A Tough Job Gets Tougher

Being an exhibit manager has always been a tough job. Now it's even more challenging. In recent Tradeshow Week research, 80 percent of exhibitors said their job is getting more complex. A number of factors is causing this, including the common problem of needing to do more with less. Similar to the lack-of-budget conundrum, more and more often, the primary exhibit management challenges today can be traced to internal corporate issues.

Corporate marketers are in a tough spot. Buyers have more tools to make buying decisions, and price transparency is rapidly getting harder to protect. It's not just the impact of the Internet that's keeping prices down; it's technological advances, lower-cost manufacturers from Asia, and corporations and governments that have turned procurement into a science.

Then there's the challenge of reaching buyers and influencers. TV advertising is not as effective as it once was, and senior executives and buyers put up more walls and roadblocks to discourage salespeople. The challenges that other marketing media are facing actually help the exhibition industry, which serves up quality buyers in quantity more effectively than most any other medium.

Still, the shift of power to buyers is making the corporate marketer's job that much harder. These challenges are being felt down the ladder by the exhibit and event manager.

Not only are event marketing budgets flat to rising modestly, companies also are reorganizing every few years, changing marketing strategies more quickly, and merging or acquiring more often. All the while, companies still continually launch new products.

With the same budget and new management, event and exhibit managers are being asked to make changes more quickly, and incorporate more complex brand messages and product lines into their programs. At the same time, exhibitors must continue to tell a compelling brand story — and make sure all the literature, graphics and booth elements get to tradeshows on time.

The overarching challenge remains: How do you tell a cohesive story integrating more brands, products and market sectors? Senior executives know the value of exhibitions and event marketing; otherwise the events industry wouldn't be growing at a steady rate. They're simply not funding event departments enough or sticking with strategies long enough to allow their event staff to de-stress. If there's one thing that is constant in the life of an exhibit manager, it's change.

Sure, change is inevitable, and many roles in corporate America are being mandated to do more with less. But is there something inherent in the role that suggests there could be a breaking point for exhibit and event managers? On one level, this breaking point would mean more staff turnover — which could actually help service providers and show producers — but it would also lower effectiveness and ROI and put the industry at some risk.

Related to the various corporate changes, senior executives are asking for more accountability from their marketing teams and partners. As a result, exhibitors tell us they are under greater scrutiny by senior management on costs and return to the business. One said he was feeling "increasing pressure for ROO and ROI reporting and verification, in addition to the increasing pressure to do more (or the same) with less money."

Simply tracking ROO and ROI is not easy either. As sales and distribution channels become more complex, with more partners involved and longer sales cycles, it's harder to track tradeshow ROI.

On top of this, new marketing and finance managers may require a whole new and different way to track and calculate ROI. And, of course, tracking ROI effectively is not the job of one exhibit manager. It requires buy-in and information sharing from a wide range of divisions, managers and salespeople.

Tracking ROI has a cost too. As one exhibitor put it, the challenge is "finding a program within budget that can track leads and request follow-up from the sales department along with the distributor base."

With corporate managerial and strategic changes and the need to demonstrate ROI, exhibitors still have to contend with, well, exhibiting. What's more, the definition of event marketing continues to expand. It is now a highly diverse medium with an ever greater number of conventions, tradeshows, corporate events and other events.

Exhibitors mentioned the "herding cats" element of event marketing. That is, the task of training sales people and other executives to man the booth or be on site in some capacity, to know event marketing best practices, and to understand the high stakes involved at the upcoming show. This includes the importance of being on time and staying in the booth, as well as how to engage booth visitors and explain new value propositions.

Note to service providers and show managers: There's real frustration among your client base. But the frustration is now focused more internally than on issues such as your event costs and service delivery. One exhibitor summed up this frustration: "I can't just do my job; I have to detail why and how it is done."

If you are a service provider or show producer, when looking at your level of service delivery and branding, focus on eliminating the pain. It used to be about alleviating fear that the booth wouldn't show up on time or the components wouldn't fit. Mitigating this logistical risk is important, but so is reducing complexity, or at least managing it better.

For years, exhibitors complained about the cost of exhibiting, labor issues and show producers that don't care. Today you're more likely to hear complaints about their corporate bosses.