Source: Conexo

Warning: this may hurt a bit!

During EIBTM 2011 I had the pleasure to be invited at a panel session called ‘ROI vs. ROE’, organized by the MPI’s Spanish chapter (picture on the left).

Obviously, I could say many things about why you should always use the ROI Methodology… But for now I’m just going to share with you my main takeaway of the session: the so-called ROE may be a bigger threat to the meetings industry than what I had envisioned.

First of all, let me clarify that ROE has probably got as many definitions as people that talk about it. But in this particular session, ROE meant ‘Return On Experience’, and one of the main indicators of ROE was WOM, both word of mouth and word of mouse (which is the digital version of word of mouth).

Based on the comments by some panelists and the audience, I had the impression that event planners are now really excited about social media and most importantly, social media metrics. This should be a good thing, right? Unfortunately, it is only to an extent.

I feel like some event planners think that they’ve found the Holy Grail: now they’re able to set measurable objectives (I want to get 1,000 Twitter followers!) and easily show the impact of the event (I got 35 Retweets! The event’s hashtag was mentioned 20,000 times!). As I usually hear, event experiences are intangible, hence they can’t be measured, but social media help us to make them more tangible.

Alas, I think many of them are missing the point. The impact that your event had on social media should be part of your evaluation (if that was one of your objectives), and undoubtedly WOM will increase the ROI, but it is not connected to the bottom line of the company. How many of those who clicked ‘Like’ on Facebook are your target audience? How many of them will ultimately buy your product? And the questions could go on and on.

Usually, measuring something is better than nothing, but event planners shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that just by tracking the impact of an event in social media they’re doing the best job. Because, if one thing we’ve learned after the recession, is that most meetings and events do not have a strong business case yet (ask AIG…). By measuring ROE, we risk getting distracted and not focusing on the real value of the event.

Are you finding that strong focus on ROE as well? Do you think it hinders the measurement of the real value of an event?

The ROI Methodology

People, Planet & Profit
All events have several stakeholders. We need to set objectives and measure results as a separate exercise for each of them. When there is alignment of objectives, this is no problem. But sometimes we have to reconcile conflicting objectives. By introducing the concept of sustainability, we simply add the local community and the environment, People and Planet, as stakeholders, and reconcile objectives.
Alignment between Profit and People is not too difficult to achieve as events provide business to the local community, and can do even more so by sourcing local products and services.
The Planet is trickier as events often generate large amounts of waste and invariably leave a carbon footprint. Perhaps ROI will be better by going virtual, or hybrid (both virtual and real), but then there is less benefit to People, less business to the local community.
In the final analysis, it is always a matter of value to stakeholders. It would be a shame for a business event, for example, to have a negative impact on the environment and also make a loss to the company. If we have a negative impact on the environment, we had better make sure to maximise the positive impact on People and other stakeholders. By using The ROI Methodology to plan and measure the sucesses of events we are able to to analyse and reconcile objectives for each of the core three spheres of sustainability, People, Planet and Profit. The Methodology creates effienciencies, supports the implementation of sustainability objectives and provides a framework for measuring the results.

Article written by Dr. Elling Hamso and Rosa Garriga Mora

In the ROI case, I’d say ‘ROI washing’ is a new ‘dangerous‘ trend. At my new role as Marketing Manager of the Event ROI Institute, I’m paying close attention to every mention of ROI. And what I’ve been finding is that ROI is being used as an equivalent of ‘value’. Obviously the ROI Methodology is about increasing value, but also much more: evaluating impact, setting objectives, benchmarking, and so on.
I’ve seen so many companies just mentioning ‘by using our product, you’ll increase your ROI’. But are they assuming the client is measuring the impact? Or are they providing any kind of metrics?

I expect that every for-profit company provides an increase of my ‘ROI’, if not why are they doing business?  However, I think this wording is misleading and it’s ultimately a shame if this means they’re not going to take advantage of all the other benefits that ROI measurement has.

Do you also think ‘ROI washing’ is a new phenomenon, or this is all non-sense? Is it good or is it counterproductive that ROI is included in marketing communications in such ‘unconscious’ way? Or is it me that I’m making false assumptions?

Since their main income comes from booking venues and flights, now their clients are increasingly doing it themselves. Personally, I always skip the ‘middle men’ when I book my travels or holidays. That is not to say that organising the logistics for 5,000 delegates is quite the same as my personal holidays! But, I’m sorry for this man but I think this was bound to happen. Although I understand his concern, I hope he realises that this ‘threat’ is also a big opportunity…

Let’s face it: this one and other major shifts (like the increasing use of virtual or hybrid events), from my point of view, are turning event agencies solely focused on logistics in obsolete business models. Or at least, there won’t be enough room for all of them.

