Events and Exhibition in the Digital Age - Term Paper Example

What issues face the Events & Exhibition field in the digital age Presented by Introduction The Internet and the digital technologies have transformed every sphere of activity in the world. The field of Exhibitions and events is not an exception. Exhibitions are essentially a marketing exercise and since Marketing is one of the fastest evolving subject, the overall character, look and shape of exhibitions has also been changing rapidly. But the significance, the importance or the benefits of participating in an exhibition has only increased over the years and is unlikely to abate anytime soon. According to Cherif Moujabber, president of Walpole, Mass.-based Creative Expos & Conferences, the companies that regularly participate in exhibition look at exhibitions as the most important lead generators for their business. He says. "In the United States, 14 to 15 percent of the marketing budget [of exhibiting companies] is dedicated to trade shows. In Europe, the percentage is 22 to 24 percent," (Michelle Bruno, www.exsa.co.za) The role of exhibitions in the marketing mix A good exhibition creates a vibrant retail environment, which in itself is a unique experience for all kinds of companies especially those in the business-to-business arena and service sectors. This unique thing about an exhibition is that it creates a neutral environment in which buying and selling is a natural process. At exhibitions, business just happens. An exhibition visitor is much more at ease than a customer walking into a store. Visitors at an exhibition or a trade show feel more in control and therefore less pressured or edgy. This is a good mood for them to have when you open up a business dialogue with them. Why should your company participate in exhibitions : Firstly, your company gets a chance to sell to hundreds of customers a day. If the product is right, the price offer is attractive, the packaging is enticing then you could close outright orders with full payment/ part down payment. For the sellers, exhibitions are a substantial opportunity to meet new prospects. Whether they close the sale then and there depends on the type of goods or services they offer. However, exhibitions provide the single best opportunity to interact with thousands of prospective customers. This gives the seller a chance to let the prospect know about the products offered, note their responses, find out what they think about the brand/ product, its features, price, quality, standing in the market, how much money they are willing to spend on such a product, the competition. For some product lines this first hand information is very important in order to improve their offering in terms of price and other attributes. Some exhibitions provide you with an opportunity to organize a private audience with prospect customers giving you the opportunity to make a high impact impression on them because you are able to attack all of their senses and they can interact with you and see/touch/feel your products, through demonstrations and trials. Apart from the marketing angle, Exhibitions also give you a place where you can do some hands on research, meet and talk to your competitors, potential suppliers, learn about the new developments in your product line. If you have a new idea in the pipeline, exhibitions can be a great place to do some test marketing and find out how the market is going to respond. Exhibitions provide the companies an opportunity, 1. to sell the products directly to large number of customers 2. to get a database of prospective customers to follow up 3. to raise awareness of your business in a given geographic location 4. to launch or promote a new product or service 5. to meet existing customers and sell maintenance contracts etc. 6. to meet potential suppliers/partners/agents/distributors An exhibition is a real opportunity to display the personality of a business. What's in it for the visitors/ customers/ general public. First of all, visitors to exhibitions and events are motivated to attend for their own objectives. They are there on their own accord. Every visitor comes for reason. If you are a casual visitor to a consumer exhibition, you are likely to have good time going around looking at the exhibit stalls, gazing at the products, listening to the marketing talk from the salesmen, collecting the leaflets/ brochures, stopping at the coffee bar, sitting through any interesting product demonstrations and finally buying a few best bargains if there are any that interests you. If you are a business visitor to a trade show, you will be treated with best of offers, a comparative study of all the competing brands, product demonstrations/ trials, raw material deals etc. If you are a raw material supplier to the particular trade you could collect the database of your potential customers for further mailing/ followup etc. On the whole to visitor an exhibition will provide the following. 1. A neutral venue to shop. 2. Chance to ask questions/doubts freely over the counter and get immediate answers. 3. No pressurization. No compulsion to buy. If you don't like it just walk to the next stall !. 4. Compare products of different brands without running around 5. Collect product literatures for future reference 6. Pampered with special "exhibition" offers with price discounts / extra quantity/ freebies / free installation/ after sales service offers or maintenance contracts. 7. Free trials/ demonstrations/ try outs. 'What issues face the Events & Exhibition field in the digital age 1. Declining Attendance : Attendance have taken a beating at some exhibitions. Especially the number of paying visitors have come down. But on close scrutiny one would find that these were poorly marketed and bad managed. Today, the visitors have more choices to spend their time on, so they have to be delighted with the prospect of the event. The What's-in-it-for-me question needs to be answered clearly and satisfactorily. 