For the leading players it’s not just a question of whether they should attend but how much will it cost to attend in a manner befitting the company’s standing in the market. And for the smaller companies – often battling to make every single marketing dollar count – there is the added stress of location within the halls to make sure they achieve enough visitors and focus to make it worthwhile.
Many readers of this article will have already gone through this pain barrier in assessing and planning a place at either Broadband World Forum Europe in Paris and/or ITU World Telecom in Geneva next month.
It’s difficult – it’s expensive – and effective public relations support can make a real difference in whether the Return on Investment (ROI) box is ticked when the post-event calculations are made.
If you take nothing more from this article, then please remember this one crucial point – it’s never too early to start your PR process once you have committed to attending a conference or exhibition.
Let’s start with exhibitions. From a PR perspective there is always the natural urge to find a real blockbuster of a story to announce on the opening day. It’s been this way with PR people for years but the reality may make you think differently in future.
For a start, just ponder for a minute on how many news releases are going to be issued on the opening day of ITU World Telecom, for example. Given the number of exhibitors and the fact that many have press packs literally bulging with news, we are talking – even conservatively – in the top hundreds. There is no additional media space available to cover this glut of news and so what may have won some press coverage in a normal week now has virtually no chance.
Even if by some miracle your PR department or agency do manage to prise out a little coverage, the item will not appear until after the event and so potential customers will only learn about your new product or solution when they have returned to their own country.
Ah, but what about the Show Daily, I hear you cry? Well I’m not going to be a hypocrite here. I have often rammed Show Daily coverage down the throats of any less than appreciative client but let’s face it, have you ever read one from cover to cover? Do you ever take them back to the office – apart from the issue with your own piece in? Thought not.
The answer is to get your news out early. By releasing your information ahead of the event, you have a “normal” day on which to fight for the media’s attention. The news is then read well ahead of the opening day and potential customers have the chance to put a note in their diaries to include you in their schedule. The more visitors you attract, the greater likelihood of a lead, resulting in a sale and the ROI box is well as truly ticked.
As well as specific launches and product news, the early bird approach to a general exhibition preview release will also pay dividends for your hard-working in-house or PR Agency team. I have lost count of the number of times that opportunities have been lost because – while engineers dithered over whether widget X was actually version 2b or 2e etc – the chance for decisive PR had been lost.
Time is critical for PR results at these events. Apart from sheer news, companies want their executives to be interviewed by the press while they are there. First you have to have real news but secondly 99% of the time the journalist will say: “sounds interesting but can you let me have a press release?”. If you can, you have a chance, if you can’t the delay might mean someone gets in ahead of you.
The answer is to prepare your preview news release well ahead of the start date – up to two months in most cases and even more in relation to something like Mobile World Congress. Accept that it will be a little vague, accept that detail can be added later for the on-site version and then you will give your PR people half a chance to deliver.
Executives have to appreciate that exhibitions and conferences put their PR people on the front line. It’s a battle out there as rival PRs scrap it out for media attention. They need good stories but they also need time to plan and exploit what raw material they have to work with.
While giving executives some advice, can I also recommend a reality check? If you expect your CEO, CTO or whoever, to be interviewed, work with your PR person to think about why they should be interviewed. A highly respected PR friend of mine, who also “doubles up” as a journalist from time to time, told me that of the hundreds of approaches he had received in the build up to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of my teams had been the only ones to actually tell him why he should be interested in speaking with their client, rather than someone else.
We have to remember that journalist staffing is at a minimum and schedules are tight at major events. Just asking a key editor to “drop by and talk to our CEO” is not likely to bring a favourable response. And being too persistent in following up can leave an organisation with a “yes” – just to avoid further calls and emails – which leaves a no-show on the day, that, to be honest, the company has no-one to blame for but themselves. A final point to consider is the impression such non-story promotion will leave with the journalist – and there’s always a next time to think about.
When you do achieve attention and coverage, an important trick that is often missed is to then link any cuttings or online pieces obtained to your sales force. This gives them vital ammunition to keep themselves in front of their clients and prospects and improves the chance of a visit to your stand or to hear your executive speak.
Some organisations reading this may think they have no news. I covered this subject extensively in the previous issue of Global Telecoms Business but there are specific ploys that can be used in relation to exhibitions.
For example, in relation to events happening in international markets, where your organisation may be struggling to make itself known, make sure you maximise on everything you have. A European telecoms vendor I worked with used to attend the giant CommunicAsia exhibition in Singapore each year. It had a tiny presence in reality but had a policy to “freeze” any announcements from January onwards in order that a wealth of local success stories were timed around the show. One piece of coverage later described the company as “Asia’s best kept secret!”.
These stories were not all orders either. Local office openings, resellers signing to distribute your product, applications being shown for the first time in this particular region (even if they have been elsewhere for some time) all make good material.
And sometimes you have to make a story out of nothing. Recently a component supplier I work with was looking for an audience with a very prestigious operator, whose CEO was to tour the exhibition on the opening day. This tour would be extensively covered by the media but my client had no “contacts” in-territory and only a small stand at the show. By checking manufacturing schedules, and using a little journalistic license, we discovered that we were just about to ship our ten millionth component and amazingly enough this customer was going to receive it. After dipping in gold leaf, lavish framing and a personalised invitation that Buckingham Palace would have been proud to receive, the CEO agreed to accept the landmark component on his visit and we duly achieved wall-to-wall coverage.
Conferences present a similar challenge. Very often a senior executive will accept a speaking slot at a major event and usually they fly off – taking them away from their highly paid role with their employer for a few days – present – and then return to the office. Their travel and expenses may, or may not, in these financially challenging times, have been paid by the organisers but the company itself could be missing out on a major profile opportunity.
Firstly, there could possibly be an opening for a news release about the executive who is going to be speaking and what his subject is. That very subject will usually have been scrutinised by a panel of experts and so the presentation could be turned into a technical article for one of the key trade journals. On the day itself, a news release can be issued about the presentation and should the media be in attendance then perhaps a lunch meeting could be arranged at the same time?
These are all opportunities that ensure a much better ROI for your organisation.
Exhibitions and conferences today remain an important focus for our industry and whatever people say about technology options, people will always want to get together and meet.
By maximising on PR opportunities like these you can use PR to make sure those events bring the returns you are looking for.
Brian Dolby is managing director at BCS PR
Other articles in this series by Brian Dolby: