Insights into how the business events industry can integrate with the marketing sector to harness the “power of exhibitions” for clients were part of the program at the Exhibitions and Event Association of Australasia’s annual conference this week.
The event, held this week at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, featured a line-up of figures from the marketing and agency world including Tim Burrowes of Mumbrella, Al Crawford of Clemenger BBDO, Scott Davis of MJW and Harvey Stockbridge of Informa Exhibitions.
“We’ve been talking a lot about advocacy to the government, but the second part of our Power of Exhibitions campaign is to deepen the conversation and reach into the marketing world and, in particular, into agency land,” EEAA chief executive Joyce DiMascio told The Nibbler.
“We know that media and marketing strategists in agencies have a plethora of channels to choose from when building integrated campaigns so the association and its members have identified penetrating this sphere of influence as being a major priority for the exhibition industry.”
Speakers at the conference shared their thoughts on the barriers faced by the marketing sector when considering exhibitions as a potential channel, and offered suggestions on how the industry can overcome these.
“We need to demonstrate how exhibitions can be integrated with other marketing channels and we need to share case studies for exhibitions for particular clients,” DiMascio said.
Other topics that were tackled included digital economy and leadership, big data and analytics along with privacy laws and compliance.
DiMascio described it as EEAA’s “best ever conference”, commenting that discussion was “rich and robust” with attendance continuing to grow – 300 people attended the gala dinner, and 154 were present for the conference and reception.
