WHERE ARE WE ON THE ROAD BACK TO LIVE?

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg on The Road Ahead. Today I have two amazing guests. I have Annette Gregg. She is the senior vice president of experience, Meeting Professionals International. I have Tom Stimson. He's the president of The Stimson Group. Everyone, welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. Thanks, Les. Well, today our show is dedicated to the return of live events. And who better than people that can speak on behalf of the industry? And I see both of you as industry professionals and people. Look up to both of you for your guidance and your influence in the field. And I want to kind of get your take on the way of the world is right now, as live events have started to return and we're loading trucks and people are starting to attend ballrooms and convention centers and, and go places. And it's very exciting to get kind of get back to work. So I'm going to start off with you. And where in the world are we with the return of events right now? Live events. What would you say? We're in that continuum of returning live events, are we? Yeah. Well, it's an interesting question because at MPI or Meeting Professionals International, our members are people that produce live events. We actually have not stopped having live events as an association during COVID. So during 2020, we decided to push forward with an in person what we call WSC or World Education Congress. It's our large annual event because we wanted to show case for our members and the events world that if the answer is to have a live event, we can show you how to do it safely. So we had about 800 people on site in 2020 and our Grapevine Gaylord Texan location. We had another 1200 on site. We had a hybrid event. And then this last year, 2021, pushed forward again and had Caesar's Forum, 1200 on site, about 600 online. So kind of flip flop there. But I think that's what the trend is you're seeing is it's actually really thrilling to to see all these what we consider our marquee events, kind of just people being bold enough to move forward. I just got back last week from for two weeks ago, maybe from IMEX America in Vegas. That's considered one of the biggest ones in our space. It usually gets about 14,000 international attendees and they neared 10,000 this year. So I think that you're seeing as long as you're seeing people feel a little more safe to travel, and you're seeing these show organizers do a really good job in creating a duty of care. We can talk about that a little bit later. If you want duty of care, that that gives people peace of mind that they've done their best to create a safe environment for people to gather. You know, I'm excited just hearing the way you answered that. That was encouraging. It was positive. The future is bright. I mean, there's nothing but positivity. You win the positivity award for today. I want you to know for those listening, Annette Gregg, rock star okay, Tom Stimson, I'm throwing the question in your world. And Tom is a super amazing person because he consults in our industry and he's got a lot of history in the industry. Tom, where do you think we are in the return of live events? I think well, I think first of all, and I'll kind of echo what an said that we never stopped doing live events. If we define live events only as having an audience in an origination site, and that's what makes the event live, we completely missing the boat. We've been doing it. I'm a theater kid. I grew up doing theater. I've done events my entire life. Even during the lockdown, we were doing events okay. We weren't loading trucks, but we were doing events. So, you know, I feel like we never got out of the event industry, but a lot of us had to rethink and redefine what an event was because we just weren't doing the stuff we love. Right. And and it's hard. I mean, it was frustrating. It was 2020 is a year we will never forget and never want to relive. But the fact is, you know, we were we went back to work almost immediately. I had clients who were doing their first Zoom assists and, you know, March 15th because their client was in a panic and needed to communicate. So we're in the communications business. We're not in the live events. Business live events is just one of the many tools that we use in terms of serving an audience in a ballroom. Now, having said that, we got a lot of people whose entire business model is completely dependent on putting large bodies of people onto airplanes and sending them across the world to fill up hotel rooms and ballrooms. Okay, I can't deny that that part of our business is suffered, but it is slowly coming back some areas faster than others. You know, obviously recognition events are coming back faster than internal meetings because they get ROI on recognition events that they don't get on internal meetings by buying $200 pots of coffee. So, you know, we we're making those adjustments, but we'll get we'll end up talking about the business of the business. But live events never stopped. It's still changing. It's going to continue to change. It's going to continue to evolve. But if the pandemic did nothing for us, it opened up our eyes to the possibilities of all the ways that we can serve the same clientele. That's a good point, Tom. I mean, as far as that hybrid experience and really redefining what an event is and how we can use that, I mean, I hopefully we can touch on that a little bit later, Les. I did want to tell you about we have a poll that we do quarterly and it's called Meetings outlook. And 77% of our people that responded to our latest poll, which is about a month old, said that their in-person attendance will be increasing in the next six months. So they these are planners. These are the show producers. They are pushing ahead with the in-person experience. Well, you know, it's interesting, Tom, you made a comment about we're continuing to do things and we're learning to serve customers in a different way, maybe not in a live audience. When people ask me sometimes, what do you do? I'm in the people gathering business, whether they gather online or whether they gather together in a ballroom. We've gotten really good at doing this virtual thing, and now we're getting really good at doing this hybrid thing. So you