Industry Marketing: Got Face-to-Face?

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 4/3/2006

See if you can remember this Tradeshow Week headline: "Center for Exhibition Industry Research Names Firm to Help Develop Industry Promotion Campaign."

No, it's not from Assn. of Equipment Manufacturers President Dennis Slater's 2004 term as chairman of the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management. In fact, it's not even from the present decade. If you guessed 1997, you were right.

The recent preoccupation with the need for a campaign to educate business and government on the value of exhibitions isn't new. The travel slump following Sept. 11, 2001, and the coinciding economic downturn just gave it a new sense of urgency.

In a 2003 letter to TSW editors, MRH Associates President Michael Hough wrote, "We as an industry must come together to re-establish the intrinsic benefits of meeting face to face. This has been the objective of the Exhibition Industry Promotion Campaign, which I helped launch in 1995 but which has languished over the past few years."

The following January, Slater took the helm of IAEM and announced the group's newly retooled strategic plan, which included, among other goals, improving industry promotion and political advocacy.

So what has actually happened?

A year before Hough even took up his pen, IAEM had collaborated with Europe-based UFI, the Global Assn. of the Exhibition Industry, to produce a four-page brochure culling research data from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, the U.K.'s assn. of exhibition organisers and Germany's AUMA (the Assn. of the German Trade Fair Industry).

Titled "Fairs & Exhibitions: the Unique Way to Reach Your Business Goals All at Once!" the brochure used survey data to make the point that "fairs and exhibitions are more effective than any other tools to achieve all these goals at once." It appeared to target exhibiting companies.

Apart from that, efforts to build a cohesive industry campaign have faltered.

"We haven't done a lot, I'm afraid," said current IAEM Chairman Sandy Angus, also chairman of U.K.-based Montgomery Exhibitions.

Slater's chairmanship was spent restructuring IAEM's membership and shepherding a proposed merger between IAEM and the Society of Independent Show Organizers, part of whose goal was to facilitate industry promotion and advocacy. The proposed merger ultimately failed.

The idea of an industry promotion campaign did not appear to have the support of IAEM President Steven Hacker. Responding to an editorial early last year, Hacker wrote to TSW: "I'll be the first to vigorously support an industry campaign that can alter consumer behavior and deliver more exhibitors and visitors to our events. Based upon the experience of other industries however, it is much more likely that changes in consumer behavior will be affected only by very specific product-related advertising."

Hacker went on to suggest that show organizers do their own promotion, arguing that "specific product advertising campaigns can work much more effectively than generic industry-wide campaigns."

But believers in industry promotion still have reason to hope. In December, Angus named it as one of the top goals for his term. "I would be very disappointed if something weren't accomplished on that front this year," he recently told TSW.

Angus has experience on which to base his hopes. While the U.S. exhibition industry has been stuck in debate, its U.K. counterpart has taken action.

About a decade ago, the aeo began what would become a three-phase generic promotional campaign with advertising, public relations, road shows and help lines. Still available to aeo members is a series of print ads with taglines such as "Exhibitions. Because business is face to face."

Angus said of the ads, "We all used them. We still do. I recently used them in South Africa."

Now it's gone a step further. Again, while the U.S. industry debated consolidation between IAEM and SISO, the aeo — led by CEO Trevor Foley — joined with the assn. of exhibition contractors and the assn. of exhibition venues and formed England's Events Industry Alliance.

The job of the umbrella organization, established this year, is to educate the press, clients, government and academia on the value of exhibitions and events. To arm itself for the effort, last year it commissioned a study to quantify the economic impact of the industry on the country.

"The original campaign raised a lot of money and spent it on advertising," Foley explained. "This time, we're going to use our own medium — face-to-face — to make presentations to all our stakeholders."

In about 20 to 30 minutes, he said, he can convey to journalists, professors or members of Parliament exactly what the EIA is about and what it wants from them.

The approach is succeeding. Stories about exhibitions and the EIA have run in the Financial Times and London Evening Standard, as well as Business Week and Marketing Week. Foley said he's met with the deputy prime minister and the minister of tourism and culture, and got a question put before the House of Commons.

"What we're finding most successful is the language we're using," he said. "We're not making outrageous demands."

Still, the United Kingdom and its exhibition industry are very compact relative to that in the United States. Could such an approach work here?

Angus thinks so. "I don't think it would be easy, because you've got different agendas from the major trade associations," he said. "But it's possible. I'm sure that we will move toward some form of partnership."

Although issues affecting U.S. exhibitions on a local level differ radically from national issues, Angus believes the entire industry benefits from educating stakeholders on the revenue it generates.

Other Britons pointed to the benefits of banding together. Tim Perutz, managing director of Nimlok's U.K. operations, said he didn't feel there was a contractors' organization worth belonging to before the EIA was formed. Now, he's on the board of the aec.

"If we promote exhibitions as the best means of taking products to market, it benefits us all," Perutz said.

A common objection in the United States is funding, Angus noted. He hopes to overcome that using aeo's approach: Start small, with those companies that believe in it pushing it; prove it works; then take it to the next level.

The EIA study cost $70,000, according to Foley, and he has raised another $150,000 for third-party services on top of what has become his full-time job.

Americans should not give up on coming together, he said. "It took us about three years. We made the decision to pull the industry together and defend ourselves against other forms of marketing. At times we asked why, and it was painful ... Now look what's happening."