Roundtable
Money
talks
Is the exhibitions industry commercially
viable? How will A.I. impact the future of events? In a
pair of roundtable discussions hosted by Mathias Tesi
Baur of MBB Consulting in partnership with Exhibition
World, these questions, and more, were posed to a
collection of industry leaders. Stuart Wood reports
Selling exhibition
space by square metres
is inherently very
arbitrary,” says Michael
Witten, Business Development
Director at Mac Brooks Exhibitions.
“Exhibitions are the oldest way of
doing business, and square metres are
an easy method for us to understand.
But are they the most effective?”
The commercial future of the
exhibition industry is the topic of
our first roundtable discussion. The
question which our table is grappling
with is: are we, as an industry, selling
our products in the most efficient
way?
“The industry has never
meaningfully challenged square
metres as a pricing model,” says
Clarion Events Group Managing
Director Lisa Hannant. “It shouldn’t be
about strategies for selling, but about
how we can provide the most value.
We should reverse engineer from
there.”
Mathias Tesi Baur sets the scene by
opening our discussion with a survey
of the exhibition industry’s current
health. The turnover of the top 32
organisers in the world amounted to
€11bn for the year 2018, he says, citing
recent data from German association
AUMA. These numbers are compared
with Facebook’s revenue from
advertising alone, which was €16bn
in the same period. Face to face events
are competing with the digital giants
for marketing budgets - and they may
need to adapt.
Extravagant pricing strategies are
meaningless, however, if company
culture isn’t in place to put them
into action. Baur says: “Exhibition
organisers need to develop a strong
culture, which can celebrate success
and learn from failure. Without that,
any commercial strategy will fall
through the cracks.”
UFI CEO Kai Hattendorf agrees,
saying: “Culture eats strategy for
breakfast. If you have created a
mutual understanding and framework
in your company, you give your
employees a platform to succeed.
“Company culture is a feeling. Many
people leave a company just because
they want to experience the culture
elsewhere, or because they don’t like
the culture where they currently work.
This is the first step to securing the
commercial future of our industry.”
“The industry
has never
meaningfully
challenged square
metres as a
pricing model.”
20
Issue 6 2019
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk