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We have some major news on the event tech front โ€“ PSAV is now Encore! The events industry is in constant mutation and news of acquisitions and mergers are not rare. And this time around, the Event Tech Podcast is here with the freshest update to reach our ears. Itโ€™s exciting, itโ€™s interesting, and it will have consequences. But of what kind?

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Will Curran and Brandt Krueger are ready to give you the scope on the PSAV is now Encore news. Did we see it coming? What does this mean for the events industry? And more specifically, to the world of event tech? Well, if you want all these questions answered, wait no more โ€“ press play and join us on this special edition of the Event Tech Podcast!

Click here for the full audio transcription.

PSAV is now EncorePSAV Is Now Encore: The Context

Brandt gives us some context on the PSAV is now Encore front. โ€œPSAV has announced that they plan to move to a new master brand and it is Encore. So, as we have covered on this show in the past, we announced when PSAV announced that they were acquiring Encore Audio Visual Services. Encore, probably one of the second largest names in in-house AVโ€, he explains. โ€œThey announced that they were acquiring Encore, which was the latest in a series of acquisitions by PSAV. So, they stated that โ€œPSAV, a global leader in event experiences, announced today that it will align its portfolio of companies under a new master brand and will assume the name Encoreโ€.

Laying Out The Biases

Our hosts make a point to let us know where they stand when it comes to the matter. โ€œI own a third-party AV company that does compete against PSAV and Encore and all these brands a lot of the timeโ€, Will explains.โ€But I think that, most importantly, we just needed to get the news out there for people to be aware of. I, happily, if I get beat by them, Iโ€™m happy to admit that there are times where they are a great vendor. And times where I work with them and theyโ€™re actually one of my suppliers as well when we were doing rigging and things like thatโ€.

โ€œSo, as an independent technical producer, I work with all kindsโ€, says Brandt. โ€œI want to make sure Iโ€™m getting the best deal for my customer or, to be perfectly frank, Iโ€™m going to do what I think makes the most sense for my clients. So, sometimes, thatโ€™s the in-house AV, sometimes thatโ€™s third-party. If budget is a primary concern, obviously, then we start looking towards third parties just because as a general rule, they tend to be less expensiveโ€.

โ€œBut sometimes, convenience is the overall majority thing that we need to be keeping in mind, that we want it all on the same master account. We want the equipment to be all right there. Things are going to be changing a lot on the fly. You and I have talked about this quite a bit on the road. Weโ€™ve talked about it on the show. Weโ€™ve done our traveling AV SmackDown, where you represent the third parties. I represent the in-house because itโ€™s been increasingly more difficult to get someone to represent the in-houseโ€, he adds.

PSAV Is Now Encore: A Branding Problem?

Brandt raises an interesting topic in relation to the PSAV is now Encore news. โ€œI think thereโ€™s no doubt in my mind even trying to stay relatively independent, relatively above the fray on this, that this is clearly, in my mind, an acknowledgment that they have a branding problemโ€, says Brandt. โ€œAnd I think that rings true because pretty much everyone that I know, almost every planner that I know of when they say the word PSAV, do it with a little bit of disdain in their mouth. Because I think it being such a large company, at some point or another, theyโ€™re going to have been burned by a PSAV crew, in one way or another. So, that tends to stick, that tends to linger. And so, this to me is kind of a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that their brand is tainted at this pointโ€.

โ€œIโ€™m looking at this from a purely business standpointโ€, adds Will. โ€œIf I was PSAV, I would be making the same move as well. But I think that when they are acquiring companies and becoming so large now that weโ€™ve talked about the word, the M word, monopoly, I think that it has to be in check at some point too. And we have to have these sorts of conversations and be hard about it. And the same way that I hope as well that any vendor would also want to keep my company in check. I donโ€™t think Iโ€™ll ever be as big as PSAV, but I would hope that everyone wants to hold each other accountableโ€.