2. New technologies : The new age event concepts like Podcasts, Webinars (seminars on the web) have caught the imagination of the tech-savvy segments of the customers. They use slide presentations, live or streaming video, text and video chat, blogging etc. to reach out to global audience. There are definitely some products such as software, training etc. that can be more cost effectively done online. 3. Event overload : A few years back there was too much clutter of events in the market. The events industry needed a shake out and it is beginning to happen. Some redundant exhibitions have merged. Some have discontinued. Others have consolidated. Added new features like technology conventions, seminars etc. 4. Environmental Concerns : The carbon blueprint of the large scale exhibitions have been alarmingly increasing. Event managers have to take all the precautionary measures to protect the environment. Efficient use of energy, power and water, non-dependence of fossil fuel, supply & waste management, maximising the usage of environment-friendly materials. Some countries have implemented certain standards and regulations. The future of exhibitions History shows that new innovations and inventions sometimes eliminates the hitherto standards in many spheres of life. At each successive age in mankind's history one can see that products and machineries make way for new improved models and entirely new concepts and machineries. Computers killed the type writer. Motor Cars killed the horse carts. Emails replaced postcards. Mobile phones eliminated pagers. Likewise, the Internet and other technologies have affected the world of exhibitions and events. In order to see the extend of the effect of digital age we need to understand that the strength of Exhibitions and events is that they provide buyers and the media with real-time information regarding a particular product / service so that they can take quick decisions to buy or not. The internet and the information technologies have transformed the dissemination of information so much that a buyer can access critical information regarding the options on most products/ services at the click of a button on his desk. Internet and the world wide web has become pervasive and hence information too. Sitting on a computer a person can see products, read the features, watch a virtual demonstration, compare prices at a dozen stores or websites, bargain on the offer, place the order and make the payment. All online. So why should one take the trouble of going to the exhibition Firstly, after the initial euphoria around the e-commerce consumers have realized it is not as much fun as physical shopping. The danger of frauds, fake products, tall claims, late or non-deliveries, credit card security issues etc. have plagued the success of e-commerce. Barring a few sectors like books, greeting cards, travel ticketing etc. the so-called digital age have failed to make substantial inroads into the revenue of traditional shopping. Secondly the joy of shopping is absent when one does it online. The see-touch-feel-buy sequence provides the buyer a richer experience and is irreplaceable by any level of online presentation. Exhibitions and events can bring buyers into direct and intimate contact with highly reliable sources of product information which is unlikely in the case of online transaction. The information explosion With so many different media available in order to reach the customer such as Radio, television, Internet, email, and mobile telephones, it is estimated that today the typical consumer in an industrialized nation may receive more than 5,000 advertising messages every day in an increasing variety of formats including radio, television, Internet, email, and mobile telephones. Add to this, the fact that the traditional media like the newspapers and magazines, billboards and hoardings have also thrived as potent advertising media. As one can imagine, this communications overload has resulted in many marketing organizations continuously re-evaluating their strategies, priorities and communications channels of choice. The marketing departments of corporates are put under pressure to be accountable for their activities. Every marketing exercise is scrutinized to find out if the results achieved shows a positive return on Investment. Lately the sales oriented approach has given way to a more solution based marketing. Exhibitions provide a natural and nearly perfect platform for the presentation, sales and delivery of solutions. Exhibition organizers have upgraded their events with special focus on providing consultative opportunities, learning content, demonstration theaters and more one-on-one buyer-sellecr meetings. These are emerging trends and the new exhibition organizers have succeeded in converging the traditional advantages of exhibitions with the current changes. Today exhibitions have started to become an integral part of the broadening universe of event marketing but not the only part by any means. In order to survive in the future many exhibition organizers will have to become event-marketing organizers and coordinators offering a full menu of customer interactions to their traditional exhibitors. Bright future ahead "A recent research study commissioned by the MPI Foundation and conducted by The George P Johnson Company supports the belief that the future of exhibition events is bright indeed. Over 90% of the six hundred marketing executives at major companies (Revenues exceeding $250 Million [USD] Annually) have revealed that they believe that the importance of event/exhibition based marketing is growing. Moreover, they believe that event marketing provides the best ROI across all geographies. Almost half (43%) of those participating in the study said they would be increasing their event