Why You'll Lose if You Compete on Content

I came to a discouraging conclusion yesterday when talking to one of my clients about marketing their conferences. They want to stay on the high road and be known for having the best content in their industry. In fact, the main reason they hired me was to achieve for them exactly that - Rule by Content.

The trouble is, I can't give it to them. My principal job with show producers is to help them create the best possible content at their shows, and use this superior content as a meaningful point of differentiation against competitors. And I'm unable to do it.

I'm not one for shirking responsibilities, but I don't think my failure is entirely my fault. I think you can't win on content. Why? Because there is nothing unique about one show's content over another. Sure, sessions can have more interesting titles and precise panel composition, and program directors can use feedback forms vigilantly to weed out poor speakers and re-engage stars. But there's nothing you can labor and sweat over that your rival can't simply copy, and quickly. I've programmed shows with 4-tracks and 20+ sessions in two months. If I'm nimble and connected (which I am), I can skim the cream off any show out there and stir it into mine. And launch before the shows I'm poaching from.

I don't do this, of course. But the way conferences within an industry work with and against each other almost ensures that the content is about the same. You see, programmers select their speakers and content from a few different sources:

1. Speaker and Session Proposals
2. Sponsors who buy their way in
3. Past experience

But all of these sources draw from finite and duplicated pools of potential speakers. Any company sponsoring your show (2) is also sponsoring your competitors' shows, and buying their way as speakers into all of them. For many companies, it's cheaper and more reliable than a PR firm retainer. And your past experience (3) is comprised of who you've seen speak and speak well at your shows. Think they got to be good speakers only speaking at your shows? Even speaker proposals (1), which are often the best source for finding speakers and companies not heavily on the circuit can backfire. When they submit to your show, you can be sure that the exact same proposal (or a near copy) is going to rival programmers. Believing that you're the only one who sees the potential in this speaker or company or topic is to underestimate your competitors, which is foolish. If you invite them in, know that your rivals will too.

I'm almost using "speakers" to be synonomous with "content"' and that's not entirely fair. They're very different to the people who attend the shows and diligently sit through the sessions. But the vast majority of people who learn about your show through your marketing will equate content with speakers. If they've seen that list of speakers before, they're likely to believe it's the same old thing they've heard before. It's rare when you hear a conferee remark, "Oh, she's speaking in that session? I saw her at a show last month. She was great. I'll go see her again." Instead it's, "Nah, already know what she has to say. I'm gonna go into the lobby and make some calls."

I've thought for a long time on this next point, and it's almost too simplistic to be true, but I believe it:

The only meaningful point of differentation a conference can achieve is through networking. Everything else is the absence of a negative.

When I was a Marketing Manager at a Fortune 500 company about 10 years ago, I was proud to be able to tell my then-boss that I was working towards my MBA part-time. Satisfied but unimpressed he remarked, "an MBA is the absence of a negative." What he meant was that you didn't get points for having one, but you'd lose points if you didn't. It was a cost of doing business in marketing departments then.

I don't mean to discourage everyone who toils and tears over all aspects of show production - operations, programming, sponsorship sales, vendor liaison, and on and on. I've done it all and I know these functions are important. But only inasmuch as they don't give the audience a reason not to come back. Nobody will rave about your show if they're sped quickly and efficiently through registration, but if they have to wait 30 minutes to get their badge it will color their whole experience. And I've never seen a response on a feedback form inquiring into the attendees' favorite things about the conferece, "The chairs in the general session were super comfy!" But make someone who spent $1100 stand in the back because you over sold (or under set) and you may have lost them for good.

Sadly, I believe the same thing holds true with content. If it's the same pool of speakers on similar topics, how can it not?

But there is a perception that content at one show is better than another, and here's how that happens, and what you can do to put your content's best foot forward:

