More Managers Go With Private Events

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 1/17/2005

Private events continue to spark interest in the world of traditional tradeshows, with two more companies revealing plans to help bridge the gap between event and exhibition management.

Needham, Mass.-based business and technology consultancy FuelDog in December announced its new Event Concept Development Group, aimed at helping media companies generate ideas for events that will complement their other products — tradeshows, for instance.

Meanwhile, Chicago-based Next Generation has successfully tested a service to assist tradeshow managers in offering their corporate exhibitor customers viable event alternatives to pulling out of shows.

News of the two new projects came just over one month after IDG World Expo's announcement in November that it was creating a Custom Events Group to focus on developing and managing private events for the corporate clients it already works with as exhibitors in its dozens of conferences and exhibitions around the United States.

In fact, IDG World Expo is one of FuelDog's first exhibition-industry clients. The two staged their first jointly conceived production, Wireless Sensing Solutions, Sept. 21–22 in Rosemont. Now, they've come up with Syndicate, an executive-level, business-to-business conference on content syndication, set to take place May 17–18 at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Ted Doyle, senior partner of FuelDog, said this is exactly the type of work that the event group was created to focus on: helping business-to-business media companies initiate events that expand their core competencies. FuelDog and its subsidiary, GMD Resources, have been doing events for more than five years, but according to Doyle, interest from companies like IDG World Expo lately has been on the rise.

"We're hearing a lot of talk from media companies that are looking at their brands differently," Doyle explained. "People used to think of their tradeshow as ground zero of their brand. Now, they're taking a step back and looking at the show as one instance of that brand — with the magazine, the webinar, the blog as other instances."

He added that the new group has a couple of projects cooking, and that it is willing to work "on a fee or fee-equity basis — whatever makes sense."

Doyle is optimistic that show management firms — which tend to be efficient operationally, but find promotions costly — will see the wisdom in outsourcing event concept development. Besides following an industry trend, the move "spreads out risk, and brings fresh blood," he said.

Former SmithBucklin executive Brian Casey launched Next Generation in October 2003, planning to offer outsourced event management services to both traditional tradeshows and corporations looking to do proprietary events.

Soon after going out on his own, Casey connected with Tony Lorenz, founder of ProActive, a 10-year-old strategic communications and events firm that is also located in Chicago. While discussing industry trends, the two got the idea to combine their experience into services that would respond to the growing demand for innovative events.

Drawing on his track record of show launches at SmithBucklin, Casey's role in the alliance is to offer strategic business development: identify opportunities to capture stronger market share for existing shows as well as launch new events. ProActive brings to the table both resources and production capabilities.

Last August, the two worked with Access Distribution, a GE company, to measure the effectiveness of one of the group's important private events for customers and resellers. Casey sat down with each sponsor and identified specific measurable objectives for its participation in the event.

Working with GuideStar Intl., Next Generation and ProActive then created a Web measurement tool that generated customized reports and gave sponsors direct feedback on their objectives after the event. Next year, they're hoping to expand their agreement with Access.

Casey said the project, successful because it provided not just the event but the measurement participants are looking for, is the type of work that he and Lorenz are talking to several exhibition and association managers about doing for their clients.

During the recent economic downturn, show organizers worried that private events were taking business away from them. As companies cut marketing and travel budgets, many pulled out of expensive exhibitions in favor of proprietary events, where they could meet with small, but highly targeted, groups of buyers for relatively low cost.

But as exhibitions have slowly begun to recover, a different understanding of private events has taken hold.

"We're not the enemy," Casey said. "There are a couple ways to look at it: one, sit in the marketplace and fear (private events) are a threat; two, understand the reality of the marketplace and find opportunities to capture that business."

Casey gave the example of flagship exhibitor Black & Decker pulling out of the Natl. Hardware Show several years ago. "The buying channel in that marketplace was shrinking, so you have a small number of retailers controlling most of the buying. The traditional tradeshow model may not have fit them," he said, but show management could have offered to organize a different kind of event for Black & Decker and kept the company as a client.

During an open-forum session at the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management's annual meeting in San Antonio last month, moderator Galen Poss, president of Hanley Wood Exhibitions, asked Douglas Ducate, president and CEO of the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, whether corporate events were still a threat to tradeshows.

Ducate answered that the pendulum had swung back in favor of tradeshow exhibiting. "The death of corporate events," he added, "will be from disinterest by customers ... Given the choice, attendees would rather go to a tradeshow."

IDG World Expo President David Korse said that prediction could be real for event producers who don't do their homework, improperly matching the content or other draw of an event with its intended audience.

"Content is a very strong part of all our events; it's a fundamental part of what we do," Korse said. "If I do the same quality job identifying and delivering the right benefit (for custom events as for tradeshows), there's no reason why they won't come."

He added that IDG World Expo's Custom Events Group had just signed its first contract for a series of six events to be held in the United States in the first quarter of 2005, to do everything from concept development through production. And the new division is already working on about 10 other proposals.

"The mood in the marketplace seems very upbeat and vibrant, and people seem pleased to know that we've joined the fray," said Korse.