can have your live audience and you can have your people who don't want to travel virtual audience. And some people don't even like the word hybrid. But, you know, if anything, what 2020 did, it gave us an opportunity to get really good at something we weren't very good at, and to find tools and to develop those tools. And I find that to be if you had to find the silver lining of 2020, it was, how do we make this connected world more engaging? And for the person who is in South Africa who doesn't want to fly to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, can they watch and have a virtual experience? And, you know, with all the platforms out there, and I think the estimate we've done is somewhere around 1500 virtual events. And the time we've been in COVID and it's not going away, it's just going to become another offering in the tools that we have to help deliver our message. And and that's ultimately what we do. We deliver messages to, to audiences in whatever form or fashion. So I'm moving on to my next question, and this is definitely back to Annette. So if people are planning live events, what are they doing to move forward now? And maybe if there's things they're doing that are different than they would have done pre-COVID, how are we going into the planning process and are things different? Or they're back to the way they used to do it? Well, I think they're different in every way and they should be different. I mean, we will never go back to whatever normal was in 2019. And a couple of the things I've been reading lately, you know, inflation is a real problem. It's going to be a real problem going forward. I mean, inflation is outpacing anything since 1980. So when show organizers meeting professionals are looking at their budgets, they're going to have to get a little get a little realistic about how much they're going to spend on these things, especially in some of the larger markets, especially room rates. They're up 22% for 2022, according to the latest poll, and you might be able to get a little bit of a better deal in urban centers, the ones that are still recovering, but their demand is out there. Everybody push their meetings of 2021, maybe to final quarter right now. And I know a lot of our members are super busy right now. And then a lot of demand has compressed over to 2022. So if you haven't found a location for your in-person event next year, it's going to be tough. So just plan on spending more money, especially on food and beverage and room rates. But other than that, I think what they're doing and what we're doing to we have another a European conference in two months. You just have to communicate so clearly. Things are still in flux with all the different COVID guidelines, especially for a European conference. We have probably 12 different countries that people from 12 different countries that show up to this. So we have to make sure that we're communicating our own duty of care. We're having a fully vaccinated conference. Our last conference was fully vaccinated, and that's our choice right now. If we if we have fully vaccinated in our next World Education Conference, which is San Francisco, in about eight months, that's our plan for that. So we just have to communicate that far in advance. So people have peace of mind. They have the knowledge to make a good decision whether or not they're going to attend in person or virtually. That was a super comprehensive. I'm ready to go to the ballroom right now. You've got me all motivated. Tom, what are your thoughts on this? If we're planning a meeting moving forward, are anything different? What's the experience like from the planning process to what they can expect and that she referred to? Things are going to cost more money, you know, whether it's inflation or the cost of goods or like in any market, if you have high demand then and low supply, the prices go up and the room rates are what you're referring to. So, Tom, what are your thoughts? Well, I want I want all of my clients, especially their sales team, to listen to what Annette just said because they need to understand their clients reality. My clients, you know, your clients or your people or my people's clients, and they need to listen. They need to understand what your reality is. It is a different way of planning. You have different priorities, your cost. And we have, whether it's in or supply and demand. We won't know until the historians come back and look at it. Economists wall disagree anyway, but the fact is there are things that are more expensive. It's making it harder for people to prioritize how to spend their money. My people need to be aware of this, okay? The before the pandemic, an event planner producer called last and says, hey, we've got a show in March. Here are the dates. Here's the hotel, here's the venue, here's when the keynote is going to be. And I just need you to come up with something really cool for us to do to make this all look good. All right. It was all buttoned down. Okay. You got eight months to figure it out, right? That's not the way it's working. Now, they're saying we're going to have a communications opportunity in three months, and we don't know what it's going to be, but we need to start talking about it now. And then you talk. You talk and talk. My people, the event people, the live event people who have not figured out what's going on. Keep thinking they don't have an event because it's never been defined until the last minute. They're going the jobs last minute. The job's last minute. No. It's done. You've been talking to these people for four months. There's nothing last minute about it. You just weren't listening to the clues and the signals to understand. You just didn't know what it is you were going to finally deliver. And that's the big difference, Tom, that's such a good point, because what we're seeing is so, so much more last minute decisions. And a lot of it is because people are afraid of making a decision, and then it's going to change because of who knows what in this evolving world. And my people and your people are making it hard for the end client to make a decision, because we get upset every time they make a change. Right? It's like you can't make a change. Just of course you can. You're the buyer. You know, the circumstances change. Please make a change. We are here for you. We will support you. That is our value. That's where we create value. And I think we can create value is to be consultants in this role. You know, I mean, if we're paying attention, like you said, Tom, to the to the kind of breadcrumbs that are being laid, you know, what's the what are what are these end users trying to accomplish. Right. And really, really, we know we were supposed to ask those questions all along, but now more than ever, we have to understand what are they trying to accomplish? Then you have a whole spectrum of things to offer them. Maybe an in-person event isn't the right thing to do right now. It depends on their goals and objectives. And if we're being true consultative partners, we should be able to help them find a solution. Imagine if we had been asking those questions two years ago how big our businesses would have been. Yeah yeah. