Challenges facing the events’ industry in 2019

Since the Great Exhi­bi­tion of 1851, the UK events indus­try has always led and oth­ers have fol­lowed. Today, in the UK, exhi­bi­tions alone con­tribute £12 bil­lion to the econ­o­my, but with venue space at a pre­mi­um it’s now become a mat­ter of safe­guard­ing what we have, while oth­er coun­tries devel­op flex­i­ble cam­pus­es to suit any event.

Despite this chal­lenge, the indus­try is still grow­ing; so should we be keep­ing calm and car­ry­ing on? At the end of 2018, IBC365 asked broad­cast and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies such as Ende­mol Shine UK, MTGx and Net­flix what their trends and issues were for 2019. The response? The same con­cerns affect­ing oth­er UK indus­tries like ours: infra­struc­ture, Gen­er­a­tion Z and tal­ent.

How Gen Z demands are shaping events

B2B event launch­es in the UK are now tend­ing to be small­er scale exhi­bi­tions or con­fer­ences. The big ques­tion regard­ing infra­struc­ture is whether there is enough venue capac­i­ty, at a time to suit the organ­is­ers’ busi­ness or audi­ence, to allow fur­ther growth of larg­er-scale events. In the mean­time, UK organ­is­ers are look­ing else­where and invest­ing in new mar­kets by cre­at­ing and geo-cloning exist­ing events. In fact, they are now gen­er­at­ing a turnover of £2.1 bil­lion from out­side the UK, which, accord­ing to the lat­est stats from the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics, is equiv­a­lent to the eighth largest ser­vice exporter.

Gen­er­a­tion Z are cer­tain­ly keep­ing us on our toes and mak­ing us ques­tion if our events are fit for pur­pose. Grow­ing up in a world of social net­works has influ­enced their behav­iour and pref­er­ences so they chal­lenge every­thing. They want to con­nect wher­ev­er they are, have flex­i­bil­i­ty to pick and choose con­tent, share per­son­al, fun and unique expe­ri­ences and com­mit their time to social­ly respon­si­ble projects. In turn, they expect events to sat­is­fy each of these as well as deliv­er on cre­ativ­i­ty and con­ve­nience.

This is cre­at­ing major chal­lenges for the indus­try. On the sur­face, it’s quite refresh­ing to have an entire gen­er­a­tion ques­tion­ing why. How­ev­er, when the speed of change doesn’t keep up with the need to change, frus­tra­tions start to set in on both sides. We effec­tive­ly need to rip up the rule­book for this audi­ence, but with estab­lished, prof­itable annu­al events, it’s a very brave organ­is­er that decides to change every­thing.

How the events industry is attracting and retaining talent

Which brings me on to tal­ent. Is there real­ly a lack of tal­ent or is it that what UK busi­ness is offer­ing at the moment isn’t appeal­ing enough? Some mil­len­ni­als, and now Gen-Zs, don’t want a job for life; they want three jobs at the same time. If they do decide to train for a long-term career, they want a clear indi­ca­tion of how they can progress, when they’ll be able to pay their stu­dent loan off, how they can impress their friends and fam­i­ly and have fun while work­ing for an organ­i­sa­tion with a social con­science.

The truth is, a lot still needs to change and the events indus­try has already iden­ti­fied what to pri­ori­tise. We’re tak­ing big steps for­ward in attract­ing, devel­op­ing and retain­ing tal­ent, includ­ing tar­get­ing school leavers with the right mind­set, per­son­al­i­ty, work eth­ic and, hope­ful­ly, stay­ing pow­er to help us devel­op next gen­er­a­tion events.

Organ­is­ers are using data and tech­nol­o­gy to make the cus­tomer jour­ney as sim­ple as pos­si­ble. By devel­op­ing audi­ence per­sonas, they are deliv­er­ing per­son­alised con­tent and inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences that make their cus­tomers feel val­ued. Con­sumer fes­ti­val for­mats are start­ing to be adopt­ed by many B2B events, but there’s still more to be done to appeal to younger audi­ences.

The good news is ‘face to face’ is still appeal­ing to Gen Z who may well bring a friend along for the ride. For organ­is­ers that are able to take a leap of faith, for­mats can be adapt­ed to suit their needs and, when used intel­li­gent­ly, tech­nol­o­gy and data will help the indus­try meet its ever-chang­ing pri­or­i­ties.