A Wider Net

Background: We used to own very high power lasers for entertainment use. All lasers like these needed to be operated by companies registered with an obscure yet draconian branch of the FDA called the CDRH. This was mostly because the “R” in LASER stands for “Radiation” and even though light is technically radiation, the word “radiation” scares people and someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to keep track of things that emit the stuff. Why flashlights don’t have registration numbers and “cooling off periods” is beyond me. So… all our stuff was registered, and we had special federal permission to use it for our corporate events. Some states, namely Arizona, had their own, even more ridiculous, regulations that we had to follow closely.

We sold that equipment shortly after 9/11 temporarily knocked the wind out of corporate events.

Today I received a letter from the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency. It says “Notice is given that Arizona Nonionizing Radiation Registration No. xx-xx-xxxx has expired on September 30, 2005. A renewal application is required to update your registration.

Can you imagine if magazine subscriptions worked this way? “Gee, we noticed that you haven’t been paying for your magazines for the past three years - here’s a renewal form.” I’m just hoping that the government agencies keep better track of the really scary sources of radiation than they do these laser light show devices. And this certainly reminds us to stay timely with our customer communications.

EMS 2008 ended last Wednesday, but there is still much to share. The exhibit floor contained more than 60 exhibits covering a wide range of event technology and services. As you might expect at a marketing summit, there was pretty much every type of audience acquisition tactic deployed there - SMS text message contests, the ol’ bring-the-thing-in-the-swag-bag-to-our-booth-and-enter-to-win-a-thing…. thing, great big steaming heaps of swag, big lead-gen contest giveaways, bikini’s and “brand ambassadors” (the linguistically neutered version of “booth-babes”), a guy projecting logos on the wall using a video-projector-on-a-stick, digital versions of “spin the wheel to win a prize”, oxygen bars, massages, video games, and the old standby - chocolate. I did not, however, see any sweaty Buddha’s on unicycles. Someone was asleep on the job.

Here are three of my favorites:

KAON Interactive featured a unique kiosk solution, called the v-OSK (see example screen below), that allows exhibitors to showcase products that cannot be on the show floor due to size or other constraints. An entire library of products can be featured on the interactive touch screens and operators can easily get a feel for the product by rotating and zooming around a photo-accurate 3D model. Having produced many kiosks of this type of over the years, I think this is the slickest virtual product demo solution I have seen. It isn’t 3D stereo, but I imagine that is the next step in this product’s evolution. I was particularly impressed that the assets and most of the interactive experience can be replicated online as well as on the kiosk, making the solution immensely more valuable. KAON can produce these as a turnkey service but they also work with production and design agencies for content creation, including model building.

Pixman, the army of ambassadors-for-hire schlepping 30-pound knapsacks connected to LCD-monitors-on-sticks that hover over the wearer’s head like a freakish square digital halo, were the ones with the video-projector-on-a-stick. They obviously like to stick stuff on sticks. But they also like being the center of attention, which is good because they usually are. They have upgraded the LCD monitor knapsack rig to include a qwerty keyboard built into the arm band of the wearer for data entry - sort of what Wonder Woman’s amazon bracelets would look like if Microsoft made them. The projector-on-a-stick was very clever as a way to sneak a video onto a surface and then turn and run when the fuzz get the call. All of their technology supports their “nomadic media” tagline - media that can wander and deliver a message to a large event from within the crowd.

Last, but not least, I liked the Immersa-Dome from Aardvark Applications - a rentable sensory thrill ride that bombards you with immersive video, programmable scents, wind, seat vibration, and wrap-around sound. They can even add interactivity and high definition video. Since throughput is an issue with this one-seater device, I think the price is a little steep, but if you have the space and budget, and if you need to get someone immersed in the sights, sounds, and smells of a brand - then this is the coolest way to wrap that all in one. They also make multi-sensory theaters for larger crowds, but they aren’t quite as immersive. Considering how dorky you look sitting in the chair with your head inside a dome that makes you look more than a little like the Martian from Bugs Bunny, the theater may be the way to go. Use your own judgement to gauge the dork-tolerance of the crowd.