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I'm going to take our time machine and I'm going to set it to, you know, for for November 2019. And we're going to go back in time and, and think of how the world would look differently if we just knew what we did. That would be pretty interesting. Okay. I'm moving on. So, Annette, when you say 2019 levels, and the second part of the question is, do you think this virtual hybrid thing will continue in the formula? Well, it's such a loaded question isn't it. Because do you you ask that on behalf of air travel? Well, if you read some headlines, you know, TSA cleared clear the most amount of passengers ever recently, you know, back to 19 levels. And then if you talk about hotel demand some it goes by market or goes by certain class of hotels. So some of those predictors are saying 23. Those most people are saying kind of early 2024, you're going to see a full recovery. But if you look at your holistically kind of back to Tom, Tom's point about we have opportunity now with events looking different. And and if you look at the amount of events that have grown their audiences because you have, you might have an in-person live footprint, in-person footprint, we'll call it that. But now you've been able to grow your audience tenfold because you've added a really compelling digital offering. And we have an example is we have members in 70 countries. They're not all going to come to my US based annual conference, but if I can create an online experience for them, then I've already grown. So some in that, in that frame of mind, my business is already past some of the metrics in 2019, because I'm touching an audience that I never even would have been able to reach. So it's a it's a way to it's not an easy answer, less. But I think if you're looking at it straight from kind of heads and beds question, I think most people are saying end of 23, early 24 at this point. You know what's interesting? What I have found. I'm sorry. Let me clarify. Next year and early 23, end of 22 I gotcha. Okay. End of 22 or 23 I have found from clients that have picked up this new wide digital audience, and now they're going back to life. And they they don't want to give up that audience. That audience became a whole nother dimension of people they can sell to and their their attendee list, while they may not be in person, has gotten much bigger and wider and it's become a whole nother thing. What I believe is that you need curated content for the virtual audience, and that curated content has to be different than for the live audience, because I think they're having two different experiences, and I think the whole shared experience is, is is for very special pieces of a, an event, maybe the CEO speech or the the big reveal. I think you can create a content that actually works for both, but that's a really unique piece of a much bigger puzzle. Tom, what is your thought on this? Well, it's again, like I said, it's a loaded question. 2019 levels. What are you going to measure by what measurement? If I look, you know, I had a client who called me the beginning of the week. He was very excited. He had the first semi tractor trailers leave his loading dock in 22 months. He was ecstatic there in Canada. However, the past two months he's exceeded his 2019 revenue levels and he has never sent a major show in a truck out of his facility. His studio is working seven days a week. They have clients that they never had before, doing huge, huge events that are virtual. So he's back at 2019 levels. If you look at revenue, if you look at profit, he's five times more profitable than he was then. So what do we want to get back to? You know, whatever the new normal is or the old normal or, you know, it's interesting that if we're getting back to something, we've actually learned a trait, a skill to how to use this to expand the audience. Absolutely agree. And if you look at these platforms like back to Tom's point, these are communication companies. If you look at these robust platforms that a lot of us are using for these online experiences, these are communication companies. They know if we're really doing this right, we're turning in this to a we're turning this into a year round communication strategy, a year round content strategy of engaging an audience, engaging in community beyond the touchpoint of the event itself. And that's what we've always wanted to do in events. But when you're in a live event situation, you get so driven by the end game and just the adrenaline of kind of producing this five day event or what have you, and you're kind of on to the next one, and you leave it to your marketing team to try to make this evergreen content strategy. But now we have to do it as event and meeting professionals. We're using these platforms that we have the capability. So I think the the better thing for us, the opportunity for us to continue to elevate what we do as an industry is to see that this is now a way that we can keep this going consistently, not just at each event itself. So. So let me throw this conversation a slightly different path, and I'll throw this question to you, Tom. I want to talk about and I think I referred to it is the health and safety and the kind of the, the, the kind of the runway you have to set up for your attendees to create an environment so that people have a willingness to