The Events Industry Doesn't Just Have a Content Problem. It Is Too Afraid To Be Memorable | Epic Events by Podcast | Chloe Richardson

Younas, CEO (00:02.539) Hello, everyone. Thank you for being on Epic Events Podcast. Today I have Chloe Richardson as our host.

Chloe is one of the events industry leading voice on measurement, equipping event professionals with the confidence, clarity, and frameworks they need to prove impact and drive smarter decision when it comes to making sure that the events matter. Chloe, thank you for being on the podcast. Chloe (00:25.134) Thank you for having me, it's great to be here.

Younas, CEO (00:27.659) Chloe, you have been in the industry for almost 17 plus years. Can you just walk us through a bit of your journey of what led you to be in the finance industry? Chloe (00:34.

57) Yeah, it's quite scary when you say that because it's pretty much most of my adult life but the way that it all started and it's classic, it's the classic story of I fell into events. I ended up running my first two-week event program where I had to do 10 back-to-back events at age 19 when I was at university and I actually got the job of president at my university and the first thing that they make you do is they give you a budget, they give you a committee of 14 other volunteers and they say, organize 10 events for us.

And so that was where it all started. And now it's funny because I look back and I know that we had no idea what we were doing, but at the time it felt incredibly responsible and I felt very grown up. But after that two weeks, I remember I got no sleep. It was incredibly draining.

I was very stressed, but that was it. And I just loved Younas, CEO (01:16.203) Thank Chloe (01:29.464) people and communicating with people and being involved in the hustle and bustle of what it was like to be running those events.

And so I just ended up doing it for the rest of my life. And I've kind of transitioned through head of events at a venue here in Sheffield. And then I did years and years and years working with trade show organizers. And then I shifted into more of the MC space.

And then I've recently, over the last six years, been working very closely with corporates, associations and trade show teams. focusing on this idea of measurement, which I know is something we're going to talk quite a lot about today. And so I've kind of drifted through all of them, all of the different areas of our ecosystem. And so it's allowed me to have a really great perspective of, first of all, what good looks like, but then also maybe some of the things that we need to change as an entire industry.

Younas, CEO (02:18.123) Absolutely. And tell me about that first event. You mentioned that there was, of course, a lot of stress running that first event.

I still feel that stress whenever I'm any event. So that has not gone. But what kind of event that was? What kind of a budget that was?

And how did that go? Chloe (02:26.22) Yeah. Thank Chloe (02:36.

044) Yeah, I mean, it was 10 events across a two week period and we had a mix. So we had a careers fair, we had an association fair, we then had a ball that we had to do. So it kind of went from one side of the spectrum to the other. We had networking events, obviously, because it was for freshers, right?

So they were all new to university. And it was a case of wanting them to get to know each other better over a short period of time. I'm trying to think what else we had. We had smaller events like quizzes and things like that.

But it was a real range and to do all of that at that age with the budget, I can't remember exactly how much we got, but at the time I couldn't believe that they were giving that to us because I'd never seen money like that before. my goodness. It was well in the tens and tens of thousands, but it was just a lot and we had to sign everything off and it was such a learning experience because it really touched all the different event bases. Younas, CEO (03:32.

203) I've seen that you describe your work as helping event professionals move beyond vanity metrics to insights that actually influence stakeholders. What are the vanity metrics most teams are still clinging to and why is it so hard to let them go? Chloe (03:47.47) So I think the industry's favorite phrase, for want of a better word, is the event went really well.

And whenever I hear that, say, according to who and against what objective. And so what I find is when I talk about vanity metrics, we are really relying on activity metrics instead of impact metrics. So when I say activity metrics, I mean registrations and footfall and booth scans and even app downloads. And sometimes sentiment metrics like NPS, which is obviously the metric for advocacy.

All of those things, they tell you that something happened, but they don't actually tell you whether anything changed as a direct result, which is why I call them vanity metrics. Questions like, did attendees remember anything three weeks later? Or... Did exhibitors progress their pipeline or even things like did internal stakeholders gain confidence in the programme or did behaviour shift or did trust increase?

