“We’ll Speak But No Exhibit, Thank You”
Using exhibitors and sponsors in the conference sessions as panelists or keynotes seems to be a more hotly debated topic these days. Michael Hough says you should absolutely never do it. I disagree to a certain extent – I think it can be done as long as the speaker knows the ground rules. But we’ve all been to conferences where the keynote is nothing more than a 30 minute infomercial for the company – yawn.
I’ve been working with a couple of companies that are interested in speaking AND exhibiting at the event. I’m going to definitely get the booth space commitment first before we even discuss speaking – I’ve been burned a couple times when I thought that if I gave the green light on a panel spot, it would push them off the fence and into a booth – it didn’t happen. I’ve learned that if you go down that road, sign the exhibit space contract and agree to the panel spot at the same time. The close cousin of “Add us as speakers and we’ll consider a booth…” is “Add us as a speaker this year and we’ll consider a booth for next year….” Don’t fall for it. It’s the same pig with different color lipstick to quote a phrase Rich Westerfield likes.
I ran into one of my contacts from a company I am pitching on exhibiting at a conference today. She said, “We’ve decided that if we participate it will just be as a speaker.” My answer to this has always been, “If our show is valuable enough to want to speak, why is it not valuable enough to exhibit?” The answer is of course always “our budget is small.” Well…..so is ours. Why should I give a company free promotion if they aren’t willing to exhibit?
I never want our show to become a quid pro quo for speaking/exhibiting, but I need to find a better way to show these folks the value of having a booth at our event when they’ve come far enough to realize it’s worth speaking.
Any suggestions?
June 9th, 2005 at 10:48 pm |
Tim,
If there’s a 400-lb gorilla who is setting the agenda for a large segment of the market, the CEO of that company is usually a good draw. Question is, can s/he speak coherently?
For the breakouts, even though you’ve already started, one idea would be to have some folks who know the subject tracks in your back pocket. When you’ve got a preliminary schedule (or even before) ask them what they think of the speakers you’re considering. Sort of like having unpaid conference chairs over each track.
I like Mike Hough. But he’s not always right. From 95-99 I marketed six different internet events, including Internet World. Five of them used vendors for keynotes and most of the breakouts (when not vendors, consultants were used – and that’s sometimes the same deal). If the vendor-speakers know the police is in the audience, they’ll usually behave and sometimes even impart knowledge.
Then again, you might want to consider a hefty number of open-topic sessions where the audience determines the content on the fly. Since it’s a social networking event, that type of format may even be expected.