marketing budgets that already represent about 20% of their total marketing budgets. What is it that they expect to achieve from participating in events High on the list of expectations are: Increased Brand Preference Enhancing relations with customers Increased Brand Awareness Increased Product Knowledge " (Steven Hacker, 2007 www.exsa.co.za) Apparently no other marketing activity can even come close to match an exhibition event in achieving these objectives. Other forms of business-to-business media are either one-dimensional such as print advertising or like radio, television, and the Internet, they do not offer the kind of instant and intimate connection between buyers and sellers that exhibitions and events do. The ROI Angle One thing that marketers like about Exhibition events is that its comparatively easy to calculate the ROI without much ambiguities. The results are immediately computable in terms of actual sales or number of leads generated. In the case of the other marketing activities such as advertising, roadshows etc. the results are more long term and is not easy to quantify. The MPI survey also reveals that when a key audience was asked, what events provide their companies with the best ROI, the unqualified winner is, trade shows followed distantly by conferences, seminars, road shows and sponsorships. The responses were essentially the same across all geographies. So having established that exhibition have been and will continue to be the premier product/service marketing activity, it is easy to see that the internet and digital technologies will not hamper its glory to any significant degree. In fact in several ways information technology can be utilized to further the objectives of exhibition events. "The fact is that face-to-face marketing, the most "analogue" medium, is also perfectly suited to our digital age. News of the "death of the tradeshow" now appears to have been greatly exaggerated. Many of the key conferences have in fact grown." ( Josh McCall, January 31, 2007, http://360.jackmorton.com) CES, The International Consumer Electronics Show sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association is a trade show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada, was attended by a record 150000 people in 2007. How event managers can leverage the strengths of the digital age. 1. Email and Mobile phones are two of the most significant media of the digital age. Both are powerful and can be adapted and used in the promotion of an event. Short Message Services (SMS) on mobile phones can be a potent and economic tool to spread the message about the event with specific reach on a local or regional level. If the database of mobile numbers are detailed enough, the messages can be customized to a different segments of people so as to increase its appeal and relevance. Similarly email is probably the most cost effective tool available to promote an event. Focused email messages can reach out to potential visitors around the globe within minutes. 2. The important sections of the exhibition ( the displays, conferences, seminars, demonstrations, training programs ) can be recorded and uploaded at the event managers website so that the interested parties can log-in and view. 3. There are software available that can completely computerize and segregate the registration and attendance of visitors. This can be a useful database can made available to participating companies for a fee and so could be an additional revenue for the event manager. 4. Event Managers have started installing cameras at key locations within the exhibition area to find out the crowded and unattended areas to continuously improve the positioning of stalls. There are innumerable ways that computers and the digital devices are used today in the administration, marketing and customer service. Event managers seem to have adopted the best of technology to improve the success of their events. Conclusion The face-to-face one on one marketing experience of the exhibition is unlikely to be challenged by the e-commerce or the digital on line exhibitions. There are only just a few sectors or product lines that's suitable for the online world. The rest will always require the see-touch-feel-buy experience that only events can deliver. Todays marketers are looking for two most important qualities for any marketing exercise. First is the ability to catch the target audience in the right frame of mind - ready to listen, willing to consider and prepared to purchase. The second is being able to measure the results accurately. The conclusion is that the future of exhibitions and similar in-person buyer-seller events remains bright for the foreseeable future. The concept, size, shape and organization of exhibition have evolved most dramatically in the past century and will continue to do so. Rather than fighting the digital age, the exhibitors have learned to leverage the power of technology in the positive way. The history of mankind shows that the need for intimate, personal, face-to-face interaction remains as strong today as it has ever been. There is simply no reason to believe otherwise. List of references (Steven Hacker, CAE, President, International Association of Exhibitions and Events, http://www.exsa.co.za/exsa/exhibitionarticle.aspxrootid=4&subdirectoryid=1140 Josh McCall, CEO, Jack Morton Worldwide, 2007 http://360.jackmorton.com/articles/article013107.php, Environmental Protection: Before Green Was Cool By Gary Tufel -- Tradeshow Week, 8/27/2007 http://www.tradeshowweek.com/article/CA6471004.html Andy Hayler, November 10, 2005, "The decline of the trade show" , http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2005/11/the-decline-of-the-trade-show/ Rich Westerfield & Tony Maiorino, "Give your attendance numbers a boost", 1 April 2005 http://www.dolce.com/meetings/article-028-give-your-attendance-numbers-a-boost.php Read More