CMW Guest Author
Generation Alpha: ‘more Gen Z than Gen Z’
Tay Ling, vice-president of TBA Hong Kong, Pico Group, explores how new generations will force an adjustment in both brand marketing and the MICE sector: The moment that marketers spent years preparing for is already here: Generation Z’s phase of demographic dominance has begun. So, as the influence of their expectations, habits and needs becomes increasingly embedded in brand marketing and the MI...
Who owns the data?
Global event auditor BPA president and CEO Glenn Hansen discusses the need for standards in digital events, including data ownership: In June 2020, we at BPA Worldwide published an open letter to the industry on the subject of data leakage in the bidstream. It was still early days of the Covid pandemic and digital events were just becoming du jour. Our writing at that time pertained to the digital...
Emergence of the ‘new’ hybrid
International branding agency INVNT’s CEO and COO of the INVNT Group Kristina McCoobery, INVNT APAC MD Laura Roberts, and INVNT EMEA MD Claudia Stephenson reflect on how their agency has worked with the new hybrid reality: We’ve seen conferences and meetings take on many different iterations across the globe since last March, as a result of coronavirus restrictions on in-person gatherings, ...
Islands in the stream
In a new series concentrating on island destinations we look at Iceland and Ireland: Iceland Meet in Reykjavik’s director of marketing, Sigurður Valur Sigurðsson shares some insights on how Iceland is planning its return to international MICE business: We have used the last year and a half to reorganise and focus on what makes Iceland unique as a MICE destination. Last year Meet in Reykjaví...
Sharjah turns a new page for business
With Expo 2020 Dubai looming into view and the Emirates positioning themselves to take advantage of global business events reopening, CMW hears from H.E. Saif Mohamed Al Midfa, CEO of Expo Centre Sharjah: How have you coped in Sharjah and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from a business events point of view, over the past 15 months? Even though the world is still struggling with the cor...
Could Girl Guides all over Africa become beekeepers?
Gary Grimmer looks into meetings serendipity and how it is benefitting Africa and its associations: When people who have never met are brought together for some common purpose sometimes magic happens in unexpected ways. After all, so much of the world’s innovation is spawned by chance meetings, people making connections and new enterprises emerging. A case in point was a recent meeting of the memb...
Driving immersive hybrid experiences with Augmented Reality
Nextech’s Chris Burton discusses the power of Augmented Reality to optimise virtual events Technology and Augmented Reality (AR) are changing how we live, work, shop, learn and play. The global pandemic has taught us to look through a different lens, exposing new, more interactive ways to consume content. New digital experiences are rapidly taking over the ‘New New’ economy, especially in the even...
The art of serendipity
Hugo Slimbrouck, specialist in global destination and venue marketing, discusses incentive travel as a business and motivational tool in a post Covid-19 age How healthy is your human capital post Covid-19? Many industries have suffered from Covid-19 and bringing their people back together will be a major requirement for companies on the road of recovery. Initially an invention to boost sales, ince...
Similar, but different
Brea Carter examines three important ways to drive attendees to in-person, hybrid and virtual events The spectator-free Tokyo Olympics are kicking off this week amid a state of emergency in Japan, face-to-face events are very much back on the cards in the UK following Freedom Day, and on the other side of the world in Australia, a large chunk of the country is in lockdown. A quick look at the stat...
Confidence through collaboration
ICCA president James Rees sent out the following message, 19 July: Dear ICCA Colleagues, As we reach the end of the first half of 2021, it is a natural point at which to reflect on the continuing effects of the global pandemic on our personal and working lives and on the international events industry as a whole. For a truly global industry association such as ICCA, these effects have been s...
The future of in-person vs hybrid model for corporate events
By Katherine Frost The pandemic has changed all branches of the events industry from how we once knew it. At the beginning of the pandemic, event attendees and organisers fully switched gears to all virtual conferences and gatherings to abide by social distancing guidelines. As restrictions slowly began to lift, the industry saw a shift to a hybrid model for events. Now, restrictions are once agai...
How to monetise your virtual event
By Swapcard CEO Baptiste Boulard New research conducted by Swapcard provides some crucial tips for monetising virtual exhibitions and conferences and seizing that ‘golden moment’ Online event platform Swapcard published a new report, ‘The Business of Virtual Events’, to mark Global Meetings Industry Day on 8 April. The guide provides detailed advice and takeaways on how to monetise virtual events,...