The changing face of exhibitions

Technology is seen by some in the events industry as a dangerous disruptor. Pandemic necessity meant Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other virtual meeting platforms have been widely adopted with ease.

Brian Brittain recognises the threats posed by technology. He also describes how pessimists have predicted the demise of live events many times before. “Ever since the internet came into being it’s been a constant drumbeat, a constant concern,” he says.

In fact, without technology there would have been almost no way to make events and exhibitions work at all during the worst periods of lockdown. Zoom calls and Microsoft Teams, online webinars and chatroom mini-conferences proved to be invaluable tools when we could barely leave home, weren’t allowed to go to the office, and overseas travel was nigh on impossible.

Clara Biosca Ruiz de Ojeda is the events coordinator and global markets support for BBVA France. She attends RX’s IBTM World, a global event for the meetings and events industry. “We have been doing virtual team building activities. In pandemic times, it’s all we have. There aren’t any alternatives."

But she adds: “I am not a big fan of virtual events. It has been a bridge to survive 2021 as well as 2020 but I wouldn't consider them as the way to go post pandemic. We’ve concluded it is probably just better to wait until live and hybrid events are possible instead of trying to fully navigate into the virtual.”

That said, Biosca Ruiz reckons technology is having a huge impact on live events. “It will play a big part. We have seen how companies have been adapting to the new hi-tech demand and have responded efficiently. This will continue to improve in the next few years.”

James Bryan is commercial director at The Sport & Travel Group, a company which arranges golf escapes and mini-breaks among other things. In a previous job, Bryan well remembers being asked if he really needed to go to the show because it cost quite a lot of money. “I said we can’t afford not to... everyone is there and if you are not questions will get asked...You miss it at your peril.”

“You can add a lot more with technology, the booking process, the ability to network before the events...but I want to go to actual events because that is the only way to build rapport, creating and maintaining good relationships.”

In common with others, though, Bryan isn’t dismissing the online events. “I have a friend who organises a conference for butterfly enthusiasts. To his surprise, he attracted many more attendees to a recent online event than he might have expected at an in-person gathering pre pandemic.”

“My friend discovered that because people could join via Zoom from all over the world, they did. It was also easier to get specialist speakers and cheaper because there were no travel and accommodation costs.”

Brian Brittain continues: “There is a spectrum of views about technology but in the exhibitions space, it is less about disrupting and more about augmenting.”

As one of the bigger beasts of the events and exhibitions industry, RX has some of the better opportunities to find and defend its feeding grounds. Trade show operators’ most telling attribute may be data. Moreover, the bigger you are the more resources you are likely to have for gathering and utilising data.

Being part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools, helps. A number of senior RX executives, including Chief Executive Hugh Jones and Gaby Appleton, come from other parts of the group.

Hugh Jones says “RELX gives me this wonderful ability to use innovation derived from other portions of the business, and borrow it for RX. So, for example, part of RELX might use matchmaking technologies for anti-money laundering to try to catch bad guys in a sanctions environment. I can take some of their code, which is essentially matchmaking, and use it to match commercial transactions for our customers. I can use HPCC (High Performance Cluster Computing), a big data technology used across RELX, to create significant learnings about how an exhibitor has behaved over the past 20 years at all of our shows. That allows me to go into a meeting with that exhibitor and show them how the path forward might look in order to have an increased return on investment. It gives me an ability that other exhibitions companies don't have.”

Technology helps with the accumulation of data – think of badge-scanning where written records once predominated. It is crucial, however, as Appleton emphasises, to collect good data and know how to use it intelligently and effectively.

“You need really high-quality data about your customers and what they are interested in, rather than vast reams of it. It is better to have less but have it in high quality detail.”

It may be argued that data – the intellectual property which identifies who is likely to want to meet whom - is the difference between trade show success and failure. Data also defends franchises for established trade show operators.

That knowledge, moreover, appears to have the greatest ongoing value at live events. In the most difficult months of the pandemic, after we’d all discovered Zoom and Teams etc., RX asked its exhibitors if they wanted to return to live events. More than four-fifths of respondents (81 per cent) said yes. That figure is impressive itself but more so considering the positive answers pre pandemic ran at 61 per cent.

Deeper data management is one of the three aims for the digital centre of excellence at RX, headed by Appleton. RX already has a technology platform, called Atlas, for hosting exhibitor profiles and product catalogues, floorplans and webinars.

