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industry .
“ After the initial launch , we took the decision to rebuild the platform which was unbelievably painful . It took two years to deliver what our exhibition organiser clients needed ,” he adds . ASP ’ s Coole provided development resource in those early stages , but Brewster notes the first angel investor was Richard Armitage of Octanorm , in 2014 , who remains a shareholder today . A couple of hundred thousand pounds enabled the business to scale up . “ Not a lot of money , but it enabled us to go out and hire more developers and actually do some marketing ,” he says .
A landmark moment was landing the first enterprise deals . The first international organiser to adopt Explori was ITE , now Hyve . Others followed : Comexposium , Informa Markets , Emerald Expositions and Clarion . “ There was a realisation ,” says Brewster , “ that collective intelligence is an incredibly valuable asset .”
He acknowledges that in some sectors it is harder to generate a good research response than others . “ Fortunately trade shows are highly engaging experiences and lend themselves to achieving strong survey responses ,” Brewster adds . He identifies a key moment of critical mass in the business when Explori achieved a thousand events on the platform .
He recounts a meeting in with UFI CEO Kai Hattendorf where Brewster showed some of the benchmarks and insights Explori was capable
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of delivering . “ He saw it was a fantastic barometer of the health of the industry from the customer perspective ,” Brewster says . “ What UFI wanted to do was better represent the voice of the customer at their events and Explori was the perfect partner to help achieve this .”
Evidence of Explori ’ s dedication to the industry includes its commitment to producing global market research reports for the greater good of the industry .
Explori conducts research into the different stakeholder groups within the events industry : organisers , exhibitors and attendees .
The Global Insights series continues to draw on an expanding customer database and more sophisticated benchmarking as well as various one-off industry studies to answer some of the most pressing questions that affect the industry at scale .
Event Leaders Exchange Explori had begun to launch into the corporate events world pre-pandemic , but , says Brewster , reaching the global heads of events proved a challenge . “ There was an absence of community of global heads of events . We had been hearing from individuals how lonely it was at the top , despite some small private groups having formed .”
In response to this feedback , Explori launched the Event Leaders Exchange ( ELX ), in 2022 which has grown to a membership of over 80 global corporate event leaders , delivers community benchmarking ,
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an online community platform and two flagship annual congresses .
“ We launched the inaugural global congress for ELX in Chicago , which had 60 . Whilst the attendance may seem small , our members steer billions of dollars of event spend ,” says Brewster , who chairs the business , which is a separate entity from Explori .
“ Exhibitors are not going to get better at exhibiting by accident or by the industry doing more of the same .”
Maxbi The Explori products keep coming . The latest baby to take its first steps is Maxbi – a measurement tool for exhibitors .
“ Over many years in the industry , I ’ ve come to understand the frustrations trade show organisers have over the performance of their exhibitors ,” Brewster explains .
“ This frustration is mirrored by corporates around the world who struggle to effectively measure their exhibitor activity at trade shows .”
He says there are just two ways to make the trade show industry better : 1 ) You make shows better by supporting
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the organiser , and 2 ) You support the exhibitor to exhibit better . The latter is the single most overlooked component . “ Exhibitor performance is at the crux of the organiser business model . In our years of working as a strategic partner to organisers , time and time again , we ’ ve seen that shows that are run with strong customer-centric culture and processes have enormous growth and resilience advantages over those that don ’ t ,” continues Brewster
Exhibiting , he reminds , is an expensive resource , exhaustive undertaking and to be so unmeasurable compared with other marketing channels poses a serious risk to the long-term health of the industry . “ It is predictable that pressure to cut carbon emissions will soar , and this leaves trade shows increasingly exposed as probably the most carbon intensive and unmeasurable channel . It ’ s not that corporates don ’ t believe in the immense value of faceto-face ; to the contrary , they know it ’ s the most valuable medium . Many corporates love their trade shows even more today than they did pre-pandemic . The challenge we hear time and again from senior corporate leaders is the pressure to cut emissions by shareholders – ultimately all exhibiting companies love their revenue and share price more than their trade shows .”
Most important , says Brewster is to measure Return on Objectives and strategic success i . e . what inputs are predictive of delivering what outputs
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