Those types of questions are the ones that we should be asking instead because a very busy conference room is not proof that impact was delivered. It's just proof that people came into a conference room. And it shows us that our pre-event marketing is certainly doing its job, but it's not showing us how the event itself performed. And that for me is where I'm finding the industry still struggles.

Younas, CEO (05:17.963) I can totally relate to that. So I think my question is, for example, NPS, can see how people would go ahead and measure it. For an event organizer to find out the pipeline that trade show organizers are building, it's just very hard to follow up and get that information because They're not going to update technology all the time.

They take those leads, update it in the CRM, and what happens after that, hardly anyone knows. So some of those things, how do you feel that the ability for people to actually go ahead and are able to track some of those things? Chloe (06:02.862) Okay, so in the example that you gave, are you referring specifically to trade show organizers demonstrating their success or exhibitors demonstrating success?

Younas, CEO (06:09.599) But yeah, I'm just saying that any of those things up, know, so if you can just guide a bit more on how to even go ahead and implementing those things that that would be. Chloe (06:18.446) Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways and kind of this is something that I think we'll talk about a bit more is I am a big believer in first of all, setting initial objectives.

That is core to any measurement process succeeding. And when you set out what your objectives are and how you're going to achieve them, you start to be able to determine what data you need to collect and what does that really look like in practice. So for example, if you're looking at pipeline, So many of us go to trade shows and we assess the amount of leads, right? But we're basically just collecting data because we're not actually putting anything against it.

How is that lead hot, warm or cold? Or how much is that lead worth to us in terms of the next 12, 18, 24 months? What's the lifetime potential value of that lead? These are all things that we could be collecting in the moment and inputting into our CRM.

And that will automatically create a picture for you in terms of how have we generated an accelerated pipeline during this two or three day event. So there's plenty of different ways of doing it, but because there's so many different things that you might want to gain from an event, it's difficult to kind of list them all now. But honestly, I think we sometimes get daunted because... because there are so many different ways to collect data and so many different ways that we can use it that we don't often delve into it at all because it just seems so big and so meaty.

And so it tends to be that we're almost a bit scared to explore what we could do here. Really, when you do, you see it's really simple. A lot of people say to me, don't know how to measure brand perception. That's a really good example, because so many people run events or attend events because of brand perception.

And there's a really simple way that you can do it. What you can do is you can send out a survey before an event to find out how people perceive your brand. And then you send out a survey after the event, ask them the same question on the same five point scale. And immediately you can see the shift in how your brand perception has improved or sometimes not improved as a direct result of attending that show.

So. Younas, CEO (08:29.387) Hello. Chloe (08:29.

646) There are so many different ways that you can do it. Younas, CEO (08:31.935) I love it. I know that you work with global teams of transform, how they should communicate and process the event success.

Just walk us through what transformation typically looks like. Where do most teams start and what does good look like six months later? Chloe (08:46.518) Yeah, so teams really tend to start in what I call reactive mode.

So if it is happening at all, measurement is happening right at the end of the process. Whereas if you implement it properly, six months later, the best transformations usually look much less glamorous perhaps than people might expect. But what they do have is they have clearly defined objectives, again, that word, before the event. They have stakeholder alignment upfront, which is really, really critical in order for your events to succeed.

They have agreed definitions of success and agreed being the really important word there. They often have fewer, but more important and better metrics. To my earlier point, they tend to have a standardized reporting structure. They have clearer ownership internally as well.

And then they often have stronger. storytelling around these results. And all of that can happen in six months if the transformation is done properly. The biggest shift that I tend to see is usually cultural, where teams stop seeing measurement as a reporting task and they really start to use it as a strategic process.

Younas, CEO (10:04.747) So for any of this big event, tell me when should Mayurman study should be built? Is it like six months before the event, 12 months before the event? Does it become part of the culture, as you mentioned?