The centre is also embedding digital services at face to face events and developing digital products which assist exhibitors and visitors between events to increase year-round engagement. "We've created a series of products like online product showcases which, quite frankly, before the pandemic most people didn't really see the point of." says Brittain. These include one-hour customer videos on a new product they want to get out and which is targeted at the right buyers. "That's massive for our customers and we're seeing Net Promoter Score ratings in the high 60s." adds Brittain.

"We're also creating customer communities, a group of people rallied around a specific topic or interest, and target a small group of those individuals for a very targeted digital event. This is an example of year-round engagements which supplement the annual or biannual events. They are extremely cost-effective, very targeted and can help our customers come back from the pandemic. It's absolutely brilliant to watch."

 

Pandemic conditions leads Brian Brittain – and his colleagues, visitors, and exhibitors - to examine the anatomy of events. There are many different moving parts but they divide into two distinct categories. On the one hand, are things technology is good at. These tend to be simple, transactional, contacts. On the other hand, virtual interaction is much less useful, perhaps even ineffective, when it comes to the sort of complex networking seen on the floor of an exhibition hall.

Jamie Harrison, vice president for product management at RX says: “Technological solutions are excellent for narrowly defined or self-contained interactions. What digital does well is one thing at a time. Digital helps extend relationships between annual events. It also makes hybrids, which combine the most valuable aspects of live and virtual events, increasingly attractive.  

“But the biggest piece of fundamental value we deliver is the opportunity for buyers and sellers to have multi-faceted relationships that shift from person to person, minute to minute, industry by industry.”

Rounded relationships differ according to individual circumstances. “Every single attendee at one of our events has multiple reasons to be there”, says Harrison. “They are there to do a deal, connect with an existing vendor, look at competitors, learn about what’s new, meet friends in the industry, maybe find a new job.”

At the same time, exhibitors and visitors approach events from different directions, he says. Exhibitors want leads, deals, brand exposure. They want to monitor competitors, to see the busy hall, get the buzz. By and large, they are proactive.

Visitors, typically from smaller businesses, tend to plan their visit in advance with the view to meet up with specific people, to explore and discover new ideas and trends, or fish for potential partners to do business with. They value inspiration and knowledge as much as 'harder' success measures.

It’s the in-person meeting that allows them to find common ground, the “magic sweetspot” to use Harrison’s expression.

Adds Harrison: “Generalist tech products which try to do everything have resulted in dissatisfaction from exhibitors because it’s assumed the digital event is going to equate to the same overall experience they get from a physical event. It just does not work out like that.”

As in-person events and exhibitions begin to emerge from the lockdowns, technology is facilitating operational improvements that may outlast Covid.

High hygiene standards required by the group's global health and safety strategy in the face of Covid bring permanent benefits. Contactless registration and interaction between buyers and sellers, meanwhile, almost invariably helps to identify participants and their preferences. Digital data exchange makes it easier to follow up on sales leads, gather product information, arrange meetings and, ultimately, do deals. Digital content hubs developed in 2020 during the pandemic in lieu of the face to face have become a go-to source of information and a permanent offering alongside the in-person events.

In 2021, for the first time in Arabian Travel Market history, the addition of a virtual edition of the event a week later enabled exhibitors to reach a wider audience than ever before. International buyers unable to attend due to ongoing travel restrictions could watch summit sessions, view their destination videos, and attend one on one meetings online.  

Manuel Ortega García of the Andalucia Tourism Board in Spain says advancing technology was an essential element of keeping things going during the pandemic. He knows that face to face experience is “unbridgeable” by technology but also that digital services “increase the realism, make exhibitions more dynamic for consumers and heighten levels of engagement.”

As Kerry Prince points out: “Technology at live events is very, very present.” Wayfinding tools help visitors with the physical navigation of the floorplan; the matchmaking app helps delegates find out who is in the room and whether they are likely to want a meeting; heat-mapping tools help organisers with the flow of people around the event.

It’s a classic example of how the technology brought on by the pandemic will bring permanent advances. The technology is constantly improving, constantly making events safer and more efficient. For instance, says Prince, exhibitors can now assess individuals’ customer data in real-time, on smartphones, instead of having to wait until the end of the day for data downloads.

Ortega García likes the way technology augments the quality of exhibitor stands. Where displays were once static, they are now animated. Visitor badge scanning makes data exchange between exhibitors, visitors and RX faster and more accurate. Virtual video tours are of increasingly high quality. It may not be long before augmented reality – of a sort used in computer gaming – becomes widespread.