• Manage expectations. The greatest disappointment I've heard from conferees is not that the content isn't any good, but it's that it's not what they were expecting to hear. Make certain that the speakers discuss the topic exactly as it's presented to the audience. Your attendees are evaluating not what they hear in an absolute sense, but what they hear relative to what they expected to hear, even if it's less interesting to you. It's like when you bet on the ponies - if you bet a horse to Show (come in third place or better), you win more if that horse comes in third than you do if he wins. (I'm conservative - I always bet to show.)
• Remember my blog, E-venting.net. This is an absurdly narrow blog on a topic important only to a few hundred people in the whole world (most of whom seem to be in Canada, strangely). But you're one of them, and you're reading it. And the reason you are is because I'm producing the content I'm uniquely qualified to produce, and letting the audience for it (however small) find me. When you program your shows, be very conscious of as narrow an audience as you can. If you want 1000 people to come to your show, and try to find topics relevant to all 1000, you'll be so watered down that you'll get 200 if you're lucky, and send them all away unsatisfied. This means conscious segmentation, and swallowing the bitter pill which is the realization that you can't program a show for everyone in your industry. You can't. There is too much diversity of company type, company size, seniority or tenure, functional responsibility and domain expertise. No matter what industry you're in. What's that? You run a show now that brings in all those people? Harvest it, now. As your audience becomes increasingly demanding for specific content and interactions in all channels, there's no place to go but down from where you are.
• Start, but don't finish, conversations from the stage. I would have put this in the point above about the blog, if I had enough comments here to make a point. Many programmers think their objective is to create ALL the show's content. It's not. They should be focused more on catalyzing conversations than wrapping up points nicely at the end of a session. Good blogs do this, where a post of 200 words spurs conversations in the comments of several thousand words. I don't know what the right ratio is for conferences, but it sure isn't 50 minutes of panel discussion / 10 minutes of audience Q&A. Let your conferees take some responsibility for what they came to learn - they'll do a better job than you can, and cement their loyalty to the show in the process. Think of this: let's say you run a 45-minute session on 'Best Practices and Case Studies in Hoozenfaffer Ubbaglub,' a topic of particular interest to your attendees given the pending Hoozen legislation. And let's say that in your 45-minute session, each of your 3 presenters sucks. And by "sucks" I mean that they're good, but not rock stars (because that's "sucks" means to someone paying $1100 to be there and taking 2 days off from work). Session ends; grumbling audience files out, complaining of wasting 45 minutes. Now let's say that instead of going to the next session, there is a 45-minute structured peer networking session on the exact same topic, where everyone joins tables of fellow conferees and even the speakers to vet the session topics. Even if someone says, "Well that sucked. I didn't learn anything. Here's what I know about Hoozie-Ubb..." and someone else says, "I agree that it sucked. But I disagree with what you just said because..." Suddenly the content as catalyst has redeemed the time invested.

So you see why I think the networking is the most important part. But it shouldn't be separate from the content, as it usually is. It's not the 45-minute break in the exhibit hall, or the cocktail party in the club that's so loud and social that you feel like a jackass by even asking someone, "So how do you handle your Hoozie-Ubb situation?"

The other point I'd make about networking is that it's a quality game, not quantity. If 200 of my peers are at a conference, mixed in with 800 people who aren't, I suppose I can find someone like-minded, though it's no guarantee. But if I have lunch next to one person who has a really provocative point of view and inspires my work in some way, then the conference is worth it.

I believe the show producer's objective is to facilitate that serendipitous meeting, not obviate the need for it.

Comments

[Rich]

You could be right as pertains to marketing conferences (or not, AD:TECH packs a lot of content in alongside its networking nobody's really been able to copy its success), but I don't think this applies correct across all subjects.

Content can still be a differentiator if you use it better than anyone else. The quality of moderators at many conferences is more often than not abysmal - even the ones at conference industry events. A good moderator can make a huge difference.

Choosing speakers that don't often speak also helps - when you hit the right match, it can be terrific - and that's art + skill, not something that can be readily copied. Kinda like knowing what pasta to use with what sauce.

Many organizers who rely on "copying what works" will just select a pasta (e.g. a popular CXO or opinion leader) without knowing whether it truly compliments the sauce (content) or overpowers it or underwhelms it.

In the trade show industry, this is why most managers will get more from attending the one-day ECEF than the two-day SISO which itself offers more than the three-day IAEM. Sam and Mike (who run ECEF) live this stuff. They're not association leaders. They're actual producers.

Granted, they cram a lot of networking opportunities in there too, and knowing who's going to be there is hugely important, but it's still the content that justifies getting my credit card out.

[Kare Anderson]

Spot on!
As one of those "content" providers (aka a speaker) who's provided same-day briefings to exhibitors at over 200 tradeshows where I've been hired to speak to attendees I am an avid reader of your "narrowly-focussed" blog - and this is one of the best posts I've seen on this topic. I am going to recommend it to my clients.