Chloe (10:20.628) Yeah, well, for me it's unequivocally before. If you only start thinking about measurement after the event, it goes to my earlier point about it only being reactive, because what you're actually doing is you're searching for evidence retrospectively and you haven't got that critical stakeholder buy-in that comes when you co-create purpose with your stakeholders. So really, good measurement starts at the objective setting stage.

So that might be six months in advance. It might be even a year, depending on how regular your event cycles are. And really you set those objectives well in advance because these objectives determine what data you collect in the first place, how you're going to collect it, when you collect it, and then what success actually looks like. Essentially, when you start to set those objectives, which should be on day one of the planning process, that will write your strategy for you.

And if measurement only appears in the post-event debrief, it tells me that the organization still sees it as almost admin rather than strategic infrastructure. So yeah, that's the first thing I say to anybody. This needs to be the first thing you do before you spend a penny on your venue or your booth build if you're exhibiting at a trade show. You need to ask yourself, your team and your stakeholders, what is our objective?

for doing this event, and then you work from there. Younas, CEO (11:48.94) As you're explaining any of those things, it looks so simple or so clear on how to go about it. Why do you think translating event data into language stakeholders care is so difficult?

Why many of them are unable to still do it? Where does the communication usually break down, do you think, in this entire? Is it that people don't even think about it? Or is it just that?

Chloe (12:15.33) Hmm. Younas, CEO (12:17.919) The pressure of an event is so much that you're focusing on that and you forget about just a lot of these things that should be measured from.

Chloe (12:23.414) It is a great question because this isn't something that we've only just started talking about, right? We've been talking about this for years and yet we're not still doing it. So something clearly is going wrong at some point in the journey.

I find that event professionals often they're speaking event language to non-event people, which I understand because for so long we didn't need to talk about events in the language of the business because everyone was just so enthusiastic about investing in events because it felt like the right thing to do, right? But that isn't the case anymore. Stakeholders don't care about engagement for engagements sake, especially when budgets are starting to tighten globally and we're really having to scrutinize where we're spending our business money.

And so it's important that we leverage the language of the business to really get that buy in. And for example, your CFO might want efficiency and risk mitigation, that might be the language they speak. Your CMO is probably more interested in brand impact. You might have sales stakeholders who want pipeline progression, as we talked about earlier.

And you might even have somebody in the HR department who really cares about retention or culture, if it's an internal employee event that you're running. And so you need to think about who it is you're trying to get this buy-in from. what language they speak, and then you need to translate the success and impact of the event into their language. And what I find is communication usually breaks down because teams present the same report to everybody.

I love an analogy that a previous colleague and now good friend of mine, Clive Morris, I worked with him at Explore and he's a really great researcher. And he used to say, stakeholder communication is like having a buffet at a restaurant, right? Different stakeholders need different things. They eat data in different ways.

So what you need to make sure is that you've got all the different outputs available, but then you direct each person to the data set or the findings or the headlines that they are most likely to consume. And so I love that analogy because I think it's really appropriate. And that's why I've built a communication framework around that because Chloe (14:45.474) The real challenge often isn't the data itself, it's how you translate that data into the language of your stakeholders.

And I am a language as graduate, I French and Portuguese at university, so that is certainly one of the things that I love to do most. Younas, CEO (15:00.335) Actually, like without giving too much away about that communication framework, can you give kind of a high level summary of it? how do people learn a bit more about that from you?

How can they can benefit from you just if they want guidance on that one from you? Chloe (15:16.13) Yeah, of course. So I've got quite a few frameworks that I use and the communication one is just one of them.

But the main thing is that all of my frameworks are really built around one central idea that events should be designed with intention, not accidentally. again, a lot of event teams have so much data, but actually they're starving for meaning. So the shift for me and what I try to represent with all my frameworks is stop measuring everything. Start measuring what actually supports.

the objective that you've signed off with your stakeholders at the beginning and then communicate it in a way that stakeholders can understand because, and this is really the harsh reality of it. If your CFO can't understand and appreciate your report in under two minutes, you just haven't built an effective measurement strategy. You've just delivered a spreadsheet. And so the communication framework in particular I use, really speaks to understanding who you're talking to.

telling a story around the data, but also anchoring that story in the core data points. And so you're taking them through a journey. But another thing that I really want to stress, and this is something that I learned from a great speaker called Richard Newman, and that was you need to treat your stakeholder like they're the main character in this story, right? You're just their mentor.