go, they feel comfortable. What are your thoughts on that, Tom? As providers, the first thing we have to do is take care of our team. Sure, if you put your team first and you make sure your team is safe and you have protocols and you're vaccinated and your team is masked regardless of what your customer is doing at the event, that's that's step number one. Okay. So we have to be prepared to follow our standards and our protocols for the benefit of the customer, but mostly for the benefit of our team. And if we can get over that and get over the fact that we may be the only people in the ballroom wearing a mask, then then we're going to live, we're going to survive, and we're going to do well. But the vaccine proof question and then that a very glad to hear that you have vaccine requirements for your educational events. I think this is huge because this is all about trust, okay. You trust but you verify. And when verification is successful, we can trust again. And so the question about getting back, when are we going to get back to normal? When you trust that the attendees at an event are going to be vaccinated, and if there are health issues, somebody's going to know what to do and remove themselves when we're when we all trust that, that's when we're back to normal. Okay. And that may not be. And, you know, I optimistically hope that'll be early 2023 when we will start to feel that way and we will start to let ourselves behave differently. But, you know, that's still a long ways away. And Tom, I totally agree. It is about trusting, giving your people, whether it's your staff or your meeting an event participants peace of mind. It's really our job to create a safe environment for these folks to come into. And it's really I don't want to say it's not. It's easy. It's not as complicated as it used to be. There are so many tools and partners out there that have helped us. We do daily temperature checks on site. We have. We use the clear app. People upload their their vaccination information and then you get a wristband. And again, if if I'm was able to do that successfully, that was a fully vaccinated show, 10,000 people in and out of Vegas. Now you can only control what you can control your bubble of your event. People are going to go and and participate in other areas. You're not going to. There's some people are going to walk out of there getting sick, but it's not going to be on your watch as far as what you can control. And I just think that communication and that duty of care is, is our obligation now. But I will say event attendees, there's another great poll that went out Friedman and did a co with at piste epistemic. I can't pronounce it well a piece to mix maybe but they said people that attend business events have an annual an average vaccination rate of 80% versus 70% of the general public. So we need to know that it's safer to go to a business event that's well run like we're talking about. Then it might be to even go to the grocery store. And we, as event and meeting professionals, need to be equipped with those talking points so we can convince the the people who are making these decisions to go forth with their plans. I, I, I completely commend your thoughts and I agree with you in every facet of what you just said. Sign me up. So I, I want you all to know this podcast is around Thanksgiving, and I want to just throw this last question out to both of you. And I'm going to start with Tom. Tom, what do you think for yourself and for people in our industry, they're thankful for this year as we reflect and we get ready to start a new year, I think many of us are thankful people like me, who have been pretty much in a bubble for the past 20 months of being able to finally get out and be able to see our friends, see our family, give them a hug, and really appreciate that in-person experience. You know, I went to I went to the Infocom trade show a couple of weeks ago. It was it was wonderful to see people. I did not see as many people as I would like because the conference was much smaller than normal. But every person filled me up, and I think that's what we're looking for is the opportunity to have people fill us up again rather than just take away. And Annette, your thoughts on things to be thankful for. I love that, Tom. I'm piggybacking on that one because just to see when I go to these large live events and really to see kind of the human spirit come alive when people are with each other, whether you're open to hugging yet or not, but just people together again, you really are reminded or I am reminded of my why and why. I've been doing this for 25 years and why it matters. It matters to get people in the same room, to share experiences, to ignite the human spirit, and to collaborate on doing great things. So I think I'm thankful for that. And I think our industry is thankful for that. The opportunity to be together again, you know, both of you gave extremely thoughtful answers, and I am thankful that you're both you join me on my podcast today, and I'm thankful that our industry has survived and it will thrive again. And it's in the process of of coming back to its glory days of of the, the, the energy when you put people in a room. And we also do a lot of concert tours. So the the energy of when the lights go down and the, the roar of the audience. And when you put people together, something magical happens. And that magical thing that happens engages people in a way. And I think right now there's so much demand and there's such a loss for the human contact that we need. And what we can do virtually is it doesn't provide that same level of human contact. I was in Nashville yesterday, and one of my clients came up to me and gave me a hug. Are we hugging right now like we're hugging? We're vaccinated. We're hugging. We can hug. So but anyway, I want to thank Annette Gregg and Tom Stimson. You both are completely awesome people, and I want to thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to seeing you all in, in live, in person, in a ballroom, in a convention center, and enjoying and doing what we love to do and what we've done for so many years. And kind of back to our why. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead, everyone. Good job. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.