Reed Expo Will Audit Most U.S. Shows by 2006

Firm plans to conduct third-party count of 40 exhibitions within a year

By Michael Hart -- Tradeshow Week, 4/11/2005

Those on the audit bandwagon got a huge push recently when Reed Exhibitions announced it would conduct third-party audits of nearly 80 percent of all its tradeshows in the United States by 2006.

"We're striving for transparency," said Reed North America President Chet Burchett, who described a pilot audit program that began with three shows in 2004 and will expand by five this year to about 40 next year.

Auditing has been a widely discussed topic at industry meetings. It is quickly becoming a fact of life in the information technology sector, and a task force has created a set of standards that its chairman believes will be the industry's "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." However, Reed's decision is the first move by a major tradeshow company to embrace the idea in a substantial way.

"That is fantastic news," said Andrew Dudek, chairman-elect of the Trade Show Exhibitors Assn. "We've been begging for this."

Conducting the third-party audits for Reed will be Exhibit Surveys of Red Bank, N.J., following standards codified by the Exhibition & Event Industry Audit Council. About 80 percent of the approximately 50 U.S. shows managed or owned by Reed will be involved. The only exceptions, according to Burchett, will be those that now have strict security or registration protocols.

For instance, The JCK Show for high-end jewelry manufacturers already has an intricate procedure in place to guarantee that participants are legitimate members of the industry, virtually insuring an accurate count of those attending.

Burchett said the program is designed to increase customer value and help exhibitors justify their investment in Reed shows, particularly since there is such a wide variety of marketing methods beyond tradeshows available to them.

"For our customers, in many cases accustomed to other environments where there are verified numbers, there was a question of why we can't get the same kind of verification from tradeshows," he said.

Dudek believes that if Reed's move turns out to be the beginning of an industry-wide trend, his job and that of other corporate exhibit managers will become less stressful as it gets easier for their managers to measure the value of tradeshows against that of other sales and marketing means available to them.

Dudek is tradeshow manager for telecommunications firm Telcordia Technologies.

"It's going to give us credibility that our colleagues who handle advertising already have," he said. "My managers ask me who goes to this or that show and what are their demographics. Up until now, all show managers have had were some nice colorful pie charts that didn't mean anything."

David Korse, president of IDG World Expo, said, "There have been credibility gaps as long as I've been in the business, which is over 20 years."

Korse was chairman of the Task Force on Exhibition Industry Audit Best Practices and Standards, which spent much of 2004 coming up with the guidelines. Once the standards were completed, the task force was transformed into the Exhibition & Event Industry Audit Council, which Korse also chairs. The new panel, which will hold its first meeting April 13 in Las Vegas, will monitor audits in the industry and give them what Korse previously called the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Although not the first, IDG is one of several companies that concentrate in the IT sector and have already begun auditing some of their shows. The Consumer Electronics Assn. has been auditing its Intl. CES since 1998. Even though some of their largest shows have since seen their demise, companies like MediaLive Intl., Hannover Fairs USA and TechTarget have taken to audits in a major way. IDG World Expo now audits all its shows and late last month released a verified report on the 2005 edition of Macworld Conference & Expo/San Francisco, the second year the show has been audited.

Mike Sponseller, IDG World Expo public relations manager, said, "Now we can say for sure that it increased 11 percent, and we couldn't say that before."

Korse and others pointed out that IT show managers may have paved the way for Reed because they were among the first to deal with so many dissatisfied exhibitors demanding some way to measure ROI. Not only were many of their customers already accustomed to working with metrics, they had a strong, unified voice in the Computer Exhibit Marketing Assn., which lobbied the industry hard in favor of audits.

"The environment changed so dramatically from 2000 to 2001," Korse said. "IT people like us had plenty of pressure from exhibit management to do something like this."

But will the trend continue? Will Reed's peers follow its example? Burchett insists he doesn't really care.

"I'm not going to speculate on what other organizations will or won't do," he said. "We're just focused on our customers."

Others are more sanguine.

"Having someone of Reed's size and prestige do this is going to set the bar higher," Korse said, "and I would guess their competitors will have to take this into consideration."

Still, it isn't over.

As Steven Hacker, president of the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management, pointed out, "It's tempting for all of us to rub our hands and say, 'Finally!' But there needs to be a reality check. It's still going to take some time before (auditing) is an expectation, rather than an exception."