PSAV Across The Board

โ€œI mean, we sit at all of these conferences. And all the time, they have people who are coming up to us saying they donโ€™t enjoy the brand, they donโ€™t like PSAV. And itโ€™s really kind of sad, I think, for them in some ways because there are good properties. I mean, there are parallels, similar in the same way that PSAV purchased Swank and then renamed everything PSAVโ€, says Will. โ€œBut I think that, in the same way, there are some good properties, and theyโ€™re surprised they do fantastic jobs. I know at certain scales of budgets, they do a phenomenal job, and Iโ€™ve talked to clients that said they do a great job on this sort of thingโ€.

โ€œBut the interesting thing is that it kind of sucks for them because itโ€™s all under that same brandโ€, he adds. โ€œSo, when everyone assumes PSAV, they assume itโ€™s the same across the board. But yeah, changing over to Encore. Interestingly enough too, is that Encore for a while was the other large in-house AV company across the United States. And they were the ones that honestly also got a lot of flack, mainly because they were the in-house, and they had very similar strategies to PSAV. And how they want to get people into contracts and kind of force you to work with them and things like that. But I think that they had a slightly more respectable brandโ€.

Re-invention

โ€œIf you think about it, if you Google the word PSAV, I bet you, there are hundreds of articles, people talking about it, reviews. I mean, look at their Glassdoor profile, things like thatโ€, says Will. โ€œThereโ€™s so much baggage related to that brand, theyโ€™re probably trying to sweep a lot of it under the rug. Because they know that they can just take this new kind of step forwardโ€.

โ€œAnd as someone who owns a company, I have rebranded and I will tell you, it makes people think itโ€™s a new company. Iโ€™m not going to lieโ€, he adds. โ€œWhen I went from being the DJ company back in the day to starting the AV company, and we went from a basic DJ company name to Endless, people thought it was a completely new company. People thought I was acquiring companies. They thought we were going to have way more services. We literally didnโ€™t change anything. We just changed our logo on our website and that was it. And not saying that we were a bad company. But peopleโ€™s perception when you change brands is, something new and crazy has happenedโ€.

PSAV is now EncoreWhy Encore?

โ€œLetโ€™s just try and think of this objectively. So, youโ€™ve got this handful of brands, they could have chosen any of them. I think they went with, honestly, a more global-sounding brandโ€, says Brandt. โ€œItโ€™s going to be something thatโ€™s translatable to something thatโ€™s kind of around the world, even though itโ€™s an English word. Youโ€™re not sitting there wondering, what does it stand for? Youโ€™re not wondering what its heritage is. Itโ€™s just a brand name, like any other brand name, like Apple or anythingโ€.

โ€œSo, the argument could be made, if youโ€™re trying to be devilโ€™s advocate, that of their handful of brands, it was the one that was already the most global. And the one that had kind of the most legs as far as rebranding, if you think about new logos and all the new business cards and all that kind of stuff. Just thinking about it from a branding standpoint can go a long wayโ€, he adds.

Other Discarded Possibilities

Will wonders something about the whole PSAV is now Encore conundrum. โ€œWhy not break PSAV into sub-brands? If youโ€™re having an issue where people are taking a bad experience they had and applying it to every experience, why not break in a sub-brand so then that way, you donโ€™t tarnish it? I almost feel like the customer is more the property because they donโ€™t do a lot of offsite stuff. Honestly, they got to make the properties happyโ€.

โ€œWhy not let the properties brand? And why not also just let it roll into the property, so if it goes poorly, itโ€™s a reflection on the property? So you donโ€™t taint the rest of it and lose your revenue potential on this other one. But Iโ€™m guessing it also has to do with some infrastructure things as well. That means you got to have individual email addresses for everybody. Iโ€™m sure thereโ€™s something beyond that as wellโ€.