So you're talking them through these results. And that's all part of this communication piece. Younas, CEO (16:43.278) Many times event planners, they just don't have resources.

What do you think is realistic for a lean event team with not many dedicated data resources? Where should they start if they want to take measurements seriously without a big budget or a big team behind them? Chloe (17:01.274) It's a really important question because I think often when we have this measurement conversation, we talk so much about tools and process and strategy that we do kind of neglect the people side, which even with the rise in AI, it's still a fundamental part of what we do.

I would say you can absolutely start smaller than you think. You don't need to have a huge business intelligence team or even a huge budget tomorrow in order to start doing this. What I would do, and anyone watching listening to this, and some tips that I would give them is really start with three to five meaningful objectives, some strong stakeholder mapping, so working out who cares and what do they care about. I'd standardize some reporting templates.

I would have one or two behavioral metrics. So how did this event change the behavior and how are we going to measure that? And then one consistent framework that they use it. every single event so that they can start to generate some internal benchmarking because also that's important.

If you look at an event in isolation, you start to kind of lose the impact that it makes on the wider business. I find that consistency at the early stage in particular, especially with smaller teams, it beats complexity every single time. So that's a really good practical place to start. I do want to, however, push back a little bit because I personally don't really subscribe to the kind of no dedicated resource argument as I think this is such a great opportunity to upskill one of your team and make them the data specialist.

Something that we talk about quite a lot at ELX is that there is a huge gap in training and development at every level across event teams, mainly due to lack of time, but also lack of budget and a really great way to combat this and to speak to this event measurement challenge is to create specialisms within your existing team. So this is such a great opportunity to pass the mantle of data ownership to someone in your team who won't only oversee that part of your event program, but also drive these data initiatives forward.

And so for me, that's a win-win. So if anyone listening today is really thinking, I don't have the money or the time to progress with this, Chloe (19:18.52) Pick somebody in your team who wants to learn, who wants to take on extra responsibility and give them the opportunity to own this area of your strategy so that you can drive this forward in a really cost effective way. Younas, CEO (19:31.

275) You have worked with so many organizers, corporate suppliers, almost across five continents. Do you see this problem everywhere or does it look different depending on the type of organization or region that you have worked with? Chloe (19:47.243) I get this question a lot.

get the question. What are the regional nuances when it comes to trade shows and corporate conferences and everything in between? And actually, it's crazy to say, but it really is global. think it manifests slightly differently.

And I think different parts of the world are at a different stage when it comes to tackling it. So I find that organisers, really struggle with exhibit of value demonstration. That's the key part. Whereas corporates...

struggle with internal stakeholder alignment. And then on the other side, you've got your suppliers who are often struggling with proving that they have long-term strategic value beyond just the delivery. But across all of that, there really is this common thread globally that events are massively influential, but the value is massively under articulated. There are a couple of regional nuances I want to stress.

I want to highlight the Middle East here. A lot of my clients are based in the Middle East and a lot of those trade show organizers are really putting exhibitor measurement front and center to their customer strategies. They are looking at how they can support their exhibitors with effectively measuring their trade show participation in a way that accelerates the growth of the trade show too. So it's a win-win.

And I'm finding it so rewarding to see that sea change really start to happen because I think it will become commonplace internationally in the next few years. But for some reason, the Middle East and South Africa to a degree are kind of the first to really jump on this. And I think maybe it's because their exhibitors expect more now, right? And it's expensive, the market is crowded.

So as an organizer, we need to give more back to our exhibitors. We need to help them exhibit better. We need to make their lives easier. I do just want to also stress here, whilst this is certainly Younas, CEO (21:31.

775) Yep. Chloe (21:45.357) theme and a trend that I see globally across multiple sectors as well. It's not even just regions, it's across every every part of the globe.

