This is the fourth part of a five part series discussing my recent takeaways for the Exhibitor 2010 Conference in Las Vegas, March 14-18, 2010. View Part 3 – Virtual Dangers.

I like baseball.

If you know me, you’d also understand that’s easily the understatement of the decade. It’s an undefined sickness that forces me to re-channel childhood dreams of playing third base for the Chicago White Sox through summers of 12” softball, filled with pulled hamstrings and the fleeting hope that a MLB scout will witness my undiscovered “talent.”

Baseball is simple, perfect and pure…at least that’s what I believed well up until my adult years. While I don’t cherish baseball any less than I did when I was 12, I have come to understand that the sport is also a business, and unfortunately, the purity of the game is often tainted by the dictation of the dealings and dollars that drive it.

The formula for athletic success is relatively simple: performance = fortune. Mark McGuire was the epitome of baseball success during the 1990s. However, less than 7 years after breaking the single season homerun record, McGuire was strangely mum in 2005 during an infamous session in front of the House Government Reform Committee to discuss steroid usage in baseball. Suspicions were instant and unrelenting. The ‘good ole boy’ and man who brought baseball back from it’s damaging strike in 1994 suddenly undid a sixteen year, Hall of Fame career, without barely speaking a word.

I wasn’t as upset at the dishonestly of McGuire as much as I was disappointed with the revelation that he had lost the passion for purity and virtuousness that all baseball players have growing up. The authenticity of his love for the game was lost. I realized that his mixed messages were muddying up my own perspective on him, and the game of baseball.

Conversely, I have grown to value businesses that are driven by passion and have a genuine interest in their industry beyond their quarterly report. My experience at Exhibitor 2010 was eye-opening on a number of levels. Educationally, it was great. But witnessing like minded individuals, colleagues and friends who spoke with actions in place of words, was a far above encouraging sight for the future of events. As event organizers, how are we to sell our clients on the value of a face to face meeting yet substitute our own forums for communication?

The event landscape is being refined daily. Technology and new ways to communicate are simultaneously enhancing and threatening various face to face traditions. We need leadership. Leaders who will illustrate the right way and the wrong way to embrace new conventions. Leaders who can define the struggles of the common meeting planner and promptly offer solutions. Leaders who will discuss the situations surrounding face to face meetings…in a face to face setting (bizarre, huh?).

Social media has opened opportunities to extend our networks and develop communities that can support and enhance the value of the meeting place. But our trust in technologies needs to be evaluated on a consistent basis. As proponents of events, we need to be careful on what our virtual actions convey to our audiences. Are we enhancing the face to face environment with these tools, or inadvertently displaying methods that speak the opposite?

I was pleased to see relationships that were materialized in a virtual space, enhanced further at an event. We need this continued leadership to keep muddied messages from dictating perceptions. Quite simply, this is ground zero for our new landscape in developing and extending the importance of events.

Continue to Exhibitor 2010 Series: Part 5 – The Twittermediary

(image by Andrew Maycock via Wikipedia Creative Commons License)

This is the second part of a five part series discussing my recent takeaways for the Exhibitor 2010 Conference in Las Vegas, March 14-18, 2010. View Part 1 – Social Trailblazing.

During mid-morning Monday, I attended an intriguing session with Dax Callner, Using Social Media & Guerilla Marketing to Drive Booth Traffic. The examples and case studies shared opens path of creative exhibit marketing that furthers brand awareness, increases exhibit presence and attendance and pushes the envelope on traditional marketing and creativity.

Callner cited a recent video by Lady Gaga, which has gained a ton of viral attention, that pushes the boundaries on creative expression and integrated sponsorships, and proves that a delivered experience with content merits can be monetized with little detraction of substance value to audiences. An exhibit experience needs to be developed with your brand messaging as the nucleus in a format where creativity and content will rule.

