UNITED STAND

Companies are ditching the disjointed, tactical approach to conference and exhibitions to develop the ‘brand experience’.

The heads of 20 of the leading event production companies recently got together to discuss current issues. They were concerned that, while other marketing services companies were becoming more strategically aligned with their clients, conference and exhibition agencies were still primarily used tactically.

While the aim of the event was worthy, the outcome was disappointing. As Lois Jacobs, managing director of HP:ICM reports, “there were so many disparate points of view that it is unlikely we will meet again”. One of the root causes of the lack of strategic involvement with clients is that very diversity. A supplier in this sector may offer anything from product launches and staff motivation to multimedia sites or graphic design. If each of those falls under a different client-side department, it is hard to co-ordinate at a strategic level.

Yet it is that range of input to client activity which suggests event companies could have a bigger role to play. Agencies are having to address a broader range of audiences than ever before, using event techniques to deliver everything from shareholder information to brand communications. But as Ralph Ardill, marketing director for Imagination, notes, the industry is busy trying to do away with free pitches, when it should be concentrating on “creating a culture that is ideas-based, as opposed to being an ideas production line”.

The starting point for agencies’ dissatisfaction is simple. In order to deliver the right kind of event solution, they have to undertake the same level of knowledge-building which is required for other forms of communication. That means understanding their client’s business objectives and brands, down to the fine detail of the company’s logo.

But having staged the exhibition or conference, most of that knowledge is simply boxed up and archived. “The value of our services, contribution, advice and strategic input is not appreciated to the extent it should be. As a result, we have tended to work project by project,” says Nick Lamb, managing director of Crown Communications.

He believes the industry is largely to blame for having failed to present a coherent, professional image of what it can do, pointing the finger particularly at the sector’s trade association, the International Visual Communication Association.

“If the IVCA thinks it has done a good job, why are you writing this article?” he asks.

A number of factors have contributed to the predominance of ad-hoc buying. First, the high level of freelance talent employed for many aspects of this industry can lead either to anxiety about confidentiality, or to clients following those individuals from agency to agency. Second, there has been a strong emphasis on price, with companies competing for business on tight margins.

Duncan Beale, managing director of Line Up Productions, identifies two other factors which have driven project-based buying: “Traditionally, clients have viewed conferences as a purely tactical or even reactive activity. Second, our services are commissioned by a variety of people and departments within the client company, many of whom are inexperienced or first-time buyers and therefore derive security from shopping around.”

But as Lamb points out, there is now a counter trend towards a higher level of client-side commissioning responsibility. “Nine out of ten of our clients are at board level,” he says. The range of projects they buy includes annual general meetings, management conferences, product and sales launches, presentations to analysts, and multi-media. That means the communications cycle can become very disjointed, but as clients recognise the scale of their investment in events, they are becoming keener to co-ordinate it.

Steve Hill, marketing manager for Academy Expo, says this would immediately produce savings, if cost is all-important. “From a financial point of view, in many ways we can give the client better value for money if we have a strategic role,” he says.

To achieve this status, however, a number of barriers need to be overcome. The first is the perception of event agencies as suppliers, rather than consultants. The second is the recognition by clients that events can have as much importance to the company as sales promotion, advertising or direct marketing. If there is an events manager for the whole client company, it is usually a junior position without much clout.

The agencies themselves will also have to change. Pitching for business may well be one of the areas which has created a negative impression and which needs to be changed. Certainly Jacobs is concerned that business can often be won with a presentation that is not necessarily the best way forward for the client.

“There is sometimes a dilemma. Do I pitch an idea that will win the business, or an idea that is right for their communications need? Sometimes those two things are not necessarily the same idea. Some people would say you should always go for the right idea, but they are probably not running a large agency. If we can evolve away from that, clients will get a better result,” she says.

The level of talent employed in this sector also needs to rise. Historically, the emphasis has been on creative skills, especially designers, producers and directors. But if events are to become a genuinely strategic communications vehicle, then agencies will have to be able to field the kind of heavyweight planners, account directors and thinkers which above and below-the-line agencies bring to the table.

Some are going even further in their quest for long-term involvement. Imagination has just undergone a two-year corporate re-engin- eering programme as a result of a rethink which was started three years ago. Although the company was started as an “ideas factory”, able to respond to any kind of brief because of its multi-disciplinary skills base – everything from architects to Web designers – the late Eighties saw this drift of philosophy.

It became focused on vertical markets. “The mentality was, if we can do anything, then potentially everybody is a client,” says Ardill. “That meant we started to be perceived as operating in vertical sectors such as conferences, exhibitions, product launches, live events.”

As part of its rethink, Imagination concluded that conferences and exhibitions alone would be a declining market, increasingly served by smaller suppliers. It also recognised that clients were reassessing their idea of how marketing works and how brands are created. This led to the fresh focus on delivering what it calls “brand experiences” on behalf of clients.

“What we are saying is that successful brands in the future have to develop a brand experience strategy. In the past, brands were built through broadcast advertising. Increasingly, they will need to build experiences through retail outlets, theme parks, restaurants,” says Ardill.

He points to Cadbury’s Fantasy Factory, which gives the brand a platform for consumer involvement, staff motivation and PR leverage.

Such a positioning will not be right for every client. But Ardill says the concept does not even need to be explained to the new breed of marketing or managing directors who have “vision, power and budget”. He dubs such clients King Arthurs, and says they will preside over a round table of agencies which will include advertising, direct marketing and visual communications.

Ford and Ericsson are among those which have responded to the new concept and have Imagination on retainer. Leveraging the intellectual investment made by both client and agency is the key to what this approach delivers above and beyond traditional responses to a brief. It will often involve the agency in far more than simply putting together a programme of events.

While rival companies may not have undergone such a dramatic philosophical conversion, they are working towards the more beneficial position of retained agency status. HP:ICM has a long-term relationship with GM which is on a very different footing from that of a supplier. “The client takes the role of integrating our services with other marketing services agencies. That is what they are there for. So we find ourselves sitting down with the others and working out strategy and tactics,” says Jacobs.

This positioning can also come about through evolution. Line Up began working with Hotpoint in 1987, producing a ten-venue roadshow for the independent trade. Now it is involved with the company across marketing, sales, training and distribution, creating everything from conferences and exhibitions to videos and multimedia. The relationship has even survived three changes of marketing director, “each of whom has recognised our contribution to Hotpoint’s marketing efforts”, says Beale.

As the market polarises into big and small, retained and ad-hoc, what will really decide the issue is whether clients can recognise the role events play – then creating a strategic function responsible for it – and whether agencies are up to this new, grown-up function.