“ I think there ’ s an opportunityslash-responsibility or all of us to use these forums that we hold throughout the year in various industries to bring sustainability solutions and awareness and purpose to those communities as part of our presence in the pharmaceutical industry or brand licensing industry , or whatever it is .
“ All shows are stealing carbon into the atmosphere and you as an organiser are responsible for this . Our research shows that people attending as exhibitor or visitor are taking between three and seven fewer flights than they would have to do without our show .”
AEO chief executive Chris Skeith described the conference as “ incredible ” despite the disruption .
“ We had a theme of thinking differently and the conference programme was created by members for members and this was the best year yet .
“ For me there was an overarching theme within Rene Carayol ’ s keynote about putting inclusivity in everything
you do , which is something we have been trying to do at the AEO with a number of D & I initiatives and changes to the way we operate with government .”
“ We were obviously very saddened to be notified of the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth during the AEO Conference . We have been working with the orgnanisers venues and suppliers to provide support materials for members and how they handle that within their own industries .”
Bespoke explosion
FT Live has seen a surge in demand for new individual and digital events . Orson Francescone , managing director of FT Live , told the AEO Conference : “ Pre-pandemic , we had 25,000 people at our events every year in physical presence . Now between physical and digital , we have a 350,000 people have registered for events . That ’ s a huge top of the funnel piece of data that our subscription service teams love .
“ We are a fully integrated digital event proposition .
“ I told the team when physical started coming back ‘ I want you guys to experiment in a truly agile capital a way . I don ’ t know how to do this , so let ’ s experiment ’. We have some events that are two days in a hotel , transmitted digitally , we have some events that one day is digital one day is this physical . We have events where we do the contents digitally , but then we need a drinks reception . And there ’ s actually quite a lot of potential .”
Francescone said what was clear was that networking did not perform as well digitally – whereas content-led events do . But said that played to their advantage as “ the FT is a very content-led business .”
With 60 % of their revenues coming from digital FT live is cautious about launching new in-person events . However there is one area where growth has “ exploded ” Francescone says – bespoke events .
“ We have our own flagship events , multi-sponsored events with prominent speakers and people buy tickets to attend . And then we have a partner event business , the bespoke event business . I think this is a broader trend across CMOs of companies wanting more bespoke solutions . So , someone like Microsoft will come to the FT and they say ‘ we ’ d like to reach CTOs in Southeast Asia , can you help us do that ?’ And now we have the solution where we say , ’ we can run an event for you at the Ritz Carlton , in New Delhi in three or four months time . Or we can run this digital webinar in six weeks time and it will deliver you 200 to 300 leads . These digital solutions have exploded . That ’ s a solution that didn ’ t exist before Covid-19 . Now have a genuinely new product that never existed before . And of course , all our clients say ‘ no , we want the webinar in six weeks and we want to go to New Delhi in three months time . So that has exploded for us and is very profitable and very successful .”
October — 27