by Gary Slack For seven years, from 2009 to 2015, I organized and ran the world’s largest annual business-to-business marketing conference. Sponsored by the Business Marketing Association, the conference in 2015 drew just over 1,000 B2B marketers from 550 companies, 36 states and 12 nations. At least one-fifth of the attendees were senior directors and […]
by Caroline Meyers It is all too common to find sales and marketing—the two most influential departments in a corporation—at odds with each other. In our industry, we see the clash—in all of its splendor—play out on the trade show floor every day. We all know the arguments: Sales thinks marketing is detached from the […]
by Ruth Stevens I was teaching B2B digital marketing in Buenos Aires recently, and found some of my students to be dismayed by one data point that came up again and again in the course: Of all tactics in the B2B marketing toolkit, the most valued, the most used and the most effective is face-to-face […]
by Bob James and Michael Hatch Brick-and-mortar chain store owners everywhere are sweating “the retail apocalypse.” Traffic is abysmal. Sales have tanked. Stores are vanishing (over 8,600 are predicted to close this year). Job losses, bankruptcies and liquidations are legion. A tidal wave of disruption is shaking retailers to the core. Could an “apocalypse” beset association […]
by Jim Curry I am neck deep in exhibitor sales brochures at the moment. That involves reading endless exhibition statistics, questionable exhibitor testimonials, and vomit-inducing openers from organizers. It is a very boring and predictable process, because 85% of them are templated tosh. When reading the brochures, you can normally tell quite quickly the 15% of […]
by Carl Landau As a seasoned veteran in the niche event world, I’ve pretty much seen it all. What event organizers should do, mistakes to avoid, and most importantly—how to generate more revenue! I recently sat down with Magnificent Media’s Dave Reimherr for a podcast about live event management for niche publishers. We talked about how to go from thee sponsors […]
by Michael Barnett Virtual reality, drones, artificial intelligence, big data, live streaming, the list of buzzwords “revolutionizing events” is endless, and therefore meaningless. If everything is a threat to the events industry, then nothing is. But here are four trends indisputably affecting events: Isolation. Instead, consider that a majority of Americans do not have someone […]
by Elizabeth Johnson In college I had an economics professor who decided to bring a whistle to class one day so that he could blow the whistle before making an important point in his lecture. As the class wore on, he was blowing the whistle before every sentence and thus just began saying “tweet, tweet” […]
by Caitlin Fox When’s the last time you looked at your event’s website through the eyes of your end user, searching for event content you’d need to make a decision about attending? While event websites used to be an afterthought, I consider them to be the front door of a campaign, and of a show. […]
by Michelle Bruno You would think that an industry in which the majority of the workforce is female would make an effort to advance women. That may or may not be the case in exhibitions; but, to even begin a discussion on this topic, we need to talk about measurement. Starting with the fuzzy math […]
