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Let’s stop and think about this for a moment… what do we want to achieve? We probably have something of value to communicate, something that’s worth learning about, something people should remember the next time they do this or that. But will they? Will they actually remember? Forget it! Most people don’t. Not unless you make them remember. And how do you do that?

There was this clever chap way back in 1885, called Hermann Ebbinghaus, who discovered “the exponential way of forgetting”. He argued that over time people forget what they learned, unless you remind them, time and again. Complexity of the material does play a role for sure, as does someone’s memory capabilities, but the general principle holds: if you remind people, they will remember more. A student learning from a school book will typically only remember 10% after 3-6 days. That means that 90% of what was learned is forgotten. But Ebbinghaus argued that the initial phase of “forgetting” is stronger than later phases. In other words, forgetting is not linear, it doesn’t continue simply till all is lost. Some parts of what was learned will be stored in long-term memory and this is very stable. So make sure that you capture more in the long-term memory.

Much of our forgetting occurs right away. That’s why many public speakers use the “tell, tell, tell” technique: in a presentation of, say, 30 minutes, they first explain what they are going to be talking about (1st “tell”), then they tell the story (2nd “tell”), and in the end they briefly repeat what they said (3rd “tell”). But one can use this technique also for the non-spoken word: repeated visuals stick longer in memory, written key words and key phrases that keep coming back will stick too.

So the lesson is simple: if you want people to remember what you communicate about, use techniques to repeat the message. And this of course slots in very nicely with consistent communication techniques that associations should use: if you pick a theme for your annual conference, make sure that all your marketing material refers to it. If you build the contents of your programme, explain how it links in with the theme. At the opening session, refer to it again. And so on. It will stick. And the same goes for key messages on your web site, ground-breaking articles in your journal, freshly published research, etc. Repeat the key messages.

People will remember. People will learn. And they will recognise your association as one that contributes to their development. And that’s an unforgettable experience…

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President

“Good communication skills outrank other core business competencies as the number one skill for corporate recruiters looking to hire MBA graduates” according to The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which runs GMAT testing for MBA applicants. They also report that this requirement has been ranking in the top three for the last few years: it’s not a fad. It shows how important this is; MBA’s are hired for their business education and whatever discipline they specialised in, yet the number one requirement is that they can stand up in front of a crowd and communicate. Because although communication knows many different aspects – ranging from the written word to video messages etc. all the way to oral presentations – but nothing is as powerful and has such an immediate impact as someone standing up in front of people to share their views with the audience, and to enter into a dialogue. People base much of their opinion on the person, and yes, on the whole organisation he/she represents, depending on how well they communicate.

Communication knows both form and substance. The best communicators master both. Sure, for a lecture one can prepare contents in advance but if you have to answer questions or defend a position in a debate you need to master your subject well enough to go beyond prepared statements. You have to address the audience, read the mood, pick up on issues that need further clarification, and rephrase and reformulate until you get the message across, and be credible and convincing. As to the form: in his book “Body Language: 7 Easy Lessons to Master the Silent Language” (Prentice Hall life, 2008) author John Borg argues that human communication consists of 93% body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves. Mastering “form” is therefore an essential part of successful communication.

Associations and non-profit organisations thrive on communication: it helps them to build their communities, to engage their members and to inspire people into action. Many of these organisations hold periodical meetings and congresses, where the activities of the organisation come to life and where the key people of the association interact, network… and communicate. Train your leadership in this essential skill. Look for staff that have this talent and assess communication capabilities during the recruitment process. The future success of your association depends on it. That speaks for itself…

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President

Indeed, it may be easy to lead a successful organisation: when everything is going fine, the results are good and the stakeholders are happy, a leader looks good. But did she do good? Did she use her time to get ready for the difficulties that lie ahead? Did she build a team with loyal, hard-working people who trust and support each other? Did she push the team even when things were going well? A bit of hardship goes a long way to building a strong team. Did she claim the spotlight and harvest all the compliments, or did she step back gracefully and acknowledge the contributions of her team? In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins explains that “level 5 Leadership” means that leaders should be humble, yet driven to do what’s best for the company. When facing problems they should look in the mirror (their own fault?), when facing success they should look out of the window (to the people who made it happen).

Building an organisation that is battle-ready also means attracting the right people and holding on to them, inspiring them and enabling them to do what’s best for your organisation, not just because you say so but because they are intimately convinced that this is what they are supposed to do. Jim Collins says: “If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could (…) The single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people”.

Not every leader is comfortable surrounding himself with strong people. “Of course people are ambitious”, says Peter Drucker, “but you run far less risk of having able people around who want to push you out than you risk by being served by mediocrity”.

