Again I welcome back Michael Hart, the industry renown journalist and thought leader for his views on how to expand your reach and profitability with sponsors:
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Is your event still “the place where buyers meet sellers”? If so, how’s that working out for you?
Better yet, how’s it working out for your exhibitor and sponsors? Are they happy with the leads and sales you’re delivering to them? And what about your attendees? Are they getting what they want from your “marketplace”?
From my home base of Los Angeles, this summer I have been able to closely examine one example after another of events that have gone way beyond the standard exhibit hall/conference program/networking event formula to offer communities of interest more than just the opportunity to meet people they might do business with.
DWELL ON DESIGN
Start with Dwell on Design 2015 here in L.A. in late May. Technically, it was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. And, if you dropped by the convention center, you’d find a busy exhibit hall with more than 400 exhibitors and the latest in interior design. However, that was just the beginning of what sprawled into Dwell Design Week with self-driven tours of showcase homes all over the Los Angeles area and, with the downtown L.A. renaissance now in full bloom, walking tours of upscale lofts and condos just blocks from the convention center.
There was a Dwell Outdoor Cinema festival and even celebrity musician Moby talking about design.
Certainly those exhibitors back on the show floor were happily taking orders. More importantly, there were hundreds of companies even happier to be associated with the Dwell on Design persona as rabid interior design fans fanned out all over Southern California to partake of it.
ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT EXPO
Next up was the Electronic Entertainment Expo in mid-June. Same venue; maybe even more excitement. Since its launch in 1995, E3 has been an old-school tradeshow – even if it hasn’t looked like it – that denied admission to anybody who was not a qualified buyer, journalist or investor. The gaming world’s fans, who might have milled around outside, rarely got to see the lavish costumes and over-the-top displays used to introduce the hottest new games – until this year.
In a first, E3 let somewhere close to 5,000 gamers freely roam the show floor, knowing full well they’d be spinning out messages on their smartphones at the speed of light about the hottest new game they tried out in the previous 10 minutes.
Why? Because, with the kind of industry consolidation that is going on in retail, the Walmarts and GameStops of the world don’t have to go to an annual tradeshow to find out what’s new. That doesn’t mean that E3 can’t make itself useful to its faithful sponsors by providing the platform to spread the word.
This year, it wasn’t just a select few who got to see Microsoft lower a car onto its stage with a pulley or Nintendo’s puppet show featuring Reggie “My Body Is Ready” Fils-Aime. It was everybody in the world with access to a smartphone.
INTERNATIONAL COMIC-CON
Finally, earlier this month – International Comic-Con in San Diego. What appeared to be blood-soaked floors in the Hard Rock Hotel to introduce this season’s “The Walking Dead.” A convoy of 15 black Esplanades delivering the cast of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” A large contingent of the 130,000 “fans” spending their nights in line for the chance to get 45 minutes the following day with the Justice League or the Fantastic Four.
And, oh yeah, the tens of millions of impressions registered on mobile devices, tablets and laptops around the world as a result. If Comic-Con is an event, its attendees are in every corner of the world ingesting their daily doses of pop culture as quickly as they could gulp them down.
After all, isn’t that what the “exhibitors” and “sponsors” at Comic-Con want anyway? Not to just meet “buyers,” but to expose their products on the worldwide platform Comic-Con has created for them?
Do your customers want or deserve any less? Does your event have the persona people in the community it serves want to be associated with? If not, what can you do to change that?
Michael Hart is a business consultant and writer who focuses on the events industry. He can be reached at michaelhrt3@gmail.com.