Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM APRIL 2021 60 A full year into the pandemic, the $2.5 trillion tradeshow and events industry has added to the damaging ripple effect across the airline, hotel, entertainment, restaurant and B2B marketing sectors. More questions than answers remain about what the return to live events will look like and when it will happen. Forced to evolve as events were canceled and social distancing and safer-at-home initiatives were rolled out, event marketers quickly began transforming their physical events to go virtual. And despite varying degrees of success across our industry, it has become apparent that virtual events are here to stay. They are efficient and effective, often leading to a much broader reach. At our first Virtual PrimeTime event in October 2020, Nationwide Marketing Group saw 369 member companies attend online that had never attended a live show. Marketers are reveling in the opportunity to capture content that is typically one-and-done at live events, and they're finding ways to reuse this information in other formats and through other channels. And IT teams are pining over newly captured metrics. At a live event, costly and time-consuming RFID, beacons and lead-retrieval systems were enacted, but at digital events everything can easily be tracked – who attended, how long, how often, and when they viewed, what common threads existed between items they viewed, and what items they skipped. It's an unending amount of customer intel that we can use to make our events better. We're still in the early stages of virtual events, and while many of us are guilty of attempting to recreate our physical events in a digital environment, it's becoming apparent that we must develop a new strategy for this new medium. Making sessions shorter and allowing for on-demand viewing is good step, but it's only the first one. Media expert Marshall McLuhan said, "When any new form comes into the foreground of things, we naturally look at it through the old stereos... We're just trying to fit the old things into the new form, instead of asking what the new form will do to all the assumptions we had before." An example of this was the earliest television programming which was sometimes just people reading a radio play while standing in front of a camera. It took time for TV to develop its own identity, and with streaming services, it's once again morphing into something new. We're all looking forward to getting face-to-face with our communities later this spring. A year of lockdown has led to an increased desire for in-person experiences, which are more intense and more memorable than their digital counterparts. Several of my favorite memories are from previous PrimeTime events: Martina McBride at The Grand Old Opry, dinner on the field at Cowboys Stadium and the largest beach party I've ever seen at the WDW Dolphin. There are the obvious benefits of tradeshows – the buying, networking and education, but the precious face time with our peers that re-energizes us and opens to connections that can support and guide us is not happening online. In some ways, the more digital we get, the more desperate we are for live interactions. While I expect that virtual events will evolve and I'm looking forward to using them to connect efficiently, quickly, and more often with our community, there's an idea called "revenge attendance" that is quickly gaining traction in the events industry. It's based on the principle that people crave social interactions in a face-to-face setting, and that after being restricted for over a year there will be a huge surge in attendance at live events. I hope it's true, and I hope we'll experience the largest gathering of independent retailers in history at our next PrimeTime event. IS DIGITAL THE FUTURE OF TRADESHOWS AND CONVENTIONS? Melissa Stenson Member Services RO Melissa Stenson, VP of Member Experience, Nationwide Marketing Group

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