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We sat down recently with one of our clients, a Senior Events Strategist who oversees internal global events programs for a multinational conglomerate. In her position, she plans and implements more than ten events a year, all while driving the larger organization's KPIs and sales goals and delivering on-budget and value-rich programming. We asked her to talk to us about the most pressing issues she faces in her role today.
On the day I began at my company in 2021, there was a virtual event for our entire salesforce and a large part of the marketing organization – about 8,500 people attended. What we noticed at this event – which was post-COVID when no one was traveling – was that people were over virtual events and they didn’t want to participate. They were ready to attend in-person events.
From October 2021 until now, one of our biggest challenges has been that the events industry is back in full action. There are so many events taking place that it's hard for our customers to analyze which event will be the most valuable to them. And so, the most significant challenge for us at this moment is the competitive nature of events in the industry across technology companies.
It's not necessarily that the pre-production timelines have greatly changed in our world. Our internal event planning process is still six to eight months of pre-production for most of our events, which is a really short timeline. Our biggest event – our sales kickoff and annual customer event – is ten and a half to eleven months. Those timelines haven’t changed, but what has changed is the pre-planning of where we're going in the next three years. Pre-production timeframes related to hotel bookings have changed drastically.
Space is such a hot commodity in the events industry that if we waited until 18 months like we used to before COVID, the space we wanted wouldn't be an option. My company used to book only 18 months in advance, whereas now we have to book two and a half to three and a half years in advance.
That's one of the best things about our company. Yes. They will do what they need to. However, because of inflation costs, we find ourselves adding a much bigger cushion to budget holdings to cover some of that unknown. Last year, it cost us X dollars, but because we know “things happen,” this year we added a 20% contingency, which – on a 10 million budget or even a 2 million budget – is a lot of money.
We're also taking into consideration hotel cancellation policies much more than we used to because, as I said, we just don't know what's going to happen in the world. No one ever thought there would be this thing called COVID, where we essentially wasted millions of dollars in cancellation and rebooking fees. In this post-COVID world, we take all of these unknowns into account.
In terms of hiring and staffing, do you find that you have enough people to prepare for and then carry out events once you're on-site?
My company does a great job of ensuring that our marketing department is well-staffed. When I started in October of 2021, we were a team of nine, and now we're a team of 17. Within my company overall, they value the people who are producing events, from the strategist to the logistics managers, to registration managers, to digital talent.
I came from an agency side, and so I started this role with a unique perspective. When I came to work for my company, it was a surprise to see how much support the events team gets internally. I know that not every corporation is like that.
There are two tiers. First, we have to “wow” our executive team. In their view, we must flawlessly pull off the event without major issues. Our executives are asking, “Did we get as many people as we needed? Did we achieve the content we wanted to get across to this attendee base?” And then, they are looking at the event scores and surveys from those who participated.
The secondary tier we are trying to impress is the attendees, whether it is our internal employees or our partners, who we consider internal because they are essentially resellers of our products and services. They're looking at the event thinking, “I got good swag. The hotel was nice, and the food was good. It was easy to register; it was easy to get to the event. The content was great.”
When you come from an agency, you're always striving for a perfect event for a client. And that's still how I see myself now that I work internally at a corporation. I'm trying to achieve perfection for the company I'm working for. I believe we can achieve perfection, but I’m also trying to achieve a perfect event on budget while getting accolades from our executive team, not only for myself but for those that worked the event, our partners and the employees.