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[This is a transcript of the free audio program, Experiential Marketing Today. The audio version of this content is available at: Episode 006: Interviews from the 2008 Experiential Marketing Summit]

Announcer: Welcome to Experiential Marketing Today.

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Todd Austin: Welcome to this episode of Experiential Marketing Today. This show is about the theory and practice of using experiences to engage audiences with the authentic nature of a brand or company. We believe that it may be the most powerful tool marketers have, but it's also something of a mystery.

My name is Todd Austin. I'll be your host for this episode.

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Todd: Episode Six: Interviews from the 2008 Experiential Marketing Summit.

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Todd: The Sixth Annual Experiential Marketing Summit recently wrapped up in Chicago. The summit is a gathering of the leading practitioners in the field of experiential marketing. Approximately 1,000 people attended this year to hear presentations by representatives of Jet Blue, Glaceau — which is the Vitamin Water Company — Microsoft and others.

Over the next few episodes, we'll cover the concepts and practices that stood out as particularly effective, useful, clever, or insightful. But first, we're going to give you an overview of the conference through interviews with two of the people who organized the summit. John Roberson starts off our conversation, and then we'll introduce our guests.

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John Roberson: In this episode, Todd, I'd like for us to take a summary of some of the recent conferences we've been to and had presentations from. Let's enumerate those conferences. Will you help me round out the list?

Todd: Sure. I think we started off the year with the Exhibitor Conference.

John: The Exhibitor Conference in Las Vegas.

Todd: Yep.

John: And then GlobalShop in Chicago.

Todd: EuroShop was in there somewhere.

John: EuroShop in Europe. And then the Experiential Marketing Conference most recently in Chicago. And what we'd like to do for our audience is start with a summary. Let's start with a summary of why the subject that this podcast covers — experiential marketing — why this subject is so relevant, why this is so topical, why it's so important right now.

And we're going to do that through some invited guests, the guests that we interviewed at the Experiential Marketing Conference. Do you want to tell us about our first guest?

Todd: Kerry Smith is founder and CEO of Red 7 Media. Red seven Media hosted the conference. They publish four publications, which he'll talk about in a minute, and which we'll link to in the show notes. They also host a couple of other conferences. They host the Event Design Conference, which happens in the fall. And they have a brand new conference, which is called the Green Event Summit, which happens this summer.

This interview took place on the last day of the conference, I believe, and it happened on the show floor of the conference itself, so you'll hear the hustle and bustle of the crowd behind the interview. But listen closely to what Kerry has to say. There's a lot of good stuff in here.

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John: I'm here with Kerry Smith. He's the president and CEO of Red 7 Media. Kerry, tell our audience what Red 7 Media does and the valuable contributions that you all make to the event marketing sector and the experiential marketing sector.

Kerry Smith: Red 7 Media is a media and publishing company, business information company. One of our major served markets is the event industry, so we publish four magazines that serve event professionals: "Event Marketer Magazine, " "Event Design" for the design community, "Expo Magazine" for the trade show organizers, and "Agenda Magazine, " which is for special events media plans.

The Experiential Marketing Summit is our largest event serving the event marketing industry, so this event is ties to the "Event Marketer Magazine" franchise. This is the sixth year we've been doing this conference. We have about 1,000 people, representing brand-side markets, as well as event agencies.

John: As you have put together the speaker lineup, as you and your team have worked on the topics that are germane to folks in the marketing sector, specifically in the experiential marketing sector, what are the major trends that you're seeing?

And then also, you shared an important piece of research yesterday afternoon. If you could tell our audience about some of the findings in that research, that would be great.

Kerry: I think some of the major trends are marketers looking for ways to integrate live experiences into their overall marketing mixes. That's a big one. And trying to figure out how to extend the life of an event beyond just the one or two days that the event is taking place, but to weave it into a continuum that's supported by other marketing disciplines. So figuring out ways to make that happen is a big topic of conversation that's going on here.

I think one of the elements of that is this whole idea of branded content. So that's content that you're delivering at your events, whether it's a consumer event or a business event. How you can package that content up and make it live online or in other places.

