Part 2: The desire for real life
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the event industry upside down. Event agencies have had to face new challenges to ensure that they can continue to offer their customers positive experiences. But what do these changes look like? In the second part of our interview series “TELL ME, REINHARD!”, Managing Director Reinhard Pommerel will show you the changes, but also the opportunities that have arisen from them.
“The event industry has changed enormously since corona. During Corona, events were only digital and hybrid, but that has now changed completely, not overnight, but quite dramatically. There’s a rush for live formats again!
At hybrid events planned in advance, such as the Digital Summit Northwest 2022, for which we expected around 300 people in front of the screens, there were ultimately only 30 people, as everyone wanted to meet up on site again after a long break from “not seeing”.
This has prevailed to this day, as many people still want to meet in person. Despite all this, it will be impossible to imagine event formats without digital formats. People are therefore often already thinking in parallel and planning digital formats alongside analog ones as a plan B in case there is another lockdown, which of course we hope there won’t be. Ultimately, however, we can say that digitalization is here to stay, wherever it makes sense!
What has also changed a lot is that people are still uncertain, and that is our new normal, which we have to learn to deal with! Corona in the aftermath and the war in Ukraine are making many companies very cautious. The real dilemma in the industry is not the lack of demand, but the trend towards shorter planning phases. Our customers are increasingly asking themselves how things should continue and are planning events with significantly shorter advance planning than before. The challenge for us is that we often don’t have the trades or sufficient staff available, because the shorter the planning phases, the more challenging it is to implement the events.
We are also preoccupied with numerous questions: where is it all going and how will it turn out? Will the main business focus on the summer again, i.e. on the months of May to September, as we fear it will be similar to last year. We haven’t seen this kind of inconsistency in the past.
Despite all the changes, one thing has largely remained the same – the trust placed in us by our customers, which we are naturally very pleased about! Trust has always been an important issue. The client entrusts us with their budget and trusts us to create and implement a good concept for them. Many of our clients froze their budgets during the pandemic and made up for the event with us after coronavirus. This has increased their trust even more.
We have become more resilient overall and have gained the necessary courage to simply do things that we would not have dared to do before. This is an important lesson from the coronavirus period that you should take away for yourself and your company in a positive sense – especially with regard to future trends, technologies and the aspect of sustainability!
You can see that the trend is going back to natural surroundings. No major changes, the focus is on an authentic location with sparingly and deliberately used accents. The origins of the location must naturally match the message of the event concept and the participants should become one with their surroundings through immersive involvement.
With this in mind, you have to start moving the product or service to where it actually takes place. It is of no use to anyone to transport cow feeding systems for a few days to an exhibition hall that is alien to the product’s surroundings. A product-oriented exhibition, e.g. with regional farmers, would be a sustainable alternative. Associated factors such as costs, time and effort would be significantly reduced, while at the same time creating real experiences for participants.
What our customers can expect from us in the future is the honesty to question our own business model, just as we did during the Corona period. We will continue to bring this courage to our consultations, future-oriented concept developments and our event presentations in order to generate absolute added value for our customers.
We are also continuing to put our roots in the region. We want to get involved and contribute to a strong event industry, which is why we recently launched the NORDWEST regional office. You will find out more about this in the next blog post!”