I do want to add that there are some companies, particularly some corporate organizations that I know who do this really well. They have managed to hone in on the right data and use it effectively and they're from a total variety of sectors. So it's not that one sector isn't doing it well. It's just that it's something I think that we're all slowly starting to leverage.

The sectors which do find it more difficult tend to be healthcare because often when you've got HCPs attending your events, there are certain things you actually can't measure, GDPR becomes quite an issue. So you do have to be a little bit more careful depending on your audience, I'd say. Younas, CEO (22:32.811) I love the part where, again, I totally agree with them at least.

We work with a rough customer that were there. And I have to say, in many areas, just because their exhibitors demand a lot more from the organizers, they have taken them years to do that. And again, I know that you work with exhibitors also on measuring and communicating ROI. Where you think these bidders are getting something still wrong, at least in North America?

And what do organizers need to do differently to actually help them out based on your experience of successfully doing that in the Middle East? Chloe (23:04.834) Yeah, so what I find is, again, it goes back to objective setting because I did a couple of years of just going on site and speaking to exhibitors and saying, how's the show going? And they'd say, yeah, it's going well or it's not going well.

And whenever I asked them why, 99 % of the time they were saying it's either busy or it's not busy. And then I said, okay, so what was your objective for attending the event? And most of the time they don't have an answer. And if they do, they say to speak to as many people as possible.

But again, it's going back to those vanity metrics. And so what organizers can and should do from the outset, from the very initial sales conversation before that exhibit is even signed on the dotted line, educate them about why they might be coming to the show in the first place. Tell them that some people come for leads, for some it's pipeline, for others it's to improve their position in the market. Some people exhibit at trade shows because they want to launch a product.

Some of them want to do research. Some of them want to really assert themselves as thought leaders in the space through content or something similar. And so there's such a gamut of reasons why exhibitors might exhibit, but often exhibitors don't know. So my opinion is that organizers really have a responsibility here to first of all, tell exhibitors why they might be coming to the event and then lead them through, okay, if this is your objective or if these are your objectives, here's what I recommend.

Not only you should collect, but here's what looks good for our show. So our average exhibitor who has the same booth, your size in your sector, in your region, they tend to get 30 warm leads across the two days, right? Small, tiny details like that can really shift an exhibitor's mindset about what good looks like because especially if they're new to exhibiting, they might go on site expecting hundreds and hundreds of hot leads, which just isn't realistic. And actually that's when they then turn around and say, this wasn't a success for us.

But if they didn't know the context around what good looks like, how can we expect them to determine that they've been successful? So for any organizers out there, I would honestly suggest start having those conversations with your exhibitors. Start telling them what objectives could be, what good looks like, and what data they should be collecting in order to actually support those objectives. And then, where possible, give them some data back.

Yes, we give them footfall, typically, but there's other things we can be telling them. What was the sentiment of our attendees? Chloe (25:26.048) If an organizer is doing a survey, maybe pass on some of those survey details, good or bad, to your exhibitors so they can change some things strategically or design-wise for the next show.

So it's all about really educating and inspiring. And when I did a workshop on this in Oman only a few weeks ago, I had so many people come up to me afterwards saying, I'd never thought about it that way. And it's because they're not full... event professionals, their marketers, or in some cases their sales leaders.

And so their brains are not buried in this 24-7. So I think sometimes as event professionals, we forget that this isn't everyone else's bread and butter. And so we just need to handhold a little bit, which sounds patronizing and I don't mean it to, but let's educate them on what good looks like and what they can do to make their lives easier. Younas, CEO (26:17.

515) Chloe, a last set of questions. What's one metric every one team should be tracking that almost none of them are doing? Chloe (26:28.366) okay.

This is a good one. my goodness. But I love all metrics. Let me think.

None of them are doing. I think I would probably lead with retention and memory. So I think the title of the session is something about being memorable, isn't it? And actually I wrote something on this about a year ago now, and it was all about, yes, we want to make an impact.

