I want to share four things that we have learned over the last 18 months at Integrated Systems Events – to give you a better grasp of what’s possible when moving your events online. Some of you may be thinking, “Oh, another pundit trying to tell us how it works!”, but these are four key learnings from our recent experiences (not all successful) which have made think outside the box and have unlocked some new ideas.
We have been running a successful ‘in-person’ exhibition (Integrated Systems Europe www.iseurope.org ) since 2004. It has seen tremendous year-on-year growth since inception, to become the largest professional audiovisual (AV) show in the world. We have always had a very clear strategy and business model for our in-person show: we provide the largest exhibition platform, with world-class content from over 1300 leading companies who come together and showcase the latest and greatest that the AV industry has to offer (Integrated Systems Events, https://isevents.org/#trade-shows ).
That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit us last year and we had to find alternative ways to run a successful show. Like everyone else in our business, we had limits on the number of people who could come through our doors in person – so we turned initially to online, creating a monthly series of six ‘RISE Spotlight’ events with The Next Web (TNW) https://thenextweb.com https://www.iseurope.org/rise-series-2021/ (Integrated Systems Events llc, 2020 https://www.iseurope.org/rise-series-2021/ ).
Don’t try to just recreate your in-person event online!
We first observed and attended many online events from other organisers. These included VR walk-throughs of exhibition venues, digital maps, 3D exhibit booths… just about everything that you could think of. Many were very expensive to implement and needed to be fully financed by large investment from exhibitors. In a recent blog on “Mitigating the cost of Virtual Trade Shows” Exhibitors highlighted, the significant funding, as well as the of lack of real-time interaction with attendees. In many cases customer expectations were not being met. (Exhibit Concepts, https://exhibitconcepts.com/mitigate-challenges-of-virtual-trade-shows-and-events/ ).
Dave Labuskes, CEO of AVIXA (one of ISE’s owners, http://www.avixa.org) stated that “most were trying to mirror what they were doing with in person events”. He reflected “In simple terms, it’s like trying to make a film of a successful book by showing pictures of the pages”.
Know what your business model is!
ISE’s ‘RISE Spotlight’ Events were good, with great content and fantastic speakers, but we had higher expectations of sponsorship revenue and attendance. ISE has always been about innovation and learning and whilst RISE Spotlight was good it wasn’t that much different to what other organisers were doing. We also realised from the start that we could not generate the same level of income from digital as we did from in-person events. We saw from experience, and from feedback from other organisers, that attendees were not willing to pay much (if anything) to attend online events. Sponsorships, whilst they may cover the cost of the event, would not be at a level that supports an organisation devoted to producing large in-person exhibitions. If you have an organisation with relatively low overhead, you might be able to make a business from digital events.
Whilst the pandemic is not yet over, keeping market position and/or providing that meeting place for customers (both exhibitors and attendees) becomes paramount in times of uncertainty. Manufacturers rely on their industry events and the timing of those events as key elements of their R&D and marketing.
Learn how and what to market for a digital audience.
As the pandemic wore on, “Zoom Fatigue” became a familiar concept (Toney, et al., 2021 https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol48/iss1/10/ ) and this applied to online events also. Fosslein & Duffey also stated in the Harvard Business review “video calls make it easier than ever to lose focus” also “having to engage in a “constant gaze” makes us uncomfortable — and tired” (Fosslein & West Duffy, 2020).
Research (Fauville, et al., 2021 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349575392_Zoom_Exhaustion_Fatigue_Scale ) has shown that long-term exposure to video conferencing created fatigue on multiple levels (including visual, emotional and physical) and thus a negative attitude resulting in attendance of online events declining.
That’s when we decided to try something different: we partnered with Cisco on what was a new and innovative version of their Webex platform (https://digital.iseurope.org).
It was a ‘Netflix-style’ platform that allowed attendees to choose what they wanted to see, when they wanted to see it, without missing out on anything. The format was innovative and created a different way of attending on online events. Control and choice was in the hands of the viewers and we could focus promotion of other sessions to the individuals based on their previous choices.
Digital is not the future.
Despite what many pundits have been declaring, not just in the past 18 months, I am certain that digital trade shows will not replace in-person events.
Going digital has the potential to reach a wider audience at a lower cost – an attractive proposition for organisers, exhibitors and buyers alike. Organisers can create some uniqueness to their events to stand out from the competition and attract valuable customers.
But there are things that work in-person that don’t always translate well to digital platforms. Digital is not the future of trade shows. It will certainly be a part of the future but we as trade show organisers need to understand how better to use digital to increase attendee engagement. However, that’s a story for another time!