The fifth installation of The Expo Group’s signature event series Tuesday explored three of the top trends being tracked across the convention, meetings and trade show business.
In her opening address, CMO of the Dallas CVB Noelle LeVeaux taught the group about Marketing Tribalization, explaining how tribes coalesce within larger organizations, and how they can be fed and encouraged to instill your brand values. Tribes, capable of collective action, can play a huge role in how attendees come together and actively engage at an event. The upside for the organizer is then increased loyalty and the opportunity to develop a few raving fans. LeVeaux was clear that tribes are not the same as workgroups and certainly aren’t bound by titles. She encouraged xplore attendees to look instead at the passions and secondary interests that motivate the people within a community. In a group of plumbers, don’t look for everyone with the title Director to become a tribe. Instead, encourage any plumber also interested in water conservation to come together.
From there, another trend discussed by Dana Freker Doody was Content Safaris, or Attendee Journeys. Strategically designing content to cut across an event with the correct pace and deepening of thought leads to a richer experience. With that journey planning comes the physically layout of the event, and the group saw this firsthand with a tour through the National Retail Federation’ ship.org Digital Retail Summit. The Expo Group worked with NRF to achieve a few major goals design-wise intended to boost attendee engagement with the brand and each other. Specific goals included separating sponsorship logos and NRF branding, particularly at Registration, and building out a few community spaces such as the Retail Team Center, a spot where those attending the convention from the same company can gather to create their plan of attack and then synthesize what they learned.
Finally, Mike Godsey of Experient shared the exciting product deployed at Shop.Org called EventBit. With this beacon technology deployment, NRF is able to measure the interest and dwell times at all its major spaces throughout the hall, conference sessions and lobby gathering areas. Godsey taught attendees what types of questions they could solve with the data that comes from such measurement, including immediate problems like “are there enough buses serving route 1?” to “in this sponsored space how many people and of what purchasing level are receiving the sponsor touchpoints.” Sensory Analytics being that third trend covered, the group commented on the endless possibilities of how meeting planning and logistics could be improved as well as the opportunity to truly understand and better the attendee event experience.