LIVE From IMEX: What Attendees Really Want from Events! w/CEO IMEX Group Carina Bauer & Freeman SVP Ken Holsinger

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. All right, we are here for a very special edition of Do This Not That podcast. We are live at IMEX. This is my first IMEX. So what is an IMEX? IMEX, to me at least, is the world's largest event about all things events. Event planners, where you pick your destination. I mean, like thousands and thousands of people. It's wild. And who do I have here with me? I have two amazing people.

0:37I have the Senior Vice President of Research and other stuff, Ken Holsinger from Freeman. Freeman is like the company. If you've ever put up a booth or looked for research on anything related to events, anything related to exhibitions, anything, you know who Freeman is. They are like the giant company. They're amazing. And then I have Karina Bauer. Karina Bauer is the CEO of IMX. It's all her fault. Everything at this event, all these thousands of people in the most wild booth, 600 ,000 square feet of exhibit hall space here. It's all our fault. It's amazing. And we're going to be talking about some new research.

1:10And the reason I love events is the in-person events is that we think about AI taking over. We're all going to be clipping robot toenails. In-person events are going to be the thing that win the day. It's going to be the industry to be in. And we have the two most amazing people here to talk about. So, Ken, Karina, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Great to be here. Amazing. All right, Karina, first I want to ask you, did I get it right? Can you explain to everybody what is an IMAX? You got it spot on because when people ask me for the elevator pitch, I say it's a mega event for event people.

1:38Okay. But it's all focused on the business events industry. So that's one sort of facet. It's not festivals. It's not consumer events. And really what we do is we bring the whole supply chain of events globally together with all the people in the world that are planning events in different ways. So as you say, they might be looking for venues, they might be looking for tech, or they might want to learn how to really design an event for the best outcomes for their attendees. So every spectrum of the industry, every segment of it right from across the globe is here in Las Vegas. And we also do it in Frankfurt in the spring.

2:17I got to tell you, I've been to a lot of events. I've never been to an event like this. So kudos to you. Thank you very much. Everyone's got to put on their bucket list. It is pretty wild. And so, Ken, I want you to talk for a minute about this trends report, because what we're going to talk about is this trends report and what we're seeing in the event world and in-person events, all the things. So what is it? And then I want to dig into what you're finding. Well, first, I love the perspective that you're bringing coming in from the marketing community into this space, because it really is at the heart of the omni-channel that needs to be advanced.

2:47You talked about AI and the proliferation of what's going on. And we know from a number of rounds of research with the Freeman Trends report that we do that, number one, the audiences are getting younger. We're seeing an acceleration of retirement, and that's bringing us both opportunity and challenge in our industry as the audiences shift. But also, we know from a number of reports that the more time that the next generation spends online, the more they want and crave in person. So we're saying, okay, we've been building events for 40 years for boomers, that they shifted over during the industrial era into the information age.

3:23We're in this what's next, and we're in a very similar move for the way we've designed events for 40 years. How do we shift that? Let's get into the core objectives of why people come to events. And that conversation is carried out through a series of research reports we've done. Why do people come to events? They come to learn, network, have fun, and do business. We've broken that out because our industry loves different acronyms into what we call excellence, XLNC, experience, learning, networking, and commerce. We launched in collaboration with IMAX the report this time on experiential. So we've been doing other reports.

4:03This one is what's the X. And we've come away from it with some interesting findings and getting the perspective from the IMAX audience. We calibrated against the planners that come to this event with thousands of event attendees to understand what are they getting? What aren't they getting? And we found some surprising disconnects between what the audiences want, the attendees, and what planners think they want. So let me ask you, you say experience, and here we are, it's big experience. And I almost think that's a word like saying like community or being authentic. Like it's one of these where everyone says experience.

