The three dozen meeting professionals who discussed the burning issues of the day at a recent PCMA Think Tank are no strangers to economic fluctuations. But it was clear to the group that the meetings industry has entered uncharted territory, marked by the twin shadows of a major recession and the increasingly negative public perception of business travel. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures, said PCMA President and CEO Deborah Sexton, who kicked off the brainstorming session with an update on the meetings and travel industry's collaborative response to the crisis. "The industry response should be with the tone of ‘unintended consequences' - that the government's focus on bailout abuses has caused businesses to curtail meetings and events, which has led to job losses across many industries - rather than taking a defensive approach that may turn away politicians," Sexton said. "Although it will be important to emphasize that face-to-face meetings move business forward, it will be even more important to connect the message to jobs - or loss of jobs."

How to convince the outside world of the value of face-to-face events? The group had some ideas:

• Develop a Political Action Committee (PAC) - Raise funds through an event in Washington, D.C., to galvanize the industry organizations and speak to Congress. Plan a rally with D.C. hotel workers to support the movement and identify the potential loss of jobs as a major issue.
• Purchase an ad - Each meeting should consider placing an ad in a local paper in its host city to educate the community on the value that the meeting brought to the community in terms of taxes, revenue, etc.
• Create one formula - To be used industry-wide to calculate the economic impact a meeting provides to the host city. This will also encourage meeting planners to track the value of their meetings to local communities and their organization as a whole.
• Develop an "elevator-speech" - Craft one message that speaks to both politicians and laypeople and focuses on the economic impact of meetings
• Make it city-specific - Demonstrate the importance of the meetings industry by having one city "clear its books" of all meetings held in that city in the previous year and then total the revenue, taxes, and overall economic value that would have been lost.
• Convey the value - Of face-to-face meetings in terms of providing continuing education and accomplishing business objectives.
• Assist the media - In focusing on the business side of the equation, and include a tagline of the goals that need to be achieved for each meeting type.

Tackling Four Issues
Led by facilitator Nancy Morrell Swanson, Think Tank participants broke into small groups to discuss the four biggest challenges they had identified in a pre-event survey. Here are the strategies and tactics they came up with to surmount them.

1. How to demonstrate the value of meeting/value of membership

Strategy: Create social-media/community-building avenues.
Tactics:

• Develop 30-minute online chats to encourage communication among members/attendees.
• Start Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and foster peer-to-peer learning.
  

Strategy: Understand the bottom-line impact of your meetings.
Tactics:

• Conduct an internal-needs assessment of your meetings to ensure each component's success can be measured.
• Quantify how attendance affects the organization's bottom line.
• Conduct a think tank at your own organization, with a board member present to explore the value of your meetings.
  

Strategy: Expand your reach.
Tactics:

• Offer programming at your meeting to capitalize on interest from a related field. For example, Deidre Ross, MHA, CMP, director of conference services for the American Library Association (ALA), shared how the ALA offers sessions on gaming because gaming DVDs are a big part of libraries' rentals.
• Work with the local CVB to incentivize attendance.
  

Strategy: Quantify the value of attending your meeting.
Tactics:

• Develop pre- and post-event ROI tools that identify reasons to attend and what was gained by participating.
• Work on a compelling marketing campaign that conveys a can't-miss event. You need attendees to want to come so much that they will pay for the conference out of their own pocket.
• Target the marketing to each of your audiences (e.g., students and supplier partners).

Strategy: Make exhibiting more valuable.
Tactics:

• Educate vendors on who the decision makers are and how to better interact with them on the show floor.
• Offer a speed-dating/solution showcase with pre-set business appointments.
• Reduce the number of exhibitors to provide more value; offset this by increasing the registration fee since they will have more exclusive access to attendees.
• Provide an exhibitor lounge or have a special area for key exhibitors to show their products.
  

Strategy: Make sure you know what your attendees need.
Tactics:

• Send out pre-event surveys to identify what issues keep members up at night.
• Engage attendees in content decisions. For example, Oracle allows attendees to vote on topics for sessions.
• Encourage board members to speak with new members and non-members to understand how they are being affected by the economy.