But actually, we massively underestimate how important memory is to business influence. Because if somebody leaves your event and forgets your message 24 hours later, which is often the case, the statistics are something like within seven days, attendees have forgotten 90 % of what they heard whilst on site at your event. if somebody is forgetting your message after 24 hours, that event didn't create meaningful impact, right? For me, the future of event measurement and why I love the idea of a memory metric so much, it's because that makes it much more behavioral and longitudinal.

So it's a case of what did people remember? What do they repeat? What do they then act on and what changes as a result? so yeah, memory for me is just such an important KPI that we don't talk about, but it's really important.

You'll probably agree, the events. that you remember, they stay with you, right? And there are so many events in between that you never think about again. So we want to be one of those memorable events.

And there are so many ways that we can do that. But one way that you can be more memorable is just by focusing on the beginning and the end and making those both really impactful experiences for your attendees. And you can do this in loads of different ways. It doesn't need to be expensive.

It just needs to be a bit creative. And then the way that you would perhaps measure how well the memory has been retained is that you would do a survey on them straight after the show, and then do a follow-up two or three months later and see what it is they've remembered and what they've acted on as a result of attending. Younas, CEO (28:37.247) That's a gem.

That's really, really good. And I love the part also about retention. Many of us just worry so much about getting new attendees, whereas the most important thing is if there's someone who attended the event last year, is it also good to attend this year or not? Did they find value in that one?

So I love both of them. What would it actually take for the events industry to be taken seriously at the boardroom table? And how close are we? Chloe (28:45.

784) Yeah. Chloe (28:50.67) Mm-hmm. Younas, CEO (29:03.

507) with what's happening with sometimes layoffs, et cetera, the very first thing that kind of get a budget cut are the events or the events people. So where do you feel that the gap is how people can be taken in the events team a lot more seriously? Chloe (29:18.028) Yeah, I mean, you're so right, because I think we maybe got ourselves into a false sense of security after the pandemic, when people started valuing events so much.

I think we all felt a little bit infallible, like they're never going to drop the events function, they're never going to cut event resources. But then in last two or three years, we're seeing it happen across the board. And it can be quite a scary place to be, because if your stakeholders don't believe in events, it's really difficult to get that budget. And so...

For me, it has to be about consistency. And that's about being consistent with your strategic thinking, obviously having consistent measurement in place, like I've said. And of course, being consistent in the way that you communicate that with stakeholders. I find that our industry sometimes hurts itself because we really focus so heavily on delivery of amazing experiences, but then we under focus on articulating why we did that amazing experience in the first place.

And we absolutely create business impact. I have no doubt after being, after doing this for 17 years, that we are incredible at really moving the needle in terms of deals being done, deal value in terms of lifetime customer value, strengthening relationships, improving these, this brand perception that I've talked about. But we just need to be better at proving it to. leadership in a language that they understand.

And I certainly think we're closer than we were five years ago. I'm sorry, I'm throwing my highlighter. Significantly closer, but we kind of have to be because if we're not, as you said, we're just going to start losing our teams. We're to see events start to fall off the cliff.

And so it's important that this is something that we leverage. I also think that the next generation of successful event leaders, they're not just going to be creative, they're going to be commercially fluent, they're going to be strategically credible and most importantly they're going to be data literate and that's the shift I see coming and I'm really excited about it because I see us moving towards that day by day but it still is a pressing issue because it would break my heart if in 10 years events were much less prevalent because we hadn't found a way to prove it in the right language.

Younas, CEO (31:40.907) Just a few more questions. Which event has left a lasting impression on you? Which is one of your favorite events as an attendee to attend, not as someone who has organized one?

Chloe (31:53.975) Yeah. Chloe (31:58.027) It's interesting because I wrote a LinkedIn post about this recently because I hardly attend any events as an attendee and it's so sad because I'm just constantly organizing or coaching and I don't get the opportunity to experience them that well.