So here you go, a few pearls of wisdom from some of the world’s great thinkers on management and leadership. Soon I’ll be off to the annual conference of ICCA, the International Congress and Convention Association, who do an excellent job in tracking the developments in international associations and non-profit organisations. They regularly publish fresh research about this market sector, and one of the conclusions that keeps popping up is that these associations have – on average – weathered the crisis much better than their corporate counterparts. A lot of association leaders seem to be getting it right, and that’s a reassuring thought!

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President

• Agencies will move from providing audience insight to providing audience access. The best agencies will either help create or manage customer communities for their clients. They will also create client specific media channels — whether it is Twitter feeds or Internet radio — which can be used to deliver specific campaigns.
• Agencies will move from creating messaging and brand image to creating content at every stage of the customer experience. You can see this all around you as agencies develop everything from mobile applications to branded entertainment for their clients. For successful agencies, these will not be one-off novelties. They will reinvent their business model so that they share many of the same attributes as publishers and production companies.
• In 2010, social-media hysteria will turn to social-media cynicism. Banish the words “start a dialogue” and “authenticity” from your vocabulary. The winning agencies will develop social-media applications that provide real utility to clients and their customers.
• Instead of creating integrated marketing campaigns, forward-thinking agencies will integrate all the significant marketing platforms. Social media meets CRM meets search meets ad servers. Agencies with the technology savvy to work across all these disciplines will have the decided edge.
• The holy grail for agencies will remain the same. Can they influence business results? Campaign measurement will become an automated commodity. The great agencies will adapt the right analytic tools to tackle fundamental business problems.

What do you think?

Sebastien Tondeur
CEO – Corporate Division

So who’s to blame? There is a definite trend towards holding people responsible all the way to the top, and for an association event this may mean the Executive Director. It’s not just a matter of blaming the supplier who built the faulty electrical installation, or the one who provided the buses for the transfer. Did the external meeting planner you hired to organise the event check that installations were properly secured? That the number of emergency exits was sufficient for the number of people in the room? That the signs were correct and visible at all times? That the bus company had their vehicles checked in line with legal requirements? And then there is the association employee: did she make sure that the meeting planner who was selected for the job included such checks in their processes? And did the Executive Director of the association hire a qualified employee to manage the event on behalf of the association, and was she properly briefed? As the proverb goes: success has many fathers while failure is an orphan.

And so, associations would do well to make Health & Safety checks an integral part of their event management processes. Individuals involved in the organisation of events must be able to demonstrate that every reasonable precaution has been taken to make the event safe. My Health & Safety Manager taught me that it is important to properly document such precautions so that a paper trace of the efforts exists in case of problems. Key people should have the proper training that enables them to take informed decisions about activities and organisational aspects under their responsibility. As the end-user of the services of many suppliers you are responsible for checking these things. Or you hire a professional to do this for you, and you brief them properly about their obligations and responsibilities.

Proper training and the right processes go a long way to avoiding unnecessary problems at a later stage. More and more associations hire external experts to train their staff and review their event management processes. It’s a healthy approach and a safe thing to do…

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President

Associations compete. They compete for the attention of their existing- and potential members and stakeholders. In the world of marketing, people talk about a concept called “share of wallet”, which is loosely described as the amount of the customer’s total spending that a business captures through the products and services that it offers. In the world of associations I like to talk about “share of watch”: the amount of time an individual will spend being involved with an association. Associations compete for time. In a piece of research we did for one association we tried to establish which other associations their members were involved in. The findings were that although there was a spread between different associations, people typically got more deeply involved in one or two associations and maybe they picked up a few things of a third one, but that was it. So any association would have two clear objectives if it doesn’t want to lose the competitive battle: (a) increase your market share and be amongst the two or three associations that members of your target audience are interested in, and (b) increase your “share of watch” (the time you get) compared to the other one or two associations. Some marketers say that it is often cheaper to increase the share of a customer’s wallet a business receives than increasing market share. So: fighting for “share of watch” is important.

ICCA – the International Congress & Convention Association – is an absolute authority in the field of associations, with a very large database containing lots of information about where international associations hold their congresses. Their 2008 research identified some 800 new, regularly occurring events. ICCA CEO Martin Sirk was quoted as saying that “many of these events have been created as offshoots of established larger association events to service regional or precise subject-specific needs, generating new competition in the marketplace”. There you go. New competition. And in addition, the trends as we see them are that associations move more and more to professional management standards, that their stakeholders want value for money and “return on investment” (ROI), and of course money plays an important role in all this as it provides them with the means to hire the best resources.

