An outside link and two comments from SISO led to this post on whether you're paying attention to the most important elements in your job.
First, the SISO comments: (1) during the session on selling data, Angus Lindsay asked the audience, "Do you know where your data is?". (2) in talking with Cris Levy on how and what he uses to sift through the incredible amounts of data he churns, he replied, "We outsource."
Second, the link, which is to a new book titled "Radical Careering".
What do these two things have to do with each other?
Simple. As a trade show marketer, your career is no longer about creative execution or meeting schedules. It's about data. And how to use that data for better attendee marketing.
Last year I lauded VNU's hiring of Michael Ousley from American Express for the purpose of moving toward data-driven marketing. And if there was one overriding theme at SISO this year, it was how to make money from data. You could even sense there were some CRM battles being waged between sponsoring organizations.
Historically indie organizers have focused on the sales force automation (SFA) end of the CRM picture - integrating Goldmine-type apps with floorplans and accounting. But exhibitor data is really only useful to the organizer (and perhaps to reg companies and others who sell products to exhibitors). It's the attendee data that has the real value in the open market.
While I haven't seen any recent hires of Ousley's stature recently, there seems to be more energy exerted this year in learning how to capture and manage data, because better use of data = better results.
Well, duh.
I wonder how many people attending Cris Levy's session actually heard him say that he only reached his level of marketing efficiency through testing and more testing. To its credit, Reed has been doing marketing testing recently, according to Bob James. But I'm not aware of many other indie organizer (or association) that takes the time and effort to do true multi-cell testing.
In the direct mail industry, the pecking order of important elements goes like this:
1. List
2. Offer
3. Copy
4. Timing
5. Graphics
Yet our industry still celebrates "Art of the Show" awards. Sure, data isn't very sexy, but there are hundreds of shows with great brochures that became extinct in the past dozen years. If you discount IT shows that collapsed from the internet bubble, it's unlikely you'll find a single example of a show that managed its data well doing poorly.
Knowing and managing data for your shows can change the perception of marketing from one of a cost-center to one of a profit-center. Because it's not only how you use data to promote your show, it's how you package it for use by the rest of the world.
If you can do that well, it should you'll be on track for bigger raises and bonuses.
And if that argument isn't enough to sway you, perhaps this point is:
Your best-looking trade show campaign won't get you hired by a consumer products company or an ad agency. Nobody "out there" seriously considers trade show promotion as "real marketing".
However, your ability to work data into results is transferrable and will be respected by potential employers, regardless of industry.
So if you're married to the idea of being a creative director as a glamorous profession, have at it and good luck. After all, tip #97 in "Radical Careering" suggests, "Do What You Are."
But if instead, you want to be the best damn trade show marketer in the world, it's time to start focusing more on data and less on creative and production. Reinvent yourself starting now. And that's where the other 99 tips from Radical Careering come into play.
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