A Wider Net

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