ROI and management is a huge area of conversation. For so many years, events were evaluated on sort of the gut feeling that it looked good and people seemed to have a good time. With all the scrutiny of senior management these days, ROI is a big deal. Trying to figure out events that are measurable and knowing what you want to measure are huge areas of interest to event marketers these days. I think those are probably the big three.

The research that we presented yesterday was based on a survey of about 1, 000 CMO-level senior executives on the sales and marketing side around the world at billion dollar and up corporations. We wanted to find out from them their views of events relative to other elements in the marketing mix.

Some of the interesting findings there were that those senior-level executives, when asked which marketing discipline buys the greatest ROI, events came out number one by far, which is kind of interesting.

Not a lot of them, probably aroundd 10%, feel that they measure their events. But when we cross-sectioned those who measure against those who expect budget increases around events, we find that events that are measurable are the programs that get funding.

So measurement obviously is an important area. I think the takeaway for marketers is that they need to be building measurement criteria into everything that they're doing. Knowing what you want t measure and building programs to drive those measurement elements, and then actually doing the measurement to see what happened.

That is going to be the key to making these programs sustainable and to get continued funding, and for those people within those corporations who are responsible for those events to move up that ladder of important and really having a seat at the table with the advertising people and some of the other marketing disciplines.

John: Why do you surmise that experiential marketing is more effective? Why do you surmise that it's generating higher returns? What are the foundation level themes that are unique to experiential marketing than any marketing element they could be invested in?

Kerry: If you look at some of the speakers who were here who were talking about… you know, Amy Curtis-McIntyre from JetBlue, Rohan Osa from Vitamin Water… you know, where they talk about the product and the marketing being one and the same and the ability to create an experience around your brand that gets people to prefer it over another just based on this ephemeral sort of feeling they have towards the brand is very powerful.

If you go from that to why are events being sort of characterized as providing the greatest ROI… if you can get in front of a customer or a prospect and have a dialogue and an engagement — a real conversation with them — what better way to lead someone to prefer your product and understand it better? So the question is: how do you scale up those conversations in a way that moves the needle in a large way?

That's the challenge that all marketers are facing but relative to direct-mail and web and some of these other things that really aren't… there's no personal interaction! Personal interaction is the most powerful form of marketing. So, it's the people who know how to put on events and create those experiences and bring people together in these experiential settings that, I think, are going to be the drivers of marketing going forward.

John: Kerry, I want to make sure that our audience knows how to get in touch with you and how to get in touch with the media that your team puts out. Before I do that I want to say that I really appreciate the quality with which you all convey information, the standard that you have for these kinds of conferences. You all aren't afraid to launch titles or initiatives in frontiers where there hasn't been content or media previously.

Tell our audience how they can get connected with some of your magazines and be aware of some of the conferences that you all put on.

Kerry: Sure. Well, thanks for the compliment. You can go to our website www.eventmarketing.com or red7media.com and from those two places you can drill through to our magazines or white papers, research reports and some of our conferences and seminars that we put on.

John: Great. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for a great conference and we'll see you next year!

Kerry: Great! Thank you.

John: I really appreciated, Todd, what Kerry was saying there. I thought he did a great job of summarizing and I'm sure he was tired because his group had hosted this event. Don't you think he did a good job of summarizing the things that really are important for our audience?

Todd: I thought that was perfect because he touched on several things that we were hearing from representatives of the companies that were there either as presenters or as participants like we were.

John: So, for our audience's purposes let's just highlight those. We heard things of return-on-investment and measurement.

Todd: It seemed to happen in every session I sat down in. Measurement is a huge theme and especially when you think about the stat that he highlighted of: those companies who measure their experiential marketing efforts are the ones who get additional funding for those efforts.

John: That's right. I just want to encourage our audience: this is something that you've got to do! We're doing this with a number of our clients helping them to measure the effectiveness of an event by measuring the audience before they go into the event and then measuring the audience when they come out of the event and proving how productive and efficient that is.