4:37so when we think about you know IMAX and you're putting this together how do you really actually make something experiential and not just oh there's a coffee station yeah I think it's you know and this report shows it as well to a degree you have to really think about what the objectives are of your event so what are you trying to achieve and what are your attendees trying to achieve and then try to build that into the experience so having a coffee card or having a fun activity is great and people might appreciate that very much but that's not going to further their objectives in what they've come to the event to do and so for us personally we like to look at experience in a number of ways we do want to bring that wow moment and that fun experience but we put more time and effort on to really thinking about how our attendees will do their business better how they will get to network with each other how they'll find each other because those are the things they've come for so we tried to really focus on that element of the experience as well is that what you saw in the research because what you said was that the research showed you it was something different than what you expected so karina is lining out exactly what we should be doing right and we agreed going into this we had this conversation about what questions we want to ask etc what the planners came back with is that they have been distracted by both the costs and these experiential wow factors that have kind of taken them a little bit off course to be frank.

5:59And it's interesting to come into these events because you're almost coming in and stepping on toes, but they seem to love it. They love the mirror we're putting up. What the attendees told us was that, for instance, what is experience? They basically lined out exactly what Karina said. They said, it's a lens through what I want to learn, who I want to connect with and who I want to do business with. The planners came back and said, it's the keynotes, it's the galas, it's the award ceremonies, it's the wow, it's the AV and all this other stuff. And I know they're not saying that. It's not one or the other.

6:29What we found throughout the report is that if we, the objectives are table stakes. If we can meet their objectives, the learning, networking, and commerce piece, we can then use this as the X factor, we call it, because we all know what that means, to apply something that gives it something to amplify. It's not a core objective. It's an amplifying factor. And that's what we came through and figured out. What do they remember? What do they take away? How do they measure based on that? And it's a mirror we can put up to planners that frankly will help them save money because they get lost in the only the wow that's expensive yeah and they step back and go no there's some core fundamentals if your favorite team uh is struggling my loss to notre dame last week um we're doing tackle drills not special special teams uh trick plays right we need the fundamentals and i think it's a good reminder as we shift generations, as we shift into this round of moving really much more into the omni channel with the face-to-face experience marketing, it's time to get to the fundamentals.

7:30And it outlines that clearly. So I'm curious, you mentioned fun separate from experience, right? Those are two different things, right? So is inserting fun important to the planners, to the attendees? And is that different than just experience? Is experience, is that going to sessions? I think it can be different or it can be one and the same right I think one of the things in this sort of event planning community that's been a distraction over the past few years and in the trade show industry is this idea of festivalizations and that's been a word that's been used because people have seen you know these big community festivals like Coachella or Burning Man and and how they really drive loyalty in a way that business events and trade shows can find it hard to do and so maybe there's been a bit of distraction of or we need to become a festival um for us um a great journalist actually wrote a great line and he said imits is a trade show that behaves like a festival and i think that goes to the heart of it for us we think about the what the core of our business is and what's the reason that people are here and they our attendees and our exhibitors tell us the reason they are here the first reason um and the top reason is to do business and so for us we have to make the experience of doing that as productive and easy as possible however if they just came and did their business and left it would be very transactional it would be boring it would it wouldn't lead to the following and the community and and so we kind of see that as the call like I can think of it as concentric rings and then we layer more and more experiences around it so that people come and they can do their business but they can also So meet with their peers and they can make new friends and they can be inspired and they can have fun and they can do all of those good things.

9:18And that, I think, is what builds this sort of loyalty and retention. And a few years ago, we kind of looked at everything and we said, well, we do an evaluation. We don't want people to say I'm here because I have to be here. We want people to want to be here. They probably have to be here, too. But first and foremost, we want them to want to be here. And so how do you create an experience that delivers that? I think it's super interesting because I was invited to go and do one of these big festivals, be one of these festivals. And I was like, I didn't go because I'm like, I don't know what I'm really getting out of that.

9:53It looks great. Got a lot of bright lights, a lot of cool famous people. I go, well, what am I actually doing there? Because it was just a giant, you know, festival. And at the end of the day, the ROI, I mean, people coming back and saying, this is what we got out of this. I think it's really important what you are finding in your research that you have to start with the core of the fundamentals and you could layer in kind of the fun stuff. So I'm curious though, about the size. A lot of people that are listening right now, they're like, well, I don't put on a 5 ,000 person event. Maybe I could put on a 50 person event, a 200 person event.