2. How to increase meeting attendance

Strategy: Tap your existing members.
Tactics:

• Develop ways for the older generation of the membership to talk directly to younger members and to enable peer-to-peer marketing.
• Create member-get-a-member campaigns.
• Institute special pricing for group memberships/registration.
• Have your volunteer leadership call new members to welcome them.
• Post video testimonials from attendees at previous events.
• Sponsor a letter-writing initiative from suppliers to their clients to obtain a new target audience.
• Customize marketing from your exhibitors, listing benefits of attending. This can be used for all attendee populations to demonstrate the value of attending the meeting.
• Give attendees selling points to provide their leadership as to why they need to attend.
• Make attendance at your annual meeting a requirement for members who serve on a committee.

Strategy: Drive down costs for attendees.
Tactics:

• Sponsor members who need scholarships to attend; offset the cost by having your sponsors contribute a donation ($50, for example) toward these registrations.
• Encourage students to attend by offering student registration rates, a student room-share program, a career fair, etc.

Strategy: Encourage international attendance.
Tactics:

• Lobby the Department of Homeland Security for assistance in obtaining visas for attendees from overseas.
• Partner with sister organizations outside the United States to help market the meeting.

Strategy: Get an early start in promoting the meeting - and encourage early registration.
Tactics:

• Start social media early and promote involvement prior to the meeting. Provide blogging opportunities before (as well as during and after) the event.
• Work with your hotel to offer early-bird reservations - a $10-to-$15-per-night discount on sleeping rooms if booked by an agreed-upon deadline.
• Early-bird registration should begin 11 to 12 months in advance.
• Bundle packages for multiple meetings for committee members at the early-bird rate.
  

3. Sponsor/vendor relationships

Strategy: Change the mindset of the value proposition so the focus is on what the sponsor wants to accomplish.
Tactics:

• Provide an ROI Toolbox, with customized slides on the Web.
• Match benefits that fit with each partner's function as an organization, or add low- or no-cost benefits, such as adding copy about partners in a membership e-newsletter.
• Engage in direct conversations with partners to explore new ways of spending marketing money.
• Replace one-year partnership agreements with a three-year commitment that includes an opt-out clause if the partner does not get enough value out of the partnership.
• Define how partners should measure success, based on each meeting component.

Strategy: Encourage attendees to interact with partners.
Tactics:

• Educate members on the value of partners to the organization.
• Offer more time (free from competing activities) for attendees to interact with sponsors at the annual meeting.
• Offer coupons to attendees to purchase products shown on the show floor.
• Hand out surprise small gift bags (with coupons to local stores) to acknowledge those attendees who are meeting with your smaller exhibitors. u
• Use American Express credit-card points to purchase American Express gift cards as raffle prizes for those attendees on the show floor.

Strategy: Pursue partnership contracts that benefit members - not all associations/partners will be the same to all members.
Tactics:

• Collect psychographic information from attendees so you can partner with organizations that represent value to the attendee. (For example, memberships comprised of mostly women tend to value safety.)
• Give partners the opportunity to "own" event assets, such as a high-level educational offering. By underwriting that kind of offering, attendees pay a reduced rate.

Strategy: Educate your exhibitors.
Tactics:

• Offer how-to-exhibit training.
• Launch a pre-event marketing program to attendees who sign up to meet with specific exhibitors, and provide attendees with background information about the exhibitor to increase awareness.
• Add RFID capability to your exhibit floor to track who/when/how long people were in the exhibit hall. This will help combat complaints from exhibitors who say they did not get any traffic.

4. Cost of producing the meeting

Strategy: You need to demonstrate the value of the meeting and why it is okay to spend more in one area to achieve a bigger return in attendee value. Focus on cost containment.
Tactics:

• Move cut-off dates closer to the event dates.
• Share costs with other groups that may be meeting over the same period (e.g., audiovisual).
• Have vendor partners work with you to meet goals for each component of the meeting.
• Reduce costs for sponsors with in-kind contributions.
• Go green in ways that save money and better manage expenses as well as lighten your environmental impact (e.g., a virtual collateral rack for attendees and partners).
• Collaborate/co-locate with other groups to save on expenses and increase attendance through new target audiences.
• Share sleeping-room pickup to assist other groups
  in-house.

Industry Response

Here is the framework for the collaborative industry response to the negative publicity surrounding meeting travel - a coalition of organizations that includes PCMA, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the Convention Industry Council (CIC), the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE), the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), and the U.S. Travel Association:

• The overarching goal is to paint a picture of how business travel affects the meetings industry and the United States as a whole.
• U.S. Travel is the lobbying arm of the meetings/hospitality industry.
• A toolkit to respond to the corporate/incentive travel backlash is available at http://ustravel.org/resources/Public_Affairs/MEI/2-20-09.htm.
• The long-term goal is to develop an economic-impact study over an 18-month timeframe, costing roughly $1 million. PCMA will manage the research for the project, comprised in two phases throughout the 18 months.
• The industry as a whole needs a consistent, simple message - four to five bullet points to share with all stakeholders and the press.