So, that's one of the things he mentioned. The other thing he mentioned was just how important this as an element is — this being experiential marketing — as an element or as a strategy within the overall marketing mix and how it's becoming critically important: how live experiences are becoming critically important.

Todd: One of the themes that was repeated over and over again was that what we do in experiential has to be integrated with all of the other marketing things that we do. It can't be a stand-alone piece, they all have to work together or we lose a lot of the power that we can gain by making these disciplines work.

John: What I think is critical is that he took the time to say that more marketers are going to be spending more money here because they've proven that it's more effective, that it gets a higher level of return than anything else that they could choose. So I'll just suggest to our audience, whether they've done that analysis or not, the fact of the matter is: effective marketing companies, effective brands, are looking for the most relevant way to engage their audience and those companies are turning to experiential marketing.

Todd: One of the other things he said — which was a theme I heard from several of the presentations — was: the focus is turning to finding ways to extend the life of the event so we no longer view all our effort and focus being on the one day or three days of the event that we're planning but we find ways to start interacting with our audience weeks before the event and then to extend the experience into what happens after the event so that we can encourage and measure word-of-mouth and influence that extends afterwards.

John: You know, if we're not careful we kind of get the whole machine turned around, don't we? We say and think that the event is the outcome but the event is a strategy to achieve an outcome and so the way our team has being saying it around here is we've engaged with clients on projects is that the event is the middle.

Todd: That's right.

John: And that the pre-event strategy is the first part, the event is the middle, and the post-event strategy is the follow-up that summarizes, homes in on and closes in on the relationship that was begun within the event.

Todd: That's a topic we need to spend some more time on in the next episode.

John: Right. The second interview is with Dan Hanover. Dan is the editor in chief and publisher of "Event Design Magazine" and of the "Event Marketer Magazine". Dan is going to take us through, again, a summary — very expeditiously — real-time from being on the floor and from also creating the editorial platform for his magazines which cover this space very well. So, I want our audience to listen carefully to what Dan says. We'll also come back and summarize that.

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John: I'm here with Dan Hanover, the editor and publisher of "Event Design Magazine" and "Event Marketer Magazine" and we're here at the experiential marketing summit in Chicago for 2008. Dan, once again, great job putting it together, great programming for folks in the marketing space on some of the new and emerging trends and information around experiential marketing.

Could I ask you some things for our podcast listeners? One is: what trends are you seeing from your perspective in experiential marketing?

Dan Hanover: Well, thank you for your comments. I think from a trend standpoint, you know, top trends that we are seeing is number one: from a word-of-mouth standpoint how can we begin to use events to infect not only the people that marketers are talking to in a live setting but also others that may not be at the event? So I think there is a big push to implement word-of-mouth or "buzz" or viral elements that continue a conversation after an event, but also use the people that do attend to market to others.

As an example, we see eBay doing a great job with some of their "un-conferences" where some of their top buyers and sellers will go and invite some of their new buyers and sellers to live events and webinars and online seminars, thereby creating different layers of attendees and prospects.

I think number two, from a trends stand point, people are starting to focus on new words. I think "experience" and "engagement" and "360-degree marketing" is all very good, but we're seeing companies getting a little smarter and thinking about things like "acquisition, " "conversion, " and "retention."

How can we use event to acquire customers or eyeballs or bodies or conversations? How can we use smart events to convert those people from a prospect into a buyer? And at the end of the day, how can we have additional marketing platforms that help us retain those people. Because at the end of the day, if somebody buys something once, that's not where this industry needs to be. We need to use live events to create a customer for life.

And then lastly, we see the complete train towards the digital revolution beginning to gain speed as companies begin to use virtual and digital events as their own stand-alone experiences. Digital events as extensions of live events. Maybe somebody attends a trade show or event and then they are pushed online to a digital space to continue the conversation. Regardless, clearly digital is a big deal.

And obviously as a number four, green is becoming huge. And I think that marketers are still trying to wrap their arms around it. I think that companies recognize the need to create more eco-friendly live experiences, and that train may be moving slowly, but we see it primed for some speed. Stay tuned on that, John.

