By 2016, I think every single face-to-face event will have a strong online extension.
Big words from Tony Lorenz yesterday morning when I called about the announcement of his new firm – bXb Online.
But, in fact, it’s what he’s betting on. bXb is the latest brainchild from this creative industry leader – a marketing agency focused solely on hybrid and virtual event solutions. (Full disclosure: My partner on this blog, Cece Salomon-Lee, is working with Tony on a project.)
You’ll remember Tony created Proactive – an “experiential agency” primarily for the corporate event industry in the early 90s (and sold it to Freeman in 2007). So I’m thinking this isn’t far off Tony’s sweet spot – just a different type of experience. What I wonder about though, is whether Tony can find the same success in the association market he did in corporate, being that they are truly such different animals.
“The power of F2F events resides with the associations,” he tells me. “And yet, it’s also where much of the inefficiency resides. If you can only get 15 percent of your members to attend your physical event, the opportunity to engage that other 85 percent is enormous. Our goal is to help organizers have fully converged event marketing experiences – both physical and virtual.”
Tony says he’s “100 percent” convinced that virtual will stem the tide of declining physical attendance. “For last year’s PCMA ‘Convening Leaders’ meeting, 60 percent of the online audience said they were more likely to attend the 2012 event in person as a direct result of their virtual experience.”
I’m personally not a fan of the whole trade show floor metaphor we currently use with digital events, so I asked Tony what he thinks: “One of the challenges we have to overcome is that some people took on great big virtual solutions early. And that’s really not the right approach. You have to scale into a fully integrated event. The American Dental Association, for instance, has a history of live streaming with hundreds of attendees online. We’ll be building upon that this year with a more complete solution. In other cases, there’s a history of just audio recordings. So we’ll start in a different place for them.”
And what about the experience the brands are having with virtual? “The approaches to date have probably not been as brand-specific as they need to be,” he says. “Market leaders don’t need brand awareness. For emerging brands, leads might not necessary be as big a driver as sales. And for a company with plenty of revenue, thought-leadership could be their goal. The key is to tailor the approaches. It’s important to get the brands to embrace next-gen event marketing.”
When I ask Tony what he thinks about all these industry reports that keep touting virtual as the next multi-billion-dollar industry, he quips, “Even if they’re half wrong, this is still an exciting category.”
I couldn’t agree more.
About Donna Sanford
As the founder and former publisher of EXPO Magazine, Donna Sanford has been the eyes and ears of the convention and trade show industry for more than 21 years. She has a nationwide reputation for creating easily digestible and usable content, and programs that educate and move the industry forward.
