Pass the Buck, Literally

When he took the stage at the Professional Convention Management Assn.'s annual meeting in Hawaii two weeks ago, incoming board Chairman Gregg Talley, president and COO of Talley Management, ticked off the items on his to-do list for the year.

A key element of PCMA's new outwardly focused mission, he said, would be advocacy. He mentioned the association's need to speak out on visa restrictions that are preventing meeting planners from hosting foreign attendees, and to proselytize, as he put it, on the value of face-to-face meetings.

He also talked about reaching out to other convention-industry groups. "There's been a lot of ink and chatter about industry consolidation," he said, pointing to the merger of the American Society of Assn. Executives with its Greater Washington counterpart.

Talley said PCMA would be collaborating with ASAE, Meeting Professionals Intl. and the Intl. Assn. of Convention & Visitor Bureaus, to name a few, "but not at the expense of our independence and our commitment to our members."

So he implicitly rejected the notion of consolidation, at least as far as his organization is concerned.

I asked him more about this later — specifically bringing up the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management's current plans to band together in some way with the Society of Independent Show Organizers.

He said PCMA was willing to talk to "any group, large or small," but he also pointed out that an umbrella already exists to encompass the many convention-exhibition-meetings-industry organizations: the Convention Industry Council.

Sadly, Talley admitted, CIC hasn't been all that effective in acting as a unifying voice on behalf of the groups it represents. Granted, CIC has plenty on its plate already. The council is busy with the Accepted Practices Exchange initiative, a much-needed effort to establish broadly encompassing standards.

This isn't the first time someone has mentioned CIC to me in the context of industry consolidation and advocacy. But more important than its preoccupation with APEX, CIC has nowhere near the budget required to fund an effective industry advocacy initiative or marketing campaign.

Now, why do you think that is?

Groups like PCMA and IAEM have their annual meetings, where people come together to learn, have fun, and buy and sell things to and from each other. Despite a few hiccups during the economic downturn, these meetings continue to be successful.

So, the associations keep doing them the way they always have, growing attendance a little each year, putting on elaborate networking events with expensive food and entertainment to keep people coming back ... and telling each other somebody should do more to promote the industry.

But if the leaders of associations really believe — as they say they do — that industry advocacy and marketing are important, they will have to stop passing the figurative buck to CIC and pass the literal buck instead.

What if every association that's a member of CIC diverted 20 percent of the funds used for its annual meeting's social events to an advocacy fund instead? It would be a good start.

Several times at the meeting in Hawaii, outgoing PCMA Chairman Michael Payne, executive vice president and managing director of SmithBucklin, mentioned the need for the industry's planner groups to make better use of the support given to them by vendors such as general contractors and CVBs.

What if every association also took some of the pressure off these vendors to sponsor their parties and, instead, encouraged them to make donations to a CIC-led industry marketing campaign?

If they truly thought these projects were worthwhile, that's what they'd do.