Meeting Planners As Attendees

What did participants get out of attending the Dallas Think Tank? Jodi Morrison, senior director of event marketing technology and operations, Oracle; James Goodman, CMP, director of meetings and conventions, American Optometric Association; and Kristin Mirabal, CMP, senior meetings manager, Optical Society of America, shared their thoughts.

What innovative tactics and strategies did you take away from the Think Tank?
"There was great discussion on new ways to encourage attendees to register - for example, providing attendees with role-based letters to submit to management on
why they should attend a conference, bundling multiple events to encourage attendees to go to multiple events, and opening registration for the next year on-site at the conference."

"We need to unify the meetings/travel/hospitality sectors to have a single, consistent voice on Capitol Hill to protect our important industry. We all need to get active in this effort. In terms of meeting-specific tactics, I really liked the idea of an early-bird hotel rate to complement your registration rate structure."

"Working with partners rather than sponsors to package deals and opportunities: Less partners provides for more personalized service. Providing the tools necessary to attendees to show management why they must attend your event. Assisting exhibitors to more effectively manage their pre-show marketing as well as their on-site efforts."

Have you implemented any of these ideas yet at your organization?
"We are implementing reason-to-attend Oracle OpenWorld letters, and will have 2010 registration open at Oracle OpenWorld 2009."

"We will look into the rate structure for 2010, as 2009 is already under way."

"We plan to implement all of these, and work already with our exhibitors to provide customized marketing plans and assistance with maximizing their time on the exhibit floor with their customers and our attendees."

If you were to come up with a single takeaway from the meeting, what would it be?
"That the goal in the current economy should be to find better ways to show the value of your event rather than increasing discounts, which ends up undervaluing your event."

"When you stop for a day and put industry veterans in a room to work together and share ideas on how to improve our profession and/or specific meeting tactics, it is an amazing experience!"

"The negative perception of meetings impacts all industries, and it is most important that the hospitality industry becomes more of an advocate to show
the connection of this impact."

What did you feel was your own biggest contribution to the group?
"With a significant portion of the attendees from associations, I was able to share the corporate-event viewpoint, including talk about some of the technologies that we are able to implement. As they become more mainstream, associations will be able to incorporate them in their events."

"I am very passionate about the advancement of our profession, and wanted us to think about the idea of ‘unintended consequences' as our theme for counteracting
the press and politicians who are harming our industry."

"I work with a volunteer-driven society, and we organize more than 20 meetings annually ranging from 100-10,000 attendees. My broad experience in working with different-sized groups allowed me to speak on behalf of the smaller event organizers as well as those with larger events."

Do you have face-to-face brainstorming sessions at your own organization?
"Yes, we have several prior to our major events every year to determine what new approaches we can take to keep the event current and interesting to the attendees."

"Yes, both within the meetings department and at the senior-management level. They tend to have a specific focus, such as an upcoming session on revenue diversification and growth for the association."

"At the conclusion of each of our events, we have a brainstorming activity with our team, allowing time to reflect on the event as well as plan for the future. We then follow up on each of the action items throughout the year."

Would you change the process employed at the Think Tank?
"I liked the flow of the event. I believe it provided two key elements: the ability for small sub-groups to concentrate on specific topics and then allowing the larger group to have an open dialogue. This allows ideas to continue building off the initial building blocks laid out."
What was the value for you in meeting only with planners like yourself - to share challenges, ideas, and best practices?

"This was a great opportunity to talk to my peers about their experiences in the current economic environment and see what new ideas they are implementing."

"Learning from your equals through the exchange of ideas, large and small, is the best, in my opinion."

Did the Think Tank encourage a different way of thinking?
"It was very helpful in encouraging me to think differently and focus more on the industry rather than the specific events that I normally work on every year."

"I came back focused on looking at everything we do more strategically and through an attendee's eye."

"Definitely more strategically, and allowed me to consider how we as an industry need to become more of an advocate and have much more of a presence with our government."

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

This article was written with the help of notes prepared by Think Tank Facilitator Nancy Morrell Swanson and PCMA Meetings and Events Specialist Dyan Couch.