Tell us a little bit about your experience of running events in 2020, and how you’ve had to respond to changing circumstances?
CM: I’ve had many years of experience in publishing and events businesses, including EMAP and launching my own media conference. I now work with a range of media businesses as a consultant and NED. This year, two clients had to make a quick pivot from in-person events to virtual, and I worked with them to rethink their marketing. Almost every other B2B media business I know is on the same journey.
Whether you run your own events, or you invest in third-party events, they are ultimately tools used as part of the wider B2B marketing and sales process. What impact has all this had on wider marketing and sales programmes and activities?
CM: B2B brands are the sponsors of most commercial events. There has been a shift in the type of leads generated by virtual events – higher volume but earlier stage, and lighter touch/ less engaged – so requiring more nurturing than those from an in-person event.
How have buyers responded or reacted to changes, in terms of using events as part of their decision-making processes, or relationship management with suppliers?
CM: Virtual events have perhaps accelerated the move of B2B buyers towards researching purchases in some detail online before approaching a ‘live’ salesperson.
Where do you think we are now with B2B events coming towards the end of 2020, looking forward to 2021? What expectations can brands and event organisers have for running/attending events in the next few months?
CM: Most corporates are now encouraging their staff to work from home till January 2021 and so it is hard to justify attending an in-person event unless it is really exclusive information or a hard to reach group of people (and Covid-19 safe). Even in January 2021, when we might have a vaccine available, it may take some time until enough of the business population feel safe to attend conferences again. I’m hearing from organisers that they don’t expect to be running large scale (>100) in person events until next summer.
A lot has been said about hybrid events, but it feels like a nebulous term with few people having genuine clarity about what it means. Do you agree with that? If you don’t, what are hybrid events and could they be our saviour?
CM: I fear that hybrid events involve twice as much cost and organisation for no increase in revenue/value. Yes, of course you can record or even live stream an in-person event for remote attendees, but I think it is very hard to integrate both in person and remote attendees into a single live event. Maybe better to plan a mix of formats for your event series. In-person for small group discussion. Virtual for sharing content to a large audience.
Do you think the switch to digital, rapid reskilling of some event practitioners, and the blurring of boundaries with other content formats, mean that events have become a less defined or specific discipline within the marketing canon? And is that necessarily a bad thing?
CM: Change forces creativity. Digital platforms make it possible to include international speakers and create video content. So in that case, event teams can learn new skills.
Scott Stockwell, editor-in-chief at IBM, said to me recently that when radio first appeared as a medium, brands used to read out press ads on the radio. And the same thing happened when TV arrived: at first, they just read out radio ads. Is there a parallel with digital events? Even though digital events have been around for years, are we really only now beginning to understand how to use digital events effectively?
CM: This is very true! And when the iPad came out publishers created page turners. Event organisers are realising that virtual content needs to be more structured and engaging. A single speaker for 30 minutes doesn’t work. Once users have clicked away, you can’t get them back. “It’s a talk show, not a lecture.”
Thinking longer-term, do you think we’ll ever return to the B2B events landscape that we knew before? If not, assuming a vaccine is ultimately found and Covid-19 effectively goes away, what will B2B events look like in the future?
CM: Nope, we can go forward but not back. Organisers are realising that part of their portfolio may actually work better in a virtual format (content-led, large dispersed audience). Still a place for major flagship summits with star speakers and lots of networking to be in person. And the very small-scale CEO roundtables and retreats.
What advice would you offer to B2B events practitioners or marketers struggling to understand the future context of events and how to prepare for it?
CM: Go back to basics. What is your event for? What benefits does it offer? Then, can you deliver those benefits using a different channel? Be a magpie. Attend other events, see what formats work, adapt ideas to your market, and test and learn.