is borrowed from the philosopher Martin Heidegger; and melioration, from the philosopher William James (alas, no relation).

Who Attends B2B Events?

According to American Express' 2018 Global Meetings & Events Forecast, five kinds of folks show up at B2B events.

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
• Showcase the brand end to end

How to Make Moments Customers Remember

How do you create an experience customers will remember?

That's the question Chip and Dan Heath answer in their forthcoming book, The Power of Moments.

You'll recall the brothers' skills in science-based storytelling from their previous best sellers, Made to Stick and Switch.

The Power of Moments repeats those performances.

The Heaths call memorable experiences "flagship moments" and claim they're made from four ingredients:

• Elevation (flagship moments clearly rise above the rest)
• Insight (they rewire our thinking)
• Pride (they catch us at our best) and
• Connection (they bring us together)

It isn't easy to engineer a flagship moment, else every marketer would do it. Few do.

If you want to acquire the skill, the Heath Brothers advise you to "think in moments" and pay particular attention to three:

• Milestones (regular occasions like holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.)
• Transitions (ritualistic events like bar mitzvahs, graduations, weddings, etc.) and
• Pits (moments of downtime like waiting in a line, undergoing a medical procedure, etc.)

The astute marketer not only spots these moments, the Heaths say, but shapes them, by blending some or all of the four ingredients that yield a flagship moment.

And their recipe is simple: "Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled."

The Power of Moments' 300 pages are packed with examples of moment-making artistry, and make the book worth reading.

You probably know Disney distracts you while you wait in long lines, Southwest clowns around during the flight-safety announcements, and Starbucks honors your birthdays with a free-drink coupon.

But you might not know that all Pret a Manger employees can give away free food, based on how much they like a customer's looks; that Sharp Healthcare, by bringing all of its 12,000 employees to a convention center for an annual pep talk, keeps patient satisfaction in the ninetieth percentile (unheard of); and that John Deere welcomes all new employees on their first day with banners, gifts, lunches, and personalized videos.

The Power of Moments will give you plenty of ideas for "turning up the volume on reality" and delivering experiences your customers will remember. And you don't have to settle for only the examples in the book. The Heaths will soon offer free podcasts featuring more.

Fight of the Century

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:

• Redefinition. The tradeshow industry's "analog" business model is passé. "Our industry must change from its static 'show' industry self-concept," Friedman says. "We must view our future as a branded content and experience provider, and integral omni-channel member of a target community." Unless the industry rediscovers a purpose—its raison d'être—it will be excluded from the b-to-b marketers' club.
  
  
• 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.

NOTE: The Modern Digital Tradeshow is available free on the author's website.

Event Producers: Bodies at Rest

A body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest.

— Isaac Newton

Most B2B events are tired, creaky and ridiculous. And it's no accident.

Most event producers are lazy.

Decades of easy money have made them that way.

That's not to say they're the only lazy businesspeople you'll encounter.

Laziness surrounds us—and runs rampant in industries where easy money once was made. Banking. Stock trading. Real estate. IT. Retail. Advertising.

Ad exec Mitch Joel—who calls laziness not sloth, but self-approval—laments what he sees in his own industry. "There is no doubt that certain strategies and tactics work, but it's the lazy mentality that has got me down these days," he says.

Folks in advertising, Joel says, are allergic to "long, hard and disruptive work." They're unwilling to wake up in the morning and say, "Today is a great day! We're going to destroy what doesn't work, test more things, tweak others, build newer metrics, and keep at it."

You might say they need some woke.

A lot of businesspeople need some woke. Instead, they're imbibing hype.

Hype is particularly dazzling to event producers, says event planner Warwick Davies, who's down on the hype-of-the-month: event tech.

Event tech promises panaceas, but really offers little more than quick-fix "gimmicks," Davies observes.

Gimmicks won't resurrect a dead event.

"Sure, there are some tools and processes which will make your event more efficient and easier," Davies says, "but none will fix an event which is poorly conceived, researched, and not wanted by your prospective audience."

No silver bullet can substitute for long, hard. disruptive work.

"If your philosophy about how to create a valuable event is wrong, there’s no amount of technology that is going to save you," he says.

Why are Conferences Dying?

Millennials are killing dozens of industries, according to Business Insider.

"Psychologically scarred" by the Great Recession, their wayward generation is boycotting:

• Retail outlets like banks, department stores, and home-improvement outlets
• Chain-restaurants like Applebee's, Hooters and Ruby Tuesday
• Groceries like beer, cereal, and yogurt
• Household goods like bar soap, fabric softener, and napkins
• Sports like pro football, golf, gyms, and motorcycles
• Luxury items like diamonds and designer handbags

Will conferences be next?

Many industry watchers predict so; and some producers are clearly anxious, if this ad's any indicator:

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.

Or it's Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday.

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.

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.

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.

Corporate Wedding Planners Strike Back

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

If Your Event isn't Eventful, It's Just Another Meeting

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.

3 Must-Haves for Every Meeting Planner

"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.

Leave a Trail

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where
there is no path and leave a trail.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dreamforce, "four epic days that fly by, but stay with you forever," concluded yesterday in San Francisco.

Salesforce once again pulled out all the stops to educate, entertain and evangelize an eager crowd of more than 150,000 users.

"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."

Café Culture

Halfway through Everybody Behaves Badly, I'm reminded how so many of the 20th century's big ideas were born in cafés. Ideas like DNA, the computer, surrealism and existentialism.

Conferences rarely birth more than bunches of sore butts.

But we could do better.

World Café is an effort to try.

More a movement than a method, World Café urges conference organizers to structure large-group dialog around five principles:

• The meeting environment should be special and modeled after a café; no more than five people should sit at any one table.
  
  
• A host is assigned to each table; she should welcome attendees by setting the context and sharing the rules of café etiquette.
  
  
• Dialog should comprise 20-minute rounds; after each round, the groups disband and move to different tables.
  
  
• Every round should be prefaced with a specially-honed question; questions can be repeated at subsequent rounds, or build on previous questions.
  
  
• Between rounds, attendees should share insights and results; those reports should be captured in cartoons at the front of the room.

User Meetings: Sweat on the Walls

The landscape's littered with lackluster user meetings. How can you produce one so deliciously audacious there's sweat on the walls?

Experiential agency Cramer recommends eight steps:

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.

Brand Museums: Must See Ums

Every crowd has a silver lining.
                                                                 — P. T. Barnum

Glade, Land O'Lakes, Hulu and Dove are among the brands offering customers "immersive experiences" via brand museums, Kristina Monllos reports in Adweek.

• Glade's Museum of Feelings, which drew over 56,000 customers last fall in New York, "gave the world a whole new way to look at Glade," according to the company's CMO.

• Land O'Lakes' WinField Crop Adventure at Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana teaches customers about agriculture—brand-reinforcing because Land O'Lakes is a farmer-owned company. 

• Hulu's exhibitions of exact replicas of the Seinfeld apartment in New York and Los Angeles promoted the addition of the show to the company's streaming service.

• Dove's Museum of Ice Cream in New York offers customers not only displays of frozen treats, but hundreds of "Instagrammable moments," according the museum's social media director.

Crowds, in fact, aren't the justification for brand museums. 

Social media is.

"With the ubiquity of social, I think it makes sense to do museum pop-ups now more than ever," says Marie Chan, senior director of employee engagement at branding firm Siegel + Gale.

Companies shouldn't expect a brand museum to "draw millions or go viral by itself—because it won't," says Chan. "You have to think about the pop-up museum as a touch point, or content, and you have to use whatever means necessary to distribute that experience."