10:20Is your research finding that this applies to small events? And what are you seeing as in terms of as the events scale, how it applies differently? So it applies across all events. In fact, the sampling that we did talks to planners that claim from very small events, which could be, by the way, more expensive than some of the very large events. There's some very pristine, bespoke kinds of events where you're dealing with VIPs that are small, but very, very high end. At the core of it, the scalability goes to and cuts across those objectives, right? Those line through. And the fascinating thing we have, one of the brand statements that we use at Freeman, and it's used by many in the events industry, is we make moments that matter.

11:03And we want to make them memorable. So we said, let's go quantify that because that's a nice thing to say. But what is it? How do we quantify it? So we asked attendees, do you remember at the most recent event you're at a peak moment? What was a memorable thing you took away? First of all, do you remember it? Then we asked them, what made you remember it? And then third, because you remembered it, what would you do with it? And so it plays out this way. We asked the organizers the same thing on the half of their attendees. The organizers said that 80%, 78 % of their attendees had memorable moments.

11:36They're sure of it. What were they? We think they were galas and keynotes and all these big things. And we asked the attendees, and only 40 % said that they were having a memorable moment. Wow. Half what the planners thought. And more importantly, the word gala never came up in 2 ,100 responses of open-end, right? Nobody ever used those words. And it's not that we can't have a gala or do these things, but it's the core objectives first. They said it goes to someone I met. They tell us that 51 % of them will come back to your event if they just meet one person. Wow. That they can connect with. Normal event retention for first-time attendees in our industry, 30%.

12:15So we're already almost doubling retention. They told us that if they had a peak moment or a memorable moment, remember those 40%, that connected with someone, a session that they went to that changed something, a vendor they connected to that they can now do business with or a product that they discovered, 85 % retention. That as a marketer, I want to lower CAC, lower my customer acquisition costs and extend LTV. We need to focus on retention in our industry and getting at those core pieces. It's a math problem because of the mass retirement of boomers and now beginning to be Xers, God help us, that 30 % retention is going to be a math problem for many events.

12:55I mean, we deal with these all the time. And if they don't retain and grow that retention number, the event will retire out from under them. And so it's a wake up call to planners to get back to the fundamentals, get to these core moments. We can add the fun and that these extra moments on top of it, but we have some tackle drills that need to happen. Some basic fundamentals. You know, you talk about coming into this industry and all of that. And I look around and there's so many careers here. A lot of people are listening to this right now. And they're like, wow, you know what? I like events.

13:29Maybe I should be there. Maybe I should become an event professional. So Karina, tell me, is that a wonderful career? What does it mean to somebody to be like, I'm going to leave this industry and go into the event world? Is this the future? Sell us on why you should be an event professional. Yeah, I mean, I think first of all, I would say there are so many transferable skills that event professionals need. So I think that it is one of those industries where people can pivot from other careers into it. But of course, like any industry, you know, you need experience. And there are so many different skills, as you say, for an event professional.

14:04When you think about my team, for example, we're a team of 80 people. We put on these events. We have finance people. We have data scientists. We have IT people. We have relationship focused people. That's a big part of our team. This is a very relationship driven industry. So we have account managers and relationship managers. We have marketeers, digital marketeers, as well as relationship focused marketeers and partner marketeers. and we have graphic designers on our team and we have PR. So I think what this industry does, because you're creating an ecosystem essentially. So we're trying to, yes, we need the logistics people as well.

14:47I forgot the operations people. We were a big operations team as well. So that's very important. But I think sometimes when people think about events, they're thinking about the operations only. And that is kind of the hygiene factor. It's critical. And, you know, in our ops team, we have a UX designer. So to make sure that we're looking at the flow of the event and the experience from the online world to the in-person world to online again. So like, you know, there are so many different skills that are needed to make sure that it's not just a transactional process. Yes, you're putting an event.

15:23You need that to run well. but you also need to learn how to create a community you need critical thinking skills you need strategic skills to think about exactly what ken was talking about what are our attendees objectives and how do we design this event in order to meet those objectives and how do we then constantly improve them as well how exciting let me give you the other side of it which is the addictive part of what we do as well is it i think it's transferable we come in etc but we build cities in a matter of days it comes down to the wire if you were in this building yesterday there's chaos yeah controlled chaos it's it's beautiful symphony the dopamine levels are off the freaking charts because we the thing i love is that we wake up in the morning it's like one of those commercials where i stayed at a holiday inn last night and we'll have pioneers from all different industries and we get to weave in and out of basically product launches uh incredible research.