John: Now if our audience were to ask you — and obviously you are biased, you do a lot of research and writing and coverage of this space — but why are events and experiences more effective, in your opinion? You've seen the research, but why are they more effective?

Dan: Well, I think that depending on who you ask, some people may tell you that all other forms of marketing are so cluttered that you can't really get a clear connection to somebody. But I'll tell you that the preachy side of me says that the magic of this of this business is two-fold.

Number one, an event done really well can get somebody to fly through the traditional marketing purchase funnel. And so the marketers for the last 100 years have had to use media for awareness. They've had to use promotions and incentives for preference and inclination. They've had to really use different pots of money to accomplish different parts of that purchase funnel.

We're seeing that an event, done well, can actually get somebody to go from awareness to purchase in one shot, and to convert them from a prospect into a buyer.

And then the second part of the magic — and I'll wrap up on this note — is that when it's done really well, the best best-in-class events can actually speed up how quickly you can convert somebody into a customer.

If the question is why are these so effective? For two reasons. One, you can get somebody in one shot to go from not even knowing anything about a product to wanting to buy it. You can't do that with any other form of marketing.

And part two, done really well, we're starting to see marketers recognize that an event can actually convert somebody from a prospect into a buyer faster than any other form of marketing.

John: And to your earlier point, from a prospect to a buyer to an advocate, who becomes an extension of you brand marketing already.

Dan: And that's where the business is going. We want to acquire somebody, convert them, retain them, and use the top level of our customers to infect other people into the acquisition/conversion/retention lifecycle.

John: Dan, I'm a big fan of your writing. Tell our audience where they can go and how to sign up for subscriptions to the magazines, what websites have this content.

Dan: You can learn everything about our "Event Marketer Magazine" at eventmarketer.com. You can learn everything about our "Event Design Magazine" at eventdesignmag.com. You can also check out some of the research, case studies and statistics from out Event Marketing Institute at eventmarketing.com.

John: Thanks so much, Dan.

Dan: Take care.

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John: So, Todd, let's talk about what we heard Dan say.

Todd: Once again, we heard really forcefully the need to extend events. He was talking about using word of mouth, using technology — virtual and digital — to extend events. I think that's something we really need to spend some time on.

John: It was really interesting to me — and maybe this is a stretch — but I hear this word "efficiency." And it suggests to me that kind of the parallel with this movement we see toward green, because green is all about efficiency, right?

Todd: Right.

John: Efficient gas mileage, efficient energy consumption of appliances, efficient things that are recyclable. I think Dan is suggesting the events are more efficient. They have a faster speed of ramp-up time for information, knowledge, awareness. That intracycle that was part of the traditional advertising model is sped up so much more quickly.

But then what's also happening is that on the back-end of the event, you're not only producing a customer that may be newly acquired through that quick vortex of the event, but you're also possibly producing an advocate. The advocate who then repeats, tells other friends, neighbors, business associates about the event, about the company, about the company's mission and message. And in the process of doing that, they become an advocate.

Todd: Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool that we have. Unfortunately, it's also the hardest to control. Experiential events give us a tool to create the impression that we need to get people talking about it to their friends and acquaintances. That's one of the reasons it's so powerful.

John: I really thank Kerry and Dan. I thank them for the great work that they do to show leadership within out industry and to provide information and knowledge and networking platforms for people who work in and around this sector.

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Todd: Well, that wraps up another episode. As you can see, we've got some very interesting ground to cover in our upcoming episodes. We've put links to interesting resources in the show notes for this episode. Specifically, you'll find the link that allows you to get your own copy of the Event Use Survey results that were released at the conference, as well as links to the publications that Red seven Media produces, the host of the summit.

Those resources are available at our website: www.experientialmarketingtoday.com. Your comments and questions are always welcome. You can reach us using the comments tool on the site, or via email using the address: feedback@experientialmarketingtoday.com. Or through our new and improved voice comment line. The voice line is 615-690-6796.

We look forward to digging deeper in the next episode. We hope you'll join us.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Experiential Marketing Today.

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