On the other hand, event professionals focused on the content of events can take advantage of all the new trends and become an essential partner.

Do you think this is a statement too bold? Where do you see the role of a meeting designer in 5 years time?

]]> http://rosagarriga.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/become-meeting-designer/feed/ 0 rosagarriga J401x600-04351 http://rosagarriga.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/what-i-learned-from-my-1st-pecha-kucha-night/ http://rosagarriga.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/what-i-learned-from-my-1st-pecha-kucha-night/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:56:24 +0000 Rosa Garriga http://rosagarriga.wordpress.com/?p=67 Continue reading →]]>

Almost a month ago I went to my first Pecha Kucha event, in Barcelona. For those of you not familiarized with it, PK is an innovative presentation format that started in Tokyo in 2003 by a group of young designers and since then it has been expanding around the globe (over 300 cities!!).

PK’s concept is a 20×20 presentation, 20 slides and 20 seconds per each. Therefore, is aimed at keeping up the level of concentration during the whole session, increasing the learning experience. Besides, slides tend to be very visual and speakers much more engaging than in a ‘traditional’ presentation.

So I had high expectations about what would happen in PK Night. It was the 9^th Edition in Barcelona, which is always a good sign because it means they might have improved over time. However, it was a bit of a disappointment and I left at the first break (although I must say that the fact that it was freezing was another motivation to leave!).

In my humble opinion, the PK format is just OK. I like the idea of visual presentations and speed, although perhaps this 20×20 format it’s a bit too structured, unless you’ve got the right speakers.

In this case, I noticed that some of the presenters had slides that didn’t have anything to do with what they were actually talking about, just beautiful pictures. So yes the slides kept changing every 20 seconds, but not their topics!

But, what PK (and any other format) can’t change is the importance of having an engaging speaker and some substance in the content. While a few of the speakers were really good and had something interesting to say, others were dull and irrelevant. This reminds me to this old saying: ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’.

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Lift France

I’ve just come back from my first Lift Conference in Marseille, France. From here I’d like to offer you today a review of this event. However, I must emphasize that I’ll analyze Lift from the point of view of an event planner, therefore I won’t comment the topics they discussed about. This was my main reason for attending Lift: to experience at first hand what is currently, in my opinion, one of the most innovative conferences.

As you might have read in my article at Events Industry News, Lift is a co-created event, which means that roughly half of its sessions are crowd sourced. What’s more, every participant can become a speaker and showcase his or her designs. I believe that this bottom up approach to events (and other stuff) is the way to go in many cases. After all, like the Cluetrain Manifesto claims, Generation Yers want to be taken into consideration by organisations more than ever.

So, I think in this sense Lift is taking a bold but positive step. Another part of Lift takes place before and after the actual event happens. Every participant is encouraged to connect with other Lifters, through the creation of a profile and the possibility to add ‘buddies’ and follow them, like if it were a social networking site. Well, I’m pleased to say that my list of buddies has increased from 0 to 5 after my first Lift. Ok, it’s not much taking into account that there were over 500 participants! But I was lucky enough to find a really nice group of people and just stuck to them for the whole conference.

But it’s not all my fault… I’d say there is one main criticism that Lift could receive. The first one, I felt that networking was not encouraged enough. In a conference of over 500 people coming from several different countries (although approximately 90% were French) many activities could be done to help connecting people, which I’m sure would result in unique opportunities. However, most of the time was spent in the conference sessions, which were basically long and one-way presentations. Because they where behind the schedule all the time, they had to keep shortening the breaks and the lunches. On the other hand, the break sessions, called ‘Lift Experience’, promised to be ‘a dialogue between people with different backgrounds and cultures’ and to ‘engage our emotions and senses’. In reality though, this was a stage where some of the participants could present their work, and a room filled with companies showcasing their products. Sure, many of these products promoted interactivity with participants, but still I couldn’t help but feeling a bit disappointed. As someone I met put it, ‘an experience should be something (co)created by the participants’, something that is memorable or even transforming. I currently remember this experience, but not in the most positive sense.

On the other hand, I was quite shocked by the amount of people using their laptops and/or smartphones during presentations (wifi was provided for free). I’d say it was around 70% of them, and some of them not taking notes, but checking the picture they’d just taken or chatting on Facebook. Apparently this is very common and accepted within this community. However, I can’t help but wonder, can they really be concentrated on both things? Doesn’t it show a bit of rudeness towards the speaker? I know that if Lift didn’t provide wifi, probably their attendance rate would drop. But to what extent does this make sense?