I've got two if you don't mind, I'll be as quick as I can. One is actually one I went to a few weeks ago which was an incentive trip which I got invited on as a plus one and what I loved about it was just that the experience of the attendee was so immaculate and detailed and purposeful and you just kind of as somebody that was there from the events industry I was like I see why they've done that and I see why they've done that and that was really cool but again that's recency bias because that was only a few weeks ago.

What I will say and I sorry to all the other events out there that I'm not going to name there's so many of you that are brilliant but the trade show that has stuck in my mind forever is Money 2020. It is a, you probably know it, but for those that don't, it's a FinTech show. It started about 10 years ago now, I think it might've been 2016 and it's grown enormously and it really is the leader in the space. But the reason why it's always stood out to me is they took an industry that traditionally had been quite conservative and quite rigid.

And they added a festive kind of almost like it was like a festival. They added a little bit of flair and they really worked on their branding and they worked on the attendee journey and they worked on mixing up content with networking, with great stand build, with that great journey across the floor. And it created something really magical. People pay a fortune to go to Money2020 and they do it because not only are they going to have a great time, but they also know that it's the place to do business.

And if you can harness both of those things and put them in one product, it's gonna be so successful. And I think one of the reasons why they're so good is because they're so laser focused on who their audience is and what that audience expects. And that's why they do such a good job. And I mean, I haven't been now for a few years, but I've loved every single time I've been, I think it's incredible.

And they always do really good swag as well. They're always kind of one step ahead of the curve, isn't it? Younas, CEO (34:13.641) Yeah.

Your favorite swag. Like, you what's the favorite swag that you have ever got in any of these events? Chloe (34:21.074) I famously hate swag as a general rule in that I don't take tat away.

People try and give me things like, thank you so much. And then I give it to someone else. But what I do find is, particularly when you're traveling a lot, the best swag has to be something that makes that travel experience better. So there's things like packing cubes.

Sounds obvious, but it's great. Satin pillows that you can take with you when you travel. at least even though everything's dry and you feel tired and groggy, at least your hair stays nice. And then little things like masks, face masks, that nice comfy ones that you can wear on the plane with headphones built in.

Anything really that makes my life easier as someone that's constantly in the air, I absolutely love. Whereas I do think we're kind of going down the route now of like a lot of expensive swag for the sake of it. And I'm not a fan of that. I like it when events have those swag kind of shops where you can go and pick something off the shelf and take it home.

rather than having it forced upon you because it's such a waste as well because a lot of people don't want a lot of that stuff. So let people pick because they also feel like they're in control and that's a good thing but then they're also not going to waste stuff as well. Younas, CEO (35:28.267) In this world of AI, do you is going to impact events, positive or negative, just in the near term future?

Chloe (35:45.487) I've been saying this probably now for about six months. I only see it as a positive thing because people say it day in, day out. I can't stand being on LinkedIn anymore.

I don't know what's real. Everything is an AI deep fake. What should I believe? These adverts are misleading.

And actually that means that the only thing that really has credibility is something that you can see and feel and smell and touch. And that is in-person events. Without in-person events, society will crumble. I believe that to be a fact.

And it's just up to us now to actually deliver on that. So I'm not worried. I love the way that AI streamlines workflows. I think it's going to make us have more capacity as event organizers because we're going to put all the boring, laborious administrative things down to our AI agents.

And we're going to be able to focus on being innovative and strategic. But then I also think more people are going to want to come to events because it's the only thing they believe to be real. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Maybe I'm naive, but I'm not scared at all.

I think it's great. Younas, CEO (36:51.259) I agree as well. Just, I know that I said last question, but like this is my 10th last one.

You're so passionate about the whole thing. I'm just trying to pick your brain on almost everything that I'm talking about. So where do you see most value in the event itself? And I'm going to, maybe it's both, but you know, is it meeting other people, which is networking, trying to do business and so forth?

Chloe (36:56.174) Don't worry, I'll you on my toes. Chloe (37:03.524) That's good for it.

Younas, CEO (37:19.785) Or is it the content piece that you are there to get inspiration from the speakers and so forth? Chloe (37:24.376) Yeah.

