The Future of Events

Is the future of events in question?

In-person gatherings are critical to the success of many businesses and fuel an entire industry sector of the Canadian economy. How will your events recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?

Live events are the culmination of all your marketing groundwork as your branding, design, collateral, messaging, social media, sales tools and customer relationships all come together to create an engaging in-person gathering. Whether it is participating in a large tradeshow or hosting your own intimate client appreciation event, connecting face-to-face with your market is key to any business’ long-term success.

COVID-19 has presented a critical challenge to companies that rely on events to engage their market, while crippling the businesses that support the events industry such as venues, hotels, food & beverage, security, logistics, A/V, janitorial and event staffers. For example, we miss watching our favourite teams on television, but we often overlook the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars lost to major sporting events being cancelled. Small businesses are feeling this pain as well.

A New Mindset

What scares the events industry the most is not knowing how COVID-19 will change the behaviour of people once the social distancing period has officially ended. Will attendance at events return to normal levels or will the fear of highly communicable diseases keep people away from trade shows, movie theaters, sports arenas or any other large public gathering?

If you have exhibited at an annual trade show in the past, you may be asking whether the investment will be worthwhile moving forward if attendance numbers are expected to be much lower. Some events may be cancelled for 2020-2021 leaving you without a market engagement opportunity to bolster your new business numbers. Even your regular networking events may be poorly attended in the coming months.

The Silver Lining

All these trends are pointing towards lower market engagement and that could mean lower sales for the next few quarters. The upside is that your customer has also been starved of quality social interaction and the end of physical distancing will usher in a wave of social gatherings. Families and friends will be eager to reunite in-person and be social in groups. We can only hope that this effectively shifts the collective mindset and allows people to be comfortable in a group of strangers again.

If you have been on a video conferencing call with over 10 attendees recently, you know that it is just not the same as an in-person meeting. The energy is different, your own personal level of engagement is different and you log-off without the feeling the connection to others that we all thrive on. It is not an atmosphere that promotes opportunity, discovery or business growth.

Looking Ahead To The Future Of Events

Events are important to small businesses, to big businesses that support our industries and to us as people. Our economy cannot survive in a virtual or contactless environment and we should not strive to adapt to one. We should consider social distancing an extreme swing outside of normal behaviour that must swing back toward the norm.

Embrace events in the Game-On marketscape and welcome others to join you.

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