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Today I would like to shed some light on this from another perspective. I recently came across an article from a business newspaper about the increasing influence of finance directors at the board table. According to the Global CFO Study of 2010, by IBM, 70% of the financial directors take part in the relevant decisions within large companies.
When reading this article I began to wonder: what can we learn from this and how can we apply it to the events industry? It is obvious that this fact has been mainly prompted by the economic recession, resulting in companies having now different priorities. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if there are any practices that we could adopt.

And so here are my conclusions:
- The study says that the analytical skills are the ones transforming the financial sector in a more efficient one, and therefore driving its influence. Specifically, this sector has worked on standardizing processes and recruiting talented people with solid analytic and communication skills.
- That proving the ROI of events is becoming increasingly important is a no-brainer. And in this sense, it becomes clear to me that we need to increase the implementation of ROI measurement and do it using the same model, if we want to increase our credibility. As far as I know, there are currently 2 organizations working on this: the Event ROI Institute, and MeetingMetrics. On the other hand, the development of the ISO 20120 (to set a standard for sustainable meetings) is certainly good news too.
- Regarding the characteristics of the event professionals, it is also clear that communication skills are one of our best assets. However, event management degrees are relatively new, and the industry is still taking shape, which means current professionals might be lacking certain skills… Nevertheless, this problem might be sorted out soon, when cohorts of graduates enter the workforce. Another question is if the current curriculums of event management programmes cover the subjects that the industry needs, but that would be too off topic in this post!

The author sums up the essence of the article with this sentence: ‘Knowledge generates value’. Therefore, the more information we have, the better we can contribute to move our industry forward.
With this in mind, do you consider yourself a valuable asset? In which ways are you contributing to expand the knowledge of the events industry?

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Today I would like to address the subject of Experiential Marketing. The market research done by Eventoplus concludes with some advice for events agencies. It talks about ‘brand personality’, ‘touch points’, ‘live brand experience’, in other words, it encourages event professionals to embrace marketing events, or also called Experiential marketing.

Experiential has been the buzz word in marketing for the past few years. People are tired of  ‘push’ marketing techniques and authors such as O’Sullivan & Spangler or Pine & Gilmore have been putting together a recipe to stage events that engage customers in a new dimension. Many experiential agencies have jumped on the bandwagon and today it’s pretty common to find these so-called live brand experiences going on. Too common I’d say.
In my humble opinion, if I were an events agency, I’d think it twice before taking Eventoplus’ advice. Although I do agree events need to be more strategic, I think that for ‘traditional’ event agencies, to embark on organising marketing events it’s too bold and risky. Marketing agencies are already doing that, and they’re doing it very good.

On the other hand, ambassadors of experiential marketing claim proudly that this is not just a trend, that it’s a complete paradigm shift. But again here I disagree. Yes, marketing events are successful in the beginning, but I think eventually consumers will grow tired of them, just like it has happened to other marketing techniques.

I don’t know how long this trend will last. But anyway, I’m not sure if for an events agency is worth the effort it needs to shift into this direction.

What are your thoughts about Experiential Marketing? Do you think it’s a temporary trend or is here to stay?

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Among many other trends, the study points out how every time more communication agencies are integrating events management within their services. This might dislike some current event professionals, but at least to me it makes sense. Perhaps my opinion is biased, because I graduated in college with a Communications degree (PR and Advertising). During the degree, events were present all the time, and it was an obvious professional path for a lot of my classmates.

My surprise arrived when I graduated. Looking for a job in the events sector with a background in PR didn´t make sense at all to the recruiters I talked to. I couldn´t understand why, on the other hand, they were recruiting people coming from the Hospitality & Tourism side. Now that I have much more knowledge about the Events industry I do understand it, but I believe that the events industry will be much better off if it starts welcoming communication professionals. In my humble opinion, if we want to integrate events within a marketing strategy, someone coming from PR is more capable of doing it than someone from Hospitality or Tourism… I guess what I´m saying is, let´s stick with what we´re better at, so leave the substance to the communication professional and the details for the hospitality specialist… And by the way, PR is much more than just writing press releases!

What do you think about communication agencies getting more market share in the events industry? Should we perhaps call ´experiential marketing’ to the events they do?

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Thought leaders of the meetings industry, such as Corbin Ball, give their views on the future of events, mainly talking about the changes brought about by the Generation Yers and the technology innovations.

Basically they claim that virtual events are an opportunity, for those event planners that want to embrace them. And, in case anyone had any doubt, they reassure us that face-to-face meetings will continue having its prominent place.

And I’m wondering, if hybrid meetings are the meetings of the future, aren’t the event professionals going to have to be more focused on meeting design and  experts in technologies? If not, who else can perform these tasks?

Any thoughts?

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