by EN
In her latest feature, EN guest editor Ruth Carter talks to Piers Kelly, operations director, Reed Exhibitions, Verena Lester, global operations director, Clarion Events and Helen Milton, group operations director, Diversified Communications about their plans for 2021.
With the green light finally flickering into life, giving us as clear a pathway back to live events as we could expect at this time, the volume of exhibitions that will be delivered at the back end of 2021 is looking quite chunky. Tsunami September is fast becoming a reality.
While exhibition business leaders are smiling, sales people are excited about the prospect of reuniting themselves with commission cheques and marketers are brewing their creative juices, the world of the group operations director is looking a little more challenging. They will be the ones deeply in the firing line come September.
I spoke with three of the most experienced group operations directors (GODs) around to see how they are planning on delivering successful exhibitions in their usual highly organised, unflappable style when so many of the variables are yet to be pinned down. To a function that is all about detail, deadlines and planning, this can be daunting.
However, all of the GODS say that 2020 had shown just how flexible and accommodating the operations teams could be. Piers Kelly, operations director at Reed Exhibitions, feels that 2020 showed operations teams at their best.
“Operations is the foundation of the business; our role is to be bulletproof and to deliver excellence day-to-day, across the board, as a standard. 2020 showed just how awesome ops people are in this industry as we had to redeploy people from the ops team into different parts of the business to help out with other activities, especially digital. It showed just how resilient and adaptable they are and that their core skills are incredibly important to the business overall.”
Helen Milton, group operations director at Diversified Communications, feels that 2020 had highlighted that while the ops function was flexible and prided itself in excellent communications, this will need to be taken even further as they start to plan the delivery of 2021 events.
“We have six exhibitions to deliver in September alone – five of those in the same week. Successfully delivering these is not just about the ops teams but more so about both the sales and marketing teams working together with ops, being clear on what we are all saying to exhibitors. Some exhibitors will need real reassurance and having a vague message about what the safety plans are for the show will not increase their confidence. The key is making a simplified, clear version of everything you would usually have sent out to exhibitors so that it is designed to be informative but really easy to understand.”
It will come as no surprise that all the GODs are almost eerily calm about the challenges that delivering the latter part of this year will bring. Verena Lester, global operations director at Clarion Events sums it up well but adds that the bigger challenge will come with regards to contractors.
“No one is worried about delivering Covid-safe shows. We have been talking about how we are going to do that for such a long time, the Covid-safety piece, where we widen the aisle, control the numbers of people, make sure there is enough hand sanitizer, all of that we know. We have a plan. The unknown is where is have lost resource and knowledge in our industry, especially with contractors and suppliers. With that part of the industry really shrinking, we will have lost a lot of deep-seated knowledge and it will be a challenge to recoup some of that quickly.”
The mind set change from thinking about ‘suppliers’ to instead thinking about ‘partners’ is key in making the latter part of the year work. Kelly feels that the way we work with our suppliers and contractors needs to be even more flexible.
“Organisers need to do more to help suppliers deliver as well as they possibly can. Don’t just decide on your own and then tell the contractor to ‘go and build it’. Engage the contractor early, talk to them about your objectives and what you are trying to achieve and get their input. Encourage the contractors to suggest things that may be easier for them to deliver. They are going to be extremely stretched so let’s not make it overly hard for them. Oh yes, and of course, pay them on time.”
When thinking about what an organiser actually wants an event to look like, all the GODs felt that the time had come to be a little more flexible on their requirements given the exceptional nature of what the tail end of 2021 will look like. Just because the Event Director wants it to be ‘Yellow Year’, doesn’t mean that may be the right thing given the thinness of resource and suppliers. If a contractor can deliver ‘Green Year’ again because they have everything in stock, that might be the simplest and most effective answer for everyone. Lester feels that rethinking the whole purpose of an exhibition and then giving contractors more free-rein may well be the answer.
“The journey between now and delivering an exhibition is a discovery of re-understanding what exactly our shows are about; how do we want to deliver them; how do we want to work together with our contractors. Supplier briefing is extremely important and we aim to give a broad brief to them. Tell them what the general outcome should be, what you want to achieve and how it should feel but don’t tell them exactly what you are looking for. Don’t be prescriptive but allow them some creative licence.”