โ€œTheyโ€™re always listed as a preferred vendor even when thereโ€™s no preference involved, even when the contracts are clear that you have to use themโ€, adds Brandt. โ€œWeโ€™ve done through this show and talked about some of the exclusivity contracts that weโ€™ve had to deal with when dealing with in-house AV, where there was no option to get out. We had to use them. I think then, you can kind of play it off of each other. So, having that extra level of disambiguation. To be able to say, โ€œOh, no, thatโ€™s not us.โ€ when things go southโ€.

Hidden Motives

โ€œWe had this conversation recently on the show about the difference between a production company and an AV company. Iโ€™m wondering if they want to move away from being known as the AV company as wellโ€, says Will. โ€œAnd so, they know that they just bought all these companies that do beyond AV and they know the Internetโ€™s the future. They know VRs, potentially future ARs, all of these technologies, in general, are wrapping together and the lines are blurredโ€.

โ€œMaybe theyโ€™re like, โ€œHow do we, A, get rid of AV out of our brand? How do we fix our brand from being tainted? And then, how do we move forward with a more generic name like just Encore? Thatโ€™s what we are.โ€ And you can slip event technology, AV production below it all day long, is very interesting. I think that shows that theyโ€™re probably trying to make that moveโ€.

The Future

In the light of the PSAV is now Encore news, Will and Brandt wonder what this means for the future. โ€œI do think itโ€™s kind of a curious choice to do brand. Because weโ€™re seeing more and more of this kind of umbrella companies. And they had an opportunity here to start doing that. It would enable them to still gobble up smaller companiesโ€, says Brandt. โ€œBut they could have kept the branding and just started redoing the logistics and the back-end stuffโ€.

โ€œAnd going to the fact that PSAV is an investment opportunity, that seems like a perfect opportunity for them to go down that road, where youโ€™ve got all of these little sub-brandsโ€, he adds. โ€œAnd so, you could have, like the hotels do, where youโ€™ve got Hilton and all of their various brands, but each one with its own niche. So, then you would have your event technology more focused thing, your more expo-focused, building on the Freeman brand, building on each of these individual brands. I think itโ€™s interesting, potentially a missed opportunity that they are going to try and bring all of these brands under one umbrellaโ€.

Advice For Planners

โ€œI think that in the next month or so, a lot more information is going to come out and weโ€™re going to see a lot of things happenโ€, says Will. โ€œBut I think the best thing for you to do as a planner is, always feel free to get the bid and just evaluate the vendors for more criteria than just price. I think thatโ€™s one of the best things that you can do because thereโ€™s a lot of factors that go into picking an AV company. And I donโ€™t think itโ€™s just price. Itโ€™s not who can get the equipment the cheapest. Itโ€™s not who pays their labor the least, that sort of thingโ€.

โ€œSo, I think the best thing you can do is just make sure that youโ€™re aware, youโ€™re an aware consumer, youโ€™re a knowledgeable consumer. And just have those great deep conversations and I think thatโ€™s where youโ€™ll be surprised the difference between different properties.  And just stay knowledgeable, continue to always learn and grow and I think that it will help you make the right decisions along the wayโ€.

Conclusions

And thatโ€™s a wrap on this weekโ€™s episode of the Event Tech Podcast about the breaking news of PSAV is now Encore! Hopefully, we offered you some tactical tips to make situations like this easier. Before you leave, make sure you check out our new sponsor, Event Leadership Insitute.

But donโ€™t just go to that website, check out eli4.me/etp for a 20% discount on individual courses, or a 20% off of that monthly membership. Join us again next week for even more event tech talk!

Resources

PSAV Announces Agreement to be Acquired by Blackstone

PSAVยฎ ANNOUNCES PLANS TO MOVE TO NEW MASTER BRAND

Together we brand: Behind every great merger, thereโ€™s a great merger branding strategy

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Brandt Krueger

Author Brandt Krueger

With over 20 years experience in the meetings and events industry, Brandt has spoken at industry events and seminars all over the world, been published in numerous magazines and websites, and teaches public and private classes on meeting and event technology and production. He provides freelance technical production services, and is the owner of Event Technology Consulting.

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