Cause for applause
GDS Group chairman , Spencer Green talks to Mike Fletcher about the Bristol-based company ’ s journey , which saw it win the DEN Award for Best Production Agency earlier this year
During my 30-minute conversation with Spencer Green , the founder and chairman of GDS Group , sporadic applause could clearly be heard coming from staff at his Bristol-based office . Asked if they were clapping for him , Green laughs but doesn ’ t deny it .
You see , it ’ s not such a ridiculous suggestion for several reasons . Firstly , the pretext for this interview is because GDS Group won Production Agency of the Year at the inaugural Digital Event Awards earlier this year .
Although Green admits , the award wasn ’ t for anything he did but instead it was in recognition of all the hard work and toil of his team during the past year , when you scratch beneath the surface of his modesty , there ’ s actually plenty he ’ s done to propel the GDS teams onto the winner ’ s podium .
GDS started life as a B2B publishing business in 1993 and hosted its first event in
1998 . After launching its first summit in 2000 , GDS left publishing behind to become a fully-fledged events company .
By 2019 , 80 % of GDS Group ’ s revenue originated from its 60 physical executive summits around the world for clients in the transformation sector such as Dell Technologies , Microsoft , Unilever and Walmart .
The remaining 20 % however derived from digital events including the company ’ s Meet the Boss virtual roundtables . When the pandemic hit , this 20 % would provide a green shoot of growth that quickly germinated to become a forest .
Green explains : “ Covid hit us right at the start of our Spring events schedule , forcing us to cancel everything . At this point we asked ourselves ; how can we digitally transform the business to deliver the same outcomes for our customers in lieu of physical events . Our Meet the Boss product took centre stage . We moved fast to collaborate with integrators of Zoom conferencing technology , purchased a studio here in Bristol and found five virtual studio partners to work with worldwide .”
Acting fast paid off and by the second half of last year , GDS was seeing a 300 % growth in its Meet the Boss digital roundtable offering as C-level leadership relied on the GDS ’ shift to digital to access and converse with other senior executives tackling similar transformation initiatives .
“ The overriding topic of our summits – digital transformation – has grown in importance for our customers this year , so they are more driven than ever to understand it ,” Green says . “ Where previously it was something to plan for over the next few years , coronavirus brought it to the fore as a business imperative to deliver today . As a recognised leader in delivering insightful content on this topic , we were well positioned to capitalise on the additional interest in the trend this year . We expect