Am I allowed to say both? Younas, CEO (37:28.613) You can say whatever, yeah. Chloe (37:30.

222) So I think the potential is in both. However, I think at the moment, more people get value from the networking because I think we have become incredibly complacent with the way that we deliver content. We are sticking to the same formulas, even though our attendees have changed humongously over the last 10 years, but we're still doing the same things. the same types of panels, the same 45 minute keynote presentations, even though we all know that's not what anyone wants to see.

So at the moment, I think the biggest value lies in networking because it's an opportunity to get loads of people in one place at the same time. And whether that's potential new business or current customers or just peers and colleagues, it's a really great forum for that. But if we started to do content better, And this is something that I'm trying really hard to do at ELX. We've got an event coming up in a few months and we did, we do feedback at the end of every single event as everyone does.

And one of the bits of feedback we got overwhelmingly was we don't want to see panels anymore. We don't want to see keynote presentations. We don't want to be spoken at for hours on end. We want to be part of the content.

We want to contribute. We want to learn and share, right? And so many audiences want to feel involved. They want to be part of.

the magic that is happening in the room. And so I listened and I thought, you know what, I'm not gonna do three people sat in a chair on the stage. I'm not gonna do presentations that last forever. I've taken all of them out and it's brave and I'm slightly terrified, but it's listening to what our attendees have asked for and I'm delivering it.

And it might not be a success and we have our own KPIs and metrics in place to ascertain whether it was, but. I am confident that if done well, content is a really important part and will be a drive for why people come, not just because of what they're learning, but what they're teaching. Because as human beings, we want to feel like we're being heard too, as well as that we're listening. And so for me, the content arena is the place to do it.

I'm sorry, that was quite a long answer to your question. Younas, CEO (39:48.204) I love it. For me, I'm of the opinion that people, it's hard for someone, for example, I manage a lot of budget.

If my team members would come to me and would say, I want to sign up for that event because, I'll be able to network with a lot of people. I give lots of value to network. no, for me, it's a very hard thing to prove. by the way, exactly.

Chloe (40:13.674) That's just activity, right? That's not outcome. So yeah.

Younas, CEO (40:17.183) Yeah, so for me, it's the content that drives the restrictions, that drives attendees signed up. Now, networking, of course, is important, but you need to always make sure that the content is there for people to sign up with. yeah.

Chloe (40:29.902) sell the story. Yeah, it's true. And I think you can get away with signing an event off as an education, right?

That's important. But I think as well, and that really points to another reason why measurement is so important, because if you are going to your CEO and you're saying, I want to go to events, I want to network. If someone said that to me, I would just laugh. Whereas if they said, I want to go to this event, because five of our clients are going to be there.

And between the five, there's potential growth of 125 % revenue year on year. And if I have that face-to-face interaction, it's more likely to be accelerated. I'm signing up right now. Like, it's just, again, it's the way we tell the story, isn't it?

And the language that we use. And that's a great example. I'm glad you asked that because it kind of is a really good example of why saying it in the right way might get you a slightly different result. Younas, CEO (41:20.

331) I'm almost done with time. Just Chloe, you're so knowledgeable. So if people want to connect with you, learn a bit more from you, the kind of services that you offer within the event industry, what's the best way for them to connect and reach out? Chloe (41:37.

026) Definitely LinkedIn. So just Chloe Richardson. And then on there you can see, just message me. I'm always around.

And if I'm in the air or something, which tends to be where I am, if I'm not replying immediately, I'll get back to you as and when I can. But yeah, if anyone does have just any questions generally on this, I love giving advice. I love talking about this. I love our industry more than anything.

I feel like I've grown up in it. And if there's anything that I can do that helps other people with either... retaining budget or proving the value in what we do, then I'm open. So thank you for letting me come on and inviting me and letting me chat for hours about measurement.

I really appreciate it. been a great conversation. Younas, CEO (42:18.582) Thank you, Chloe, for being on the show.

Thank you, everyone, for listening in. We'll be in touch with the next episode. Thank you, everyone.