A Wider Net

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!