I cannot totally disagree with the frowning lady in the audience: there is an important human element in associations (always has been, always will be) and here associations sometimes serve as an example for companies: people matter. But with only so much time available and with an increasing number of activities to choose from, people will become pickier about their choices. Make sure they give you all the time they can spare.

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President

The evolution of the Advertising industry

1. Proliferation: agencies built on name of a person (Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Jacques Segala, Saatchi & Saatchi …the name of the creative leader) – 70s
2. Consolidation: when advertising went from creative led to finance led (IPOs), seeking margin improvement/volume efficiencies – 80s
3. Diversification: integration of adjacent services to keep the total customer-spend in one company (PR, sponsorships, branding, direct marketing …) – 90s
4. Integration: start of the concept of “integrated communication” or “holistic approach”: trying to keep customers total budget by “selling strategy” (and most groups span off their Media Buying because of the commission model) – OOs

Today “it is all about the ROI/ROO”. The meeting industry must evolve from commission to fees (we are a professional service industry after all) AND accountability is important in the service industry so we MUST be paid on performance as well!

The RACE ahead:

1. Keeping ahead: how to keep “ahead“ of the collaborative/web2.0 revolution? what is a trend? what will stay? … “People have first life before they have a second life”. Gilmore talks about the experience economy, other about “game generation”. Community experiences are the next big thing – we are social animals after all.
2. Competition for talent: BIG competition for talent, we are a professional service firm our resource is human capital. Limited resources of creative and passionate people – work-life balance is a challenge: not a 9 to 5 job! in this industry.
3. Search for efficiencies: BIGGER companies (in the future we will see 6 big event companies: 2 will arise from Meetings and Events, 2 from Advertising Group and 2 from Travel Groups)
4. Building a Brand: brands are destination for security and performance.
5. More strategy, more performance: Fee model based on performance. We must work toward guaranteeing results before the program.

What do you think?

Sebastien Tondeur
CEO – Corporate Division

Getting Results-Oriented: You need leads. You need sales. You need your teams! Transition to an entirely result-oriented event portfolio, a move that has saved millions – and generated millions.

Fewer But Bigger Events – Going Big… But Going Smart:  In this economy, you can’t do it all. Prioritizing or consolidating events that are worthwhile, meetings avoidance and executing them requires a solid balance of strategy and planning.

Portfolio Planning: To succeed in a down economy, event marketers have to re-energize their portfolio planning and revise it. Align your portfolio with changing customer, channel and employee touchpoints.

Have you noticed significant changes in the way events are addressed? Engage with us in a strategic dialog.

Sebastien Tondeur
CEO – Corporate Division

And that’s what it’s probably all about: choices. The Hanover Research Council published a study some 4 months ago which explained how companies may take advantage of a recession. Many consultancies emphasize the possibilities open to companies in a downturn, they say. A Bain & Company study found that “more than a fifth of companies in the bottom quartile in their industries jumped to the top quartile during the last (1990-91) recession”. Wow. And more than 70% sustained those gains through the next boom cycle. And a study of the 2000-2001 recession by Boston Consulting Group found that “30% of the companies that had been among the top 10 players in their respective sectors dropped off that list, and fewer than 10% of those that dropped off ever made it back”. So whereas a rising tide lifts all boats, when the tables turn some companies just know better how to make the most of it, and how to hold on to that advantage. And although different companies do this in different ways, the common denominator seems to be that they all seem to focus on determining exactly what it is they are good at (and what not), and then act on this and set absolute priorities. They definitely don’t try to do everything at once, and high on the list are actions that create value quickly. But they stay flexible, and don’t persist on just one chosen strategy which may seem OK in the short turn: they re-evaluate and re-adapt.

“Do you have to lower your prices?” asked Laure. “We heard that at the moment there is a lot more price pressure than usual”, she said. It is undoubtedly true that quite a few clients don’t have the usual budgets at their disposal, and so this may seem like a logical reaction. But here again it is largely a matter of choice: we have learned to buy better and so the pressure from the client procurement departments is largely passed on to the next level. And although price pressure is certainly a fact in the commodity section, services with an added value or specifically designed & tailored for a client resist much better to these pressures. So as long as you are absolutely clear on what you are good at and then sell that, you can earn your money.

“Are you hiring?” Laura asked carefully… “Yes we do”, I said. “But for specific positions in specific sectors; we focus on confirmed projects and we are careful not to spend money before we earn it”. I explained that we had seen a nice pick-up on business recently, but with short lead times so our visibility for the middle- and longer term remains uncertain. “But please do send me your CV’s”, I said with a big smile. After all, the tide may turn before you know it and those companies ready to act immediately will have an advantage. And I just met three very smart and promising talents, so I want to be ready: they just might be the right people for the right jobs…

Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President