Ray Bloom’s Eight Essential Lessons
1. Your business is creating business opportunities.
2. Attendee promotion is more important than ever.
3. Communications to exhibitors and attendees must be as simple, transparent and quick as possible.
4. Always seek feedback and look for innovation.
5. Hand-holding is vital. For every new tool or service you add, you must provide lots of education and support.
6. When properly managed, social media delivers a brand new dimension to your shows, one that reinforces the live experience.
7. What hasn’t changed is that exhibitors still want good business opportunities and the chance to meet high-quality buyers.
8. Much of your success will depend upon the team you assemble.
In 1973, when Volkswagen was rolling out its new slogan, “Few things in life work as well as a Volkswagen,” Ray Bloom was transitioning from his family’s VW-Audi dealership in the United Kingdom to the hospitality and events industry. Like the successful car manufacturer, one could also say that few exhibitions work as well as those produced by the now-legendary Bloom, organizer of some of the world’s most successful trade shows, notably the IMEX show for global meetings, events and incentive travel, held each year in Frankfurt, Germany, and IMEX America, which debuted in Las Vegas in 2011 and quickly became an instant sensation. There’s a lot association executives can learn from a man like Bloom, as I discovered during a recent interview with him on topics that ranged from how to organize successful business opportunities between buyers and exhibitors and the importance of attendee promotion.
Association News: What prompted you to leave a highly successful family business in the automobile industry to venture into the hospitality and events industry?
Ray Bloom: The automotive business was so successful that the family decided to sell it. We then purchased two local hotels, and this was my introduction to the hospitality business. It was during this period that I first entered the exhibition sector, prompted by a lifelong friend, Ian Allchild, who was the sales manager for an incentive marketing show in Brighton. We decided to launch a travel premium exhibition together, known as “Incentive,” in London. This went on to become the leading incentive show in the UK.
Association News: What is your recipe for success as an exhibition organizer?
Bloom: It’s a simple idea. We’re in the business of creating business opportunities—and that has been the purpose and essence of exhibitions since they first began. This means that attendee promotion is paramount.
Association News: You have become known as the “guru” of hosted buyer exhibitions. How did the idea first occur to you?
Bloom: When we launched EIBTM, the idea of a hosted buyer program hadn’t even crossed my mind. We started by investing a great deal in data research to attract appropriate attendees and buyers. However, eight months out, I started to become very uneasy that buyers would actually travel across borders in Europe to come to the show [in 1988 in Geneva, Switzerland], and this is when the idea of a hosted buyer program first emerged. Several European trade publications had agreed to support the show, so we visited them each in turn and asked if they would invite the top buyers [from their readership] to the show with the agreement that we would cover all accommodation and travel costs. Every publication we approached agreed to our proposal, and so the first hosted buyer program was born.
Association News: As the concept matured, there must have been processes or assumptions that you cast aside in favor of enhanced or new strategies. Can you share any of those learning moments with us?
Bloom: Our strategy has always been to focus on creating strong business opportunities between our main audiences—exhibitors and buyers—and to make that process, and the communication around it, as simple, transparent and quick as possible. At the same time, we’re always seeking feedback and looking for innovation, as well as being open to devising and testing new ideas.
The Internet and the growth of online tools have enabled us to develop the effectiveness of our hosted programs in ways that simply weren’t possible before. While we always arranged hosted buyer group appointments, it was never possible to organize individual appointments until the Internet came along. Now, with the proprietary software we’ve developed, we have a business model that is almost entirely driven by one-to-one, face-to-face appointments. This works well because buyers control their own schedules, they choose which exhibitors they want to meet and when, and they can easily make changes and communicate with exhibitors about those appointments before, during and even after the show. This approach is unique in our industry, with the result that last year, even before IMEX America had opened, 50,000 appointments had already been made.
The sheer number of services we now provide also led us to introduce free, live webinars a few years ago. We run a series of these webinars for different types of exhibitors and hosted buyers in the months leading up to each show. They (the webinars) allow us to run live demonstrations of the IMEX online tools and schedules and give the audience the chance to learn as they go while also asking the team questions. Interestingly, there is a strong correlation between those exhibitors who attend the webinars and the number of targeted business appointments they achieve at the show.
In addition, this year we launched a pre-show concierge service for first-time buyers coming to our shows; we telephone virtually every hosted buyer who’s never been before and give them the chance to ask us any question, be it how or where to catch a shuttle bus, how to change an appointment or even how to use the app.
In terms of learning moments, I would say that for every new tool or service we’ve added, we’ve learned that you have to provide a great deal of education and support for its true benefit to be felt. Online innovation is great, but without the hand-holding and investment in teaching people how to use it, its full value can just lie untapped.
Finally, it’s worth saying how much social media has changed the way we engage with IMEX audiences—and all year round. In a relatively short time, probably less than two years, we’ve built up 12,000 Twitter followers, 3,000 Facebook fans and 4,000 LinkedIn group members. The ongoing conversation, and the feedback it provides, has created a brand new dimension to our shows, one that reinforces the live experience.
Association News: Are all trade shows potential candidates for hosted buyer events? If not, what are the characteristics of those that might be candidates?
Bloom: Not all exhibitions need a hosted buyer program if they’re able to attract sufficient, high-quality visitors without one. It’s obviously very costly to organize hosted buyer programs and, if not budgeted for at launch, it could be problematic to recover the incremental costs. Taking this into account, it might still be possible to introduce a small program if necessary, but I believe it is essentially quite difficult to change an existing event into a hosted buyer event.
Association News: There has been enormous change in the exhibition industry in the last decade or so. Considering all that has happened, what do you think exhibitors want today?
Bloom: The basic idea doesn’t change, and that is: They want good business opportunities and the chance to meet high-quality buyers. What has changed is the promotion required to attract those buyers. Time is now such a valuable commodity that the experience of the whole event itself has become far more important to every buyer.
In the case of IMEX America, that experience now includes not only the core business function of the show but also hundreds of association and partner meetings and events; a full (and free) pre-show professional education day—Smart Monday, powered by our strategic partner, Meeting Professionals International; daily morning keynotes and education sessions throughout the show; multiple industry fundraisers; and new initiatives, such as the work we’re doing with the U.S. Travel Association’s Meetings Means Business Coalition. In Frankfurt, we also have elements such as our annual Politicians Forum and industry awards, including our green awards.
Association News: By all appearances, you and Paul Flackett (the managing director of the IMEX Group) have forged an enormously effective partnership over many years. To what do you attribute the durability and success of the relationship?
Bloom: The most important aspect of what we have achieved is due to our IMEX team. Many senior members of that team have worked with us for many years—and most of them are still young! So, I would say that what we do is not dependent on any single individual but on a group of talented and highly motivated individuals, all of whom help take the IMEX culture forward.