Tossing aside tactics of traditional marketing routines, in signage, graphics, booth personalities and presentations, guerilla marketing for tradeshows extends beyond the philosophical and literal boundaries of your exhibit space. Can your strategy bend the rules and challenge propriety by saturating audiences at the welcome reception or the restaurants that skirt the convention center? Can you hack the system to exploit traditional barriers as simple obstacles that can be evaded? Identify the regulations. Define them. Defy them. But don’t break them.

Audiences feed in to forward actions, and your exhibit, despite size or location, can generate improved traffic and, more importantly, increased perceptions as creative influencers. Guerilla marketing for events needs guidelines for success however:

• Don’t kill ideas as unfeasible – find the feasibility
• Don’t annoy people (unless they are your competitors)
• Develop a game plan that enables flexibility
• Pilot ideas- try stuff out, then abandon it.
• Measure impact
• Have fun

Despite its title, the session didn’t generate many ideas or examples regarding the use of Social Media, in its current form, to generate booth traffic. However, the point was made that events ARE social media. Face to face meetings are the essential core that drives the social engine. The virtual networks and environments that are surrounding us are simply tools to enhance your existing presence in the marrow of interaction.

While many case studies shared related to high profile, technology based exhibitors, a question was posed in regards to guerilla marketing for small business. While no definitive solutions or ideas were presented, I believe an outside the box approach can be implemented despite limitations to budget or booth presence. I also believe that packaging guerilla marketing with proper social media structure can increase the ‘virality’ and audience impact.

What can your exhibit strategy do to extend boundaries and draw attendees? Can you utilize digital messages in locations where physical marketing is restricted? Can you transform attendees into brand surrogates?

For those who attended, what were your takeaways from this session? Can you cite good examples of guerilla marketing that you’ve seen at an event? What are other ways to challenge standards of traditional tradeshow marketing?

Continue to Exhibitor 2010 Series: Part 3 – Virtual Dangers

(image by LiveU4 via Wikipedia Creative Commons License)

I’ve just returned from the Exhibitor 2010 show in Las Vegas and was intrigued, mostly positive, by what I witnessed and learned. The result of which I will be putting together in a five part series to share my thoughts.

There is little doubt that the profile of events is changing. Attendees are evolving (link), organizers are tasked with battling attendance and exhibitors are constantly dealing with new hurdles. Additionally, the entire event culture is being revolutionized by technology and social media as opportunities to enhance our face to face traditions continue to grow.

During Monday’s session, Marketing Communications to Social Audience Engagement – The Changing Event Landscape, the topics focused on encouraging companies to explore and leverage social media in to their events and marketing portfolios. Despite many examples of success, many companies and individuals are still on the fringe of social media. The sessions, led by panelists Paul Salinger, Desirée Lehrbaum and Kelly Graham, took a good look at what stands in front of the pioneers looking to improve awareness with social tools.

An important center of discussion was the need for a social code of ethics. Corporate messages need to adhere to traditional regulations and the individuals distributing the content have to understand the boundaries. There are no universal rules for social media ethics for business. Each set needs to be developed around the needs, values and guidelines that are unique only to your marketing process.

The value of social media for business highlighted was not sales, yet developing communities of individuals. Building relationships with groups forms a level of trust and awareness surrounding your company. Pairing this with a strategic personal profile furthers discussions and can be interwoven as a organic marketing strategy.

Coupling my leanings from this session with my experiences browsing the exhibit floor and monitoring the #Exhibitor2010 Twitter stream, I was left feeling that the events industry is still a distance away from developing complete harmony between virtual and physical environments. Social media integration appears, as a whole, an afterthought as a marketing tool.

Though it is effectively utilized as such, social media is being utilized primarily DURING an event. Systematic “visit our booth” tweets, again should not be discarded completely, but need to be integrated with messages that are informative, valuable and generate awareness to and from your audiences. Additionally, messages should be predicated by a strategy that meshes with your traditional awareness campaigns, on AND off-site.