Day 2 started off with a celebrity-laden presentation by Rohan Oza, Sr. VP of Marketing for Glaceau - the Coca-Cola-owned makers of Vitamin Water and Smart Water. He described the meteoric rise of their product in a category they had to define themselves - “enhanced water”. Despite the plain packaging design and unprecedented category, Vitamin Water is already bigger than Snapple, will be bigger than Red Bull next year, and bigger than Gatorade in three years, according to Oza. I found their celebrity partnerships particularly impressive, especially when you consider that 50 Cent signed up when the company first launched, demanding a stake in the company instead of payment, and his own “formulation”.

The first breakout session of the day for me was a data collection session led by Motorola Sr. Sports Marketing Manager Sharon Brown. Motorola also featured a celebrity-studded presentation featuring, among others, Danica Patrick, who made history this week by becoming the first woman to win an Indy car race. Sharon described a number of comprehensive private and industry events where Motorola captured date in return for prizes or entrance. Many of their programs also involved SMS text messaging to gather email addresses in return for chances to win prizes.

Today’s luncheon keynote was Jeff Singsaas, the General Manager of Event Marketing for Microsoft. Jeff opened with a stunning reel depicting some of the 20,000 events Microsoft stages annually. 75% of these events are Microsoft branded events. He slipped in the mind-melting stat that Microsoft is spending nearly $1billion on events annually.

He proclaimed that Digital will never replace face-to-face events, something I whole-heartedly agree with. Then he proceeded to detail Microsoft’s strategy to deliver virtual events - online companions to face-to-face events as a mechanism to extend reach and lifespan of the event. In one example, a CES virtual event website, they received 100 visitors online for every 1 visitor on site - a staggering bonus to their event spend ROI.

Ron Allen, Microsoft’s Marketing Solutions Manager, detailed their internal platform for executing virtual events. In a nutshell, they are working to deliver online alternatives to most onsite event components, using a variety of media and navigation techniques. Streaming video and photos are just part of the overall online experience. You can see what this looks like at their virtual events demo site. You’ll be able to see the whole keynote when the EMS team post it to their website.

The next session I attended covered 360 degree engagement - live and online components of events. This session also featured Microsoft technology and the speaker was Connie Fontaine - Manager of Experiential and Multi-Cultural Communications from Ford. She spoke in depth of their innovative partnership with Microsoft to launch the Sync feature - a system that lets you control your phone and MP3 player with voice commands. In fact, last night they won an X award for activation of a cause related event (not sure what the cause was).

She described a very interesting social networking/social media/viral campaign featuring two young women, Kim and Seana, who traveled across the USA performing music and delivering videos of their experience along the way. While the webisodes were somewhat scripted, the women were real. In fact, they surprised us at the end of the session by having Kim, the singer/songwriter of the pair, perform a song in front of us - 300 marketing people in chairs (tough crowd). She sounded delightful but she was about 4-foot-nothing and we could barely see her! One attendee commended Connie for being a true representative of experiential marketing by bringing Kim into the presentation. I agree - that was a very cool touch.

During some of the exhibit hours I checked out a variety of products ranging from interactives to video projection spheres. My favorite was the immersion dome, which I will feature in a separate post.

The last session of the day was the unveiling of data from the EMI EventView study, which George P Johnson launched nearly a decade ago. This data, however, covered the past three years. Highlights from this presentation:
- Event Marketing, as a percentage of a large company’s total marketing budget, dropped slightly from 26% in ‘05 to 21% in ‘07, probably due to the rise of digital marketing.
- Trade shows, as a percentage of the types of events large companies participate in, have risen from 52-62% since ‘05 - trade shows are UP!
- Marketer’s perception of ROI value of various types of marketing was down slightly over the past three years, but Event Marketing is still considered the top ROI model due primarily to two factors - the # of people reached, and the focussed targeting of that audience.
- Procurement is apparently having less of a say in the final decision of which vendor is selected for Event Marketing activities.
- 41% of large companies plan to implement green initiatives in their event functions within the next year. Only 25% had no plans to do so at all.