16:22When I'm recruiting somebody to work on my team, I'm like, tell you what, one day we're going to talk about curing cancer. And the next day we're going to go to the Super Bowl halftime show. And the next day we're going to actually go to a product launch for a big tech company. And the day after that, we're going to go to a legal conference where they're certifying, you know, legal planners, whatever it is. The events industry, in some ways, interesting to your perspective, some ways it's an industry and it's not because we actually are inside of every industry right because we're a marketing channel we're face-to-face marketing channel alongside these other channels amplifying brands amplifying business objectives and i think that there's an addictive fun uh atmosphere of just being a part of that experience ourselves in what we do yeah i think i think you've described that very well i kind of think about all the vertical sectors you know of different industries and then events as being horizontal across all of them in the same way as you say marketing is or finances or it is you know we deliver the objectives of all of those vertical industries and they all have a different need essentially and we're there to make sure that they can do that i love it and yeah and i agree you know we are the ultimate face-to-face marketing channel i mean that that is what it's trusted channel it's where the next generation wants to go to validate they know that that they They can be spoofed online.

17:47If you've ever ordered a thing from Tmue that comes in about a third the size of what you thought it was, you know why events. We come here, we validate, we talk to people face-to-face and lock it down. If I was starting my career today and I know what I want to do, I would go into the event industry. I don't want to say it's AI-proof, but it's pretty damn close to AI-proof. One last thing before we wrap up. You all have been to more events than I could possibly imagine. I want to know the best swag you've ever seen given out ever or a piece of swag that you still hold on to. Okay. What do you got?

18:20No, Karina. Okay. So I'm a very simple person. Okay. This isn't the most exciting. But I got this little leather card case. EICC is the Edinburgh International Convention Center. I got given this in 2004. Oh, wow. And I still carry it around. So it's not the most exciting, but it's very nicely branded. It's very simple. It's very elegant. I've got much fancier things, but this is the one thing I carry around with me every day. You've been holding that for like 20 years. That's amazing. I know. Exactly. This just shows it doesn't have to be super expensive. It just has to be useful, right? So we talked about my sneaker game earlier.

19:03So you would expect mine is also leather, and it's the kicks. uh i get to go into some events and i won't say where because it would expose some things but i've gotten some pretty amazing pretty rare sneakers from some event planners and i can't argue with that kind of a swag when you've got when you get some unreleased travis scott's perhaps that kind of thing that's you know you know that there are only 80 people in the world that have these imax sneakers right i understand those are super rare is a super rare i've been down at the delta booth because they don't have it as the swag but delta has a unique shoe that's only released to employees and i'm addicted and i'm like you need i'm a 360 where's the swag bring these shoes yeah the rare shoes that's that's that's my favorite is really old chocolate that makes you nauseous that's been sitting in a bowl yeah for like 10 years yeah yeah that's my go-to favorite swag yeah socks that we have themes like socks some years hot sauce whatever yeah and there There are a lot of those companies here that do a very high-end product.

20:02So, yeah. Amazing. Well, how does everybody get a hold of this research? We're going to put it in the show notes. How do we get it? We're going to put the URLs in there, all the stuff. Yeah. In collaboration with IMEX, we've posted it up. There's a link they can get. They can share it, use it, quote it, all the things. And we give a lot of the details and the methodology of who we talked to, what we talked about. and yeah, they can go in there, dig into the research and use it to make their next marketing pitch for why their event needs to change or why they need to launch one. Amazing. All right, in the show notes, you can hand and clean his contact.

20:33The LinkedIn is going to all be in there. You're going to follow IMAX and Freeman and the link to all the research. Everybody check it out. This has been incredible. Thank you both for doing this. Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it. Bye. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button, partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency, work with me directly, get access to all of my free resources at jayschwedelson.com. And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It.

21:08And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy Stupider People Have Done It. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might have been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.