Get hundreds of people together at a corporate event for several days of presentations and hope they get something out of it. It’s a tired playbook for meetings and events. Event Leaders Exchange CEO Nicola Kastner and Bishop-McCann President Rob Adams said this number will not decrease by 2024. The two were featured speakers at the Skift Conference Forum on September 17.
“We used to take people to company events and want to hold them hostage for three days. We wanted to maximize every minute they spent with us. We can’t do that anymore,” Kastner said .
Kastner and Adams highlight the challenges planners face and ways to modernize their approaches.
Rely on data
Data is becoming increasingly important in shaping events. It is divided into two categories. “Success metrics talk about the results of an event, and diagnostic metrics let you answer the why.” These are two different sets of data for corresponding applications. It’s important to understand what makes sense to business leaders. It can be used to guide business decisions.
Additionally, it’s important to view corporate events as business tools, she said. “There’s a clear difference between the event business and the events business. We have to understand that the purpose of events is for commercial purposes,” Kastner said. “If we lead by understanding the business objectives, the business outcomes, what we want to achieve, then logistics changes the conversation about events and the way we engage with stakeholders.”
focus on substance
Demonstrating business acumen and value to the organization is important. “If you talk about logistics, you’re never going to win a seat at the table,” Kastner said.
Adams recalled a meeting with a client who dealt with an overall downturn in the session’s mood based on a post-mortem survey. Meeting professionals’ plan is to ask the CEO for an additional $3 million in food and beverage expenses, hoping that will help turn things around.
“If someone walked into my office and said, ‘Rob, the meeting didn’t go well, our insight is that people weren’t happy with the food and drink, I’m going to ask for another three million dollars,’ I’d be like, you’re kidding Bar?
Sustainable development and corporate activities
Kastner said the industry must start taking environmental sustainability seriously. Failure to do so could create an industry-shattering crisis like the AIG fiasco in 2008. Just days after AIG accepted $85 billion in taxpayer funds to avoid bankruptcy, one group embarked on an incentive trip. The backlash comes as meeting professionals have struggled for years to justify off-site gatherings.
“We have to tell impactful stories about our activities to address the sustainability challenge that I think will soon come and haunt us,” Kastner said.
She recommends taking steps to offset the environmental impact of gatherings. Additionally, it is recommended to use data to quantify business impact over environmental impact.