And last but certainly not least, the night was capped off with a networking party at the River East Art Center. Ethos design provided the environment which included a massive lighted bar, distinctive modern furnishings, and large projection scrims with video images of an artist painting what appeared to be Japanese text and illustrations on rice paper. The artist was also in the room painting actual panels among us. Everything they provided was eco-friendly in some way. Bacardi was a sponsor, and is 100% to blame for any typos in this post.

Tomorrow is a half-day before we catch a flight. I may not be able to write about it until Thursday. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, this has been an outstanding event full of valuable information and conversations

I just got back from Vermilion, a fabulous Latin-Indian fusion restaurant where we enjoyed some explosively flavorful combinations. I am told this is the hottest trend in Chicago cuisine. I can see why. According to our waiter, one of the dishes, a lobster tail thingy, was voted one of the top 20 dishes in America by USA Today. How could we NOT try it? HIGHLY recommended (the dish AND the joint.)

Today was a great start for the Experiential Marketing Summit. We ran into many old friends in the trade show and event marketing industry, and we were pleased to hear that the attendance reached over 1,000 people this year.

The morning started for us with a 3.5 hour workshop led by Event Marketer Magazine founders Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover (the event organizers) talking about some research recently gathered by the Event Marketing Institute and trends about the industry as a whole. Kerry started with the research slides and revealed that, to everyone’s surprise, ROI measurement is markedly down in the event industry. 82% of the industry reported measuring ROI of their events in 2005 compared to only 67% in 2007. If you’re thinking that gets you off the hook - guess again. They also found that companies that measure are 2.5 times more likely to get their marketing programs funded than those that don’t measure.

One of the clear problems with ROI measurements was illustrated at the start of the session when Kerry asked who in the room actively measured their events and roughly 30% raised their hands. However, when he asked who had dedicated budgets for measurement, hardly anyone raised their hands. Apparently corporations want their measurement and they want it for free. That clearly won’t cut it.

Dan Hanover, a lively, entertaining, and intelligent speaker spoke next. He started by explaining that the term “destination” will replace the term “experience”. There were a lot of groans in the room as people saw a rebrand in their company’s future. Destinations are defined as places people will line up to attend - can be trade shows, mobile marketing exhibits, private events, popup stores - whatever. As long as people want to get there and will go out of their way, wait a while, and even pay to get in.

Dan also reminded us that event marketing is getting more and more expensive while attendance probably isn’t going up. We need to reach more people. To do this, the industry needs to come up with ways to get more people to draw 4 additional people into the brand. “This is the only way we’re going to be able to afford this stuff in five years,” Dan forecast.

The highlight of the day was the luncheon general session with Amy Curtis-Mcintyre, formerly the marketing maven behind Jet Blue’s meteoric rise. As of last Monday, she is with Hyatt Hotels. Amy was a fantastic speaker - warm, funny, smart, sharp, and refreshingly frank. She had a remarkable ability to answer seemingly complicated marketing problems with very simple and logical solutions. She shared an outstanding anecdote about a trip she and her husband took to a fancy resort in the mountains, riding there in a rented Jeep SUV. When they were ready to leave, they packed up the Jeep and discovered to their surprise and delight that the resort had filled the tank with gas without asking. The Jeep had been running on fumes when they arrived. This was so amazing to them that they spoke of little else about their fabulous trip other than this mind-blowing gesture. It made me wonder what my company can do to surprise and delight our customers to this degree.

She said that her goal at Jet Blue was to make Coach Class “suck less”. In fact, by eliminating First Class, the whole Jet Blue plane felt more upper class. She also shared that she launched jetblue.com with a budget of $200K in only 60 days and it turned $5K in ticket sales on day 1. She said it was simple and idiot-proof - something she takes seriously with everything her customers touch. One of her most colorful yet insightful comments dealt with corporate branded merchandise: “if people don’t want to steal your sh!# then your brand is in real trouble.”