There are elements that Covid-restrictions do not help with regards to the face-to-face environment. You cannot shake someone’s hand; you have to stand a certain distance away from someone; the noisy, buzzing networking areas are going to be difficult to deliver in a face masked world and doubly more uncomfortable for exhibitors who have to stay in the masks for a whole day. This is a challenge to all the exhibition industry but maybe we can be learning something from our old behaviours? Pre-2006, exhibition organisers had to think about how they accommodated the smokers of the world. Smoking areas, whether indoor or outside, were the norm, with high levels of ventilation and fresh air. Maybe we should be looking to introduce ‘breathing’ areas at our shows where you can go to take your mask off, rub your face and just breathe before heading back into the fray?
One of the most impressive things we have seen from the exhibition industry over the past 12 months is it willingness to be open and share learnings with each other. The AEO, in conjunction with ESSA and the AEV, started this sharing when it brought the industry together to build the All Secure guidelines (www.aeo.org.uk/covid-19), a risk assessed approach to delivering Covid-safe exhibitions.
The need to ensure that all exhibitions work and work well is the responsibility of every organiser. The exhibition industry still unfairly carries the scars from Cheltenham as a perceived super-spreader event, despite the fact that it is vastly different from a B2B or B2C exhibition. If one show fails, we all fail. Smart organisers have recognised this and Milton talks about some of the initiatives that she has been a part of.
“Communication between the industry is absolutely key in the coming months. We all do need to work together because that is the only way we will get the amount of shows out while adhering to any restrictions. I work closely with Montgomery and William Reed as we all do food shows. We get together every three to four weeks to understand what each of us are doing or not doing in relation to new or potential restrictions. Some of our exhibitors go to all three shows so what is the point of one of us saying ‘you can do x’ when another is saying ‘you can do y’. You need the consistency there. We have all agreed that, if one of us comes up with a good idea then we share it. We are all experienced but each of us can learn something new every day, especially when we in such an unclear and rapidly changing environment. You simply have to be grown-up about it.”
With the considerable amount of downsizing that the exhibition industry has had to go through, it is hardly surprising that there was a concern not just about resourcing levels but also about the impact on the morale and wellbeing of the Ops team. Having worked from home for so long, a day in the office may feel exhausting so imagine what it will be like when all those events are concertinaed together and renewed level of activity will have on teams. Lester talks about some of the plans they have in place to deal with that.
“We have talked a lot about having all our plans written down in more detail so that if someone becomes ill then the plans can easily be passed on to the next person. With a change of contractors and different internal staff now working on events, you cannot assume that knowledge will automatically be passed on. Additionally, we are having open conversations with teams and asking them to be honest about how they are coping. We have always been really conscious of the team’s wellbeing and already have multiple support methods in place. But, and I hope it isn’t the case, because the industry has seen so many redundancies, there is the potential for people to have an increased pressure to be at the top of their game and have a heightened fear of failure in case they lose their jobs.”
Unsurprisingly, all the GODs talked about planning, detail and deadlines. What was surprising and encouraging was that they all felt flexibility and adaptability was more important in this changing environment. Milton talks about the need for thinking differently.
“In operations, you become fixated about when you have to do something by. But you can’t any more. Do not worry if the deadlines change. In fact, you should expect that. That can be tough on the team. I can see people sitting there thinking ‘what is the point in doing this when it could all change in a month’s time?’. But we still have to do it. We have to be ahead of the game and if it changes, then it changes.”
All the GODs talked about how they can be helping the customer with their experience onsite and this could be as simple as ensuring that the organiser’s office is in a prominent place on the floor as opposed to being tucked away and hard to find. Kelly feels that the key is to think about the human experience.
“Regardless of how good your paper plan is, you need to think about the human behaviour on site and how we can help people navigate these new environments. We can get very focused on all the tools that we use to build our events but you need to put yourself in the mind of the visitor arriving at that show for the first time who hasn’t had the benefit of seeing any of the plans. What can you do practically to encourage the behaviours that we want now within a Covid-safe environment. We have been thinking a lot about how you nudge behaviour in a very human way rather than as a purely technical exercise. Planning is essential but don’t forget the human element.”
We appear then to be in safe but pragmatic hands. The latter part of 2021 will certainly be a challenge in terms of delivering that sheer weight of events, but our GODs are primed and ready. Lester sums up how operations teams across the board are feeling.
“Everyone is really excited about getting back out there, we have really missed it. As exhibition organisers, it is in our nature to see people, interact with people, welcome people and help them do business and make opportunities. My only advice is to just get used to things changing all the time. I could tell you something today but it may all be different tomorrow. Just be comfortable with it.” – Exhibition News
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