CMP Media Expands Into Custom Events
By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 3/27/2006
The custom events world just got a little more crowded.
After acquiring Blackhat, MediaLive Intl. and Shorecliff Communications in rapid succession — a move that, CMP Media believes, makes it the world's largest high-tech event producer — the company is establishing a custom events group headed by James Lonsdale-Hands, formerly of the George P. Johnson Co.
The group will provide event consulting and management, program development, content planning and attendee marketing for road shows, forums, roundtables, user group meetings and custom conferences. There's also potential to collocate custom events with established tradeshows.
"The fact that we're able to really deliver an audience provides a huge opportunity to build out the custom events group," said Lonsdale-Hands, managing director of CMP Custom Events.
Just last month, Penton Media expanded its custom media operations by offering tradeshow management and exhibit sales help to association customers. IDG World Expo since 2003 has operated a custom events group to manage private events for existing customers that exhibit in its conferences and exhibitions. And Next Generation for two years now has offered outsourced event management services for traditional tradeshows and proprietary events.
According to last year's Tradeshow Week corporate exhibitor survey, the market for private events is growing. Respondents to the survey planned an average of 20 private events in 2005, up from an average of 16 the year before. That compared with an average of 26 tradeshows and conferences for both years.
The CMP Media custom events team will be part of the integrated marketing solutions group, which draws on resources from throughout the company to help customers resolve marketing problems.
It will include Karen Gainey, previously head of global events at Oracle, and Julie Marple, who has held senior event positions at Oracle and WingateWeb.
Lonsdale-Hands said corporations and ad agencies — particularly those in the technology space — are increasingly taking an integrated approach to marketing.
During the downturn several years ago, many budget-sapped technology firms reportedly pulled out of tradeshows and put their marketing muscle into corporate events. Now some are finding that putting on corporate events is hard work.
"A lot of companies internally doing their own events realize they should be sticking to their core competencies. They've been looking to outsource that area," said Lonsdale-Hands, who helped GPJ build up its custom events operations in the San Francisco Bay area.
While any event management company can take on that task, Lonsdale-Hands said the CMP custom group would differentiate itself by being able to draw on its events and magazines to help customers with audience acquisition.
"Where we see such an opportunity is the fact that, not only can we help them put together a road show, we can help them deliver an audience," he said.
It's no coincidence that CMP is targeting the technology sector for its custom event efforts. According to the TSW corporate exhibitor survey, information technology exhibitors see higher ROI in private events than in tradeshows.
Overall, 33 percent of respondents said private events generated a higher ROI than tradeshows. But 55 percent of the technology respondents said private events generated more return than tradeshows.