She described how Jet Blue spent as much time and effort marketing to their internal audience as they do their customers. Treat your employees very well and they will treat your customers very well. Think about how a shoddy photocopied job application form feels to an applicant compared to one that is beautifully designed. She said “great design rules” - we couldn’t agree more.

The afternoon sessions were mostly great. First, I took in Ric Peeler and Bryon Rhoads from Intel who spoke about their social media experience with events like CES and the Intel Developer Forum. They had many interesting tips and examples to offer. One highlight was their CES 2007 exhibit which allowed people to produce videos in the booth and upload them to YouTube. The highly Intel-branded videos enjoyed about 100,000 views in aggregate, including user-generated content highlighted by this Dancing Dork.

The last session that I attended didn’t do much for me. It was billed as a “virtual event” overview but it was actually about two people who use a $99/mo webinar package to sell cruise vacations to retired people.

After the sessions they opened up the exhibit hall for a reception with free drinks and nibbles. There were many interesting exhibits, including KAON interactive who makes the V-OSK virtual product demo kiosk, which I will write about in detail later.

All in all, it was an outstanding day 1 and I need to crash immediately in preparation for day 2!

The business books about blogs and conversational marketing are full of stories where companies failed to respond to negative criticism with speed, honesty, and transparency. Most, if not all, paid a hefty price for their slow old-school approach. Circuit City recently proved that they have not read these books or, if they have, they chose not to heed their warnings.

A customer brought in his Hondacar for a navigation system installation. The Circuit City team that did the work botched the job horribly, resulting in $12,119 in damage to the car. Honda, who evaluated the car, refused to give the car back to the owner in it’s current state, declaring it a danger to drive. Circuit City refused to pay for the repairs, offering only to cover the cost of the system for which the customer paid - not the damages inflicted by their installers.

All it took was a forum post about his experience and the story spread like wildfire. It was quickly picked up by the Carsumer Advocacy site and the Consumerist. The Consumerist article received over 3,600 “diggs” and made it to the front page of digg.com. Then, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht opted to share the story in their wildly popular weekly podcast, Diggnation, which goes out to hundreds of thousands of technology fans (the “influencers”). In this episode, Kevin and Alex pointed out that no one in the tech community would EVER use Circuit City for a car installation ever again. The damage had been done.

This past week, Circuit City agreed to cover the cost of the damages and threw in some extra gear. To be more accurate, their insurance company is covering the cost less $2,000. Circuit City was too late. They should have given this man a cool new car and enjoyed the great PR from their quick positive response. Now no one knows for sure if Circuit City did the right thing because they new it was the right thing or because they were getting hammered in the court of public opinion. I bet they would gladly go back in time and spend the $25K on a new Civic with navi.

The new world: Listen. React quickly, honestly, and positively to negative criticism. Get your blog going. Bad customer experiences can ripple through the internet like a tsunami.

If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, consider yourself lucky. Twitter can be an incredible time sink and it’s not clear that the signal to noise ratio can be managed to the point where it’s anything but a life-logging digression. In fact, studies will one day show that reading too many posts about menial situational updates like “I’m eating a peach” will actually make you dumber. But if you’re a marketing professional (given the nature of this blog, you probably are), you probably need to stay in tune with the “tweets” of Twitter because there is a fair amount of interesting things you can do with 140 characters or less. If you need a primer on Twitter, check out their FAQ.

I started using Twitter again recently after some previously tweet-resistant coworkers fell victim to the Twitter gravitational forces. So far, I am not hooked, nor am I leaning that way, but as I occasionally skim the posts from the various people I follow, I have found a few ideas that have inspired me among the many that have completely wasted my time. Earlier today, I received one that inspired me to write this post.