Your event marketing campaign and its adoption of social media can be one of two things: interdependent or cohesive. Many traditions take precedence when it comes to developing a strategy in early event planning, and most times, does not include a social element…until later. This oversight and delayed implementation forces interdependent tactics, which become exposed during execution.

One of the best tweets that I saw was from Mary-Ann Wessan and concisely reflects my thoughts:

So how do you accurately introduce social media to swing towards a more cohesive output?

1. Develop social media before and beyond your event. Focus a campaign around building awareness around your brand and develop communities and interaction with an audience.
2. Discover ways to incorporate your virtual and physical audiences together. When you develop a brand community, varying audiences have a common topic to discuss in physical and virtual platforms: YOU
3. Your social campaign begins when you register for an event….Not when you arrive. Booth size and location may dictate your strategy and developing a virtual buzz may be essential to compliment the physical restrictions and limitations to your traditional campaigns.
4. Unity, unity, unity. Make your social marketing more traditional and transform your traditional marketing to be more social.

Other takeaways from the session:

• How do you address negativity on social media?
• Develop awareness by influencing the influencers
• Most (up to 60%) of marketers don’t see concrete ROI in social media, yet understand and trust its value
• Content is king – distribute and share information to develop transparency
• Have something to offer before jumping in to social media. What are your assets?

Did you attend this session, listen to the audio broadcast or witness any comments from the Twitter stream? What were your takeaways?

Continue to Exhibitor 2010 Series: Part 2 – Guerilla Marketing

(image by sburke2478 via Flickr Creative Commons License)

OK, so today marked my first ever Exhibitor show and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement among the other attendees.  Also, I have to applaud our competitors, a few of them at least that exhibited at the show with what I felt was a genuinely original approach to reach the many trade show coordinators, marketing managers and event professionals in attendance.

Eric and I represented Echelon by participating in several of today’s conference sessions.  Below you will find a few notes that I took during the session.  Forgive me because I’ve left my notes largely unedited.  I’d prefer that you experience what I was thinking during the presentation and encourage you to key in the conversation at any and every section that you’d like.

Session: Marketing Communications to Social Audience Engagement – The Changing Event Landscape (On Twitter here, #EX10SM)
Speaker info:
Paul Salinger (@psalinger)
Desiree Lehrbaum (@lumendesiree)
Kelly Graham (@KellyAGraham)

DS: Seek first to understand than to be understood (from 7 habits of highly effective people).

KG: Give clients platform, tools, and education.  Create a certification program.

PS: Create communities of people and facilitate peer-to-peer sharing. Defining success in the social sphere:

• The people that are actively talking about your brand and actively engage them.
• Building advocacy through those relationships.
• Add in to the conversation when it’s appropriate.
• Building r/ps takes dedicated time.
• Small companies that commit to building brand and personal r/ps through social media find most success.
• Social marketing b/c part of your job — requires a cultural shift.

KG: getting over the hurdle — social media is a/b transparency.

KG: starting a program to do list:

• Who is your audience?
• What are they talking a/b?

PS: More on transparency:

• Publish to all channels simultaneously to encourage sharability.

• The idea that social marketing jeapordizes intellectual property is a misnomer, once something is out in the public domain — it’s public.

DL: how do you deal w/negative comments?

PS: negative comments are opportunities to build r/ps. Main thing is that you respond to people.

DL: it’s a/b being heard.

KG: social media is online word of mouth advertising.

DL: tools for measuring social marketing success:

KG: still searching for ROI.

• One way is measuring active conversations (i.e., how many people using the hashtag for an event).
• Pre, during and post event related conversations.
• Length, amount and quality?
• Influence: how far has the conversation gone?

My overall takeaway:

This session wasn’t the most insightful presentation that I’ve seen on social media but can say that I feel the panel was just getting into something more substantial when the time ran out on our session.  Unfortunately, Eric and I had already committed to another session; otherwise, we would’ve stuck around for the second part of the session.  It’s my understanding that the panel was to lead the audience through a team/brainstorming session.  Did any of you happen to catch this session???