The world is in transition, and event industry professionals are asking questions. Does event size matter? Many events are seeing the fall of pandemic safety regulations. Does this mean large events are back?
In todayโs episode, Thuy leads the Brew Crew in a conversation about event size. While Nick, Will, and Thuy mostly agree that their preference that small events are better, they also explore the benefits of going big. Tune in and find out what the Brew Crew has to say about event size in 2022 and beyond.
Does Event Size Matter?
Thuy introduces todayโs topic. โWeโre talking about size and if it matters,โ she says. โThis is a conversation I feel I have more coming out of the pandemic. Many companies ended up going more intimate and small because of regulations and safety concerns. Now weโre seeing more big conferences with more attendees. I want to know, Will and Nick, small or large events? Where do you stand?โ
Will is on team โit depends.โ โAs a vendor, I love large events because they have big budgets, and thereโs a lot of scale that allows you to do some cool, unique stuff,โ he explains. โSmall events can be incredible, but thereโs almost a threshold. If you donโt put any effort into it at all, Iโm not going to have a good time. Iโll have the classic Brandt answer; it depends.โ
Nick joins team Brandt and believes it depends. โWhat I see with large-scale events are a bunch of capitulations that are made in order to appease the masses. Often, the goal is a large event or increasing ticket sales. The goal isnโt to create the best event,โ says Nick.
Nick continues: โIf you can have the best event, and thatโs your goal, then thatโs the right place to be. For instance, an IT summit says, โWhat if we added this stuff, and all of a sudden we can get marketers too?โ Well, youโve just watered down what your goal is. So my real answer is I like smaller events mostly because they can be extremely niche for me. Iโd rather go to more than one event around topics that are more specific,โ he concludes.
Thuy also leans towards small events. For her, small events allow for more genuine and personal connections. โWhen I think about it, I think of it from a social media standpoint,โ she says. โI can have more reach when announcing something on social media where genuine true connections are more one-on-one. As an attendee, you donโt want to feel like Iโm just another number.โ
Large Events: What are the Benefits, and Who is the Audience?
The Brew Crew seems to lean toward small events. As a result, Nick wants to push the envelope a bit and explore the benefits of larger events.
โI want to be a devilโs advocate on this,โ says Nick. โI feel weโre so unified in this idea that intimate niche events create a lot of attendee value. We should explore what larger events can do for us. Not only are big events popular, I think institutions are looking for a maximum number of impressions. For instance, San Diego ComicCon. Sponsors are looking to make a big splash within a broad spectrum of people and use it as a kind of R&D to determine if their products are commercially viable and at what scale.โ
Will thinks thatโs a great point. โThere are some cases where having more people equals more impressions,โ he says. โOne of the big challenges with San Diego ComicCon is the lack of housing. I wonder if deciding to do it twice a year and spreading out their audiences solves the housing issue. But, then, you donโt get the one-time reach.โ
Nick continues playing devilโs advocate and points the group to another example of an industry rallying around one major event. โWhen people publish things in the events industry, they publish it around IMEX. Thatโs a small industry compared to motion pictures or television, and it still uses that lightning rod for impression style metrics.โ
โI feel like there are so many opportunities that you end up missing out when it comes to large events. I feel large events are like the Cheesecake Factory menu,โ explains Thuy. โWhen we talk about IMEX, we even announced our podcast during IMEX. I see the benefits of that, and if I had to choose one conference the whole year, that would be the one I would choose because there are so many opportunities there. Itโs just how you can utilize it.โ
Risk and Sustainability in Event Size
As Will pointed out earlier, large events typically come with large budgets, but with larger budgets come higher risk. โI feel like the risk is lower with small events. For example, if we can find a way to test out hybrid or this new RFID technology, your risk of doing it is so low. Much lower than investing all your chips into one thing,โ says Will. โSo thatโs one way to think about smaller rather than larger events. You have this ability to risk things a little bit easier than when all your chips are in one basket.โ
Nick agrees that investing too much into a large event can be bad. He also believes itโs simply not sustainable for the people running them. โThe stress factor on planners is exacerbated by putting all their eggs in one basket, that their event passes or fails and their whole year depends on that. Probably the reason people are scared of risk is that failure can be so absolute,โ says Nick. โIf failure is divided by six, it wouldnโt be failure anymore.โ
โCould we make our lives more sustainable by making all our events smaller?โ continues Nick. โThink about the decompression that takes place after an annual event. People are fried and almost always take a week or two off after. Thatโs not sustainable behavior. So another element besides profitability, scale, and experience design is, whatโs good for us?โ
The Brew Crew feels the industry must find a way to balance financial and personal investments in events. Are you all about the smaller, more intimate events? Or are you team big? Contact us!