An exhibition, the New Media Expo, had started “following” me (subscribing to my twitter updates). Why? Because they want me to attend their expo. By “following” me, they expect a “follow-back” where I return the favor by following their updates (Jonathan Coulton has to write a “follow-back” song to the tune of “Hollaback Girl”.) Even if the user isn’t prone to automatically following everyone who follows them, most people will check out the new follower to see who they are. The “open rate” for twitter follow announcements has got to be worthy of the marketing hall of fame. But what I really like is the fact that the response mechanism is a subscription - they tune into you by following you, automatically, on twitter.

The New Media Expo, and many other events, are targeting influencers within the twitter community, and “following” all of their followers and followees. That’s not a word… I’m pretty sure. Example - they figure Robert Scoble is a good person to connect with for a tech event. They follow him. Then they look at his list of people that he follows, and they systematically follow all of them. Of those people some will opt to follow the expo’s twitter feed. And their friends will find out. And viro-exponentially it goes. That’s also not a word, but you get my gist. Gist is a word - a strange and miserably overused word, but a word nonetheless. GIST also stands for Girls Into Science and Technology, which is really really cool, and Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, which is really, really not cool. My Scrabulous skills just leveled up.

Back to Twitter: So you can market your event through twitter using this viral, WOM, tap-the-sap-of-the-influencers method, and you can also do one or more of the following:

- Tweet news from the show, like Forrester.
- Automatically Tweet the RSS feed from your event blog. Don’t have an event blog? Start one now - your attendees want in on the process.
- Enlist twitterers in the same fashion that many events enlist bloggers. Give them access and privileges and ask only that they enjoy the show and post what they want.
- Incorporate mobile device features into your event offering such as mobile agendas, alerts, handle questions from text messages or tweets, and SMS polling. Using Twitter as a Q&A vehicle will naturally inspire people to tweet about the show.
- Offer free passes to influencers with many followers that align with your target demographics.

Did I miss anything?

Yup - my twitter feed

Looks like AT&T will finally deploy 12 stores worth of Microsoft Surface interactive displays. For this, we cheer and do the cha-cha. All 12 stores are located in only 4 cities. For this we put our cha-chas back in the bag.

I’m jazzed to see this cool technology in use at last. While I wish they would move faster, as we have a line of interested clients that runs right out the back door into the street, but I appreciate their slow and methodical approach to releasing it only when it’s ready. After all, Vista, Zune, and the XBOX 360 could have all used more incubation time (although some would argue that Vista stayed in the egg too long and spoiled).

According to Engadget, this in-store kiosk will allow you to place two phones on the surface, the one you’re buying and the one you currently own, then transfer contacts and stuff from one phone to the other by simply dragging and dropping. Funny - I thought having the store clerk do that was simple enough. But I think the OTHER applications of surface will make more sense - comparing features of multiple phones, playing with demo assets, exploring coverage maps, etc. (things the store clerk generally can’t wrap his head around.) I can’t say I love the pictures of the in-store display, but I love the Surface itself. As they continue to refine the application, adding drag-and-drop support for ringtones and wallpapers, for example, this will only get better and better. When people actually try it, I predict they will talk about Surface more than they talk about their new phone. Since the iPhone won’t be part of the display, this is pretty much a guarantee.

Microsoft announcement here

Thank you Engadget.

I just read the PLSN e-newsletter about this pyro accident at a WWE event on March 30, 2008. From what I have read there and here and a few other places, there were several pyro devices attached to guide wires above the stadium. At least one wire appears to have broken, possibly due to other detonations, dropping it’s pyro load on the crowd. The reports differ, but around 45 people were injured from burns as well as welts (presumably from the falling cable assembly).

The pyro company was reported to be Zenith Pyrotechnology of NY. I have worked with these guys several times in the past and found them to be very good, although I seem to recall they are not strangers to accidents. Pyro is a very dangerous business.

This may go down as a freak accident. Event marketers know that bad stuff happens even to good vendors. Make sure they follow every federal, state, local, and venue requirement, and that they have the appropriate safety measures in place. Double-check your insurance. Pyro can be a safe and cost-effective wow for your event, so I hate to see accidents like this curtail its use.

There’s video, but I didn’t want to embed it. It is not pleasant.