How to differentiate your event in a sea of sameness

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Okay, cool. People are a lot more calculated about am I going to make this trip to in person? Am I going to sit on this virtual thing all day. Like we're heroes! We've found it. This is what events are all about. We got it done in the nick of time. Welcome everyone to a new episode of the Event Effect. My name is Merijn Van Buuren. I'm the founder of Event Mender and today your host for the Event Effect. I'm joined by Martin, a.k.a. DJ Graffiti and Kathryn. One of the very most inspiring event marketers that I came across, both actually my very good LinkedIn friends and in order to get to know each other a little bit better, we start off with the question how did you get started in the event industry? MARTIN Maybe you would like to start this one off. All right. Thank you so much, Merijn, that is a serious question with a long answer. I'm not going to give you the full rundown, but we'll say I've been a deejay and a marketer since 1997. I started in college and I deejayed for a while. Professionally, I kind of worked my way up to opening up for big name artists like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, Beyonce, Eminem. So I was doing lots of concerts I started to travel, and I realized, Wait a minute, hold up this travel stuff all the time is not for me. I leaned into running a marketing agency for the next ten years and then only because of COVID. And I was always deejaying throughout that entire time, but it was more of a very well-paying hobby, and I wasn't doing it full time. Then COVID hit, and now I'm back to deejaying full time and I've kind of merged my two worlds. So deejaying and marketing have come together. And that brings us to Present Day, where I'm doing lots of enterprise corporate events on the deejay side of things, and I want to give a shout out to Mahoganey Jones, who is a event professional who really invited me into this whole event profs community. So shout out to Mahoganey. Awesome. Well, thanks to her, indeed, because it's a pleasure to have you here. I think the combination between your deejay background and the marketing background is a very big value add for the event industry. Kathryn, how did you actually got started in the event industry and event marketing? I will say too, you're definitely not getting off the hook without some light behind the scenes Snoop Dogg stories or something. I mean, there's there's going to be some follow up there. Just dropping some heat like that. Yeah. So it's interesting to think about events. So I do have to say, when I first got my taste of wanting to be in events, I was a kid of the nineties. And do you remember when they launched the Victoria's Secret fashion show and it was, well, somebody would probably remember, but it was like a really, really big deal. And it was broadcast on. It was it was like celebrity culture and it was sort of like bringing fashion to the mainstream. And I remember watching that and thinking, oh, my gosh, what what is this? This is so cool. And the build up to it. And so it's just funny kind of reflecting on that thing like, oh, okay, that's, that was probably the first thing that enticed me. But my very, very, very first internship in the event space was for a television show that people might remember called The Weakest Link, where she was like, Goodbye, I loved that. Right! like remember, it was like. She was so mean and I never got to meet the host, but I was like taping cables down and, you know, making copies and and doing it. But I, I, you know, working on some of their, their events and sort of how they were, you know, bringing in contestants. And it was really interesting. But then I went on to work for a local true events and and publishing agency here in Minneapolis. We were doing bridal events, corporate events, group tour events, and it was really interesting. I was on the sales side at that point, but it also trickled over into operations and then PR heavily and I stayed sort of in the sales space for a long time, creating partnerships, a lot of bespoke events and helping clients design for them, but then also measure how they would perform. And that's what kind of gave me the interest in marketing is they didn't want anything to happen just in an echo chamber. It wasn't just enough to for the event to have happened or for them to have a big sponsorship or a presence at the show they wanted. What's the pre pre-event exposure? What's the post, how is this all working? How is it performing? How we're measuring? And it just kept getting more and more into that. And then that became sort of my natural progression into that marketing and I've never looked back. I love it. Awesome. Such a different background here and I love that I have the both of you because I feel like, especially in the next topics where we dive a bit more into your day to day life, we're going to have a bunch of different experiences that really enlighten what it is to be in event marketing Martin, to start off with you, I would love to hear like what is kind of the trends that you're currently seeing or what is going on in event marketing? Well, I would say probably the biggest trend that I'm seeing is everybody trying to figure out what's going on right now and what is the current status of events in general. And it's not that everything is, you know, bad, but we have we've had COVID, right? That is still kind of lingering and hanging on a little bit. So you've got the return to in-person events and maybe the numbers aren't quite the same as what they were prior to COVID. But then also we've got virtual events where the numbers aren't quite what they were during COVID, right? And so everybody's like, where is this all going to settle out? And from a marketing standpoint, I see a lot more focus on prioritizing. Why should people come to these events? Right. We really need to because we're seeing numbers dropping and it's not just come back in person because you haven't seen people in so long. Right. And people are a lot more calculated about am I going to make this trip to in person? Am I going to sit on this virtual thing all day? Right. So the trends for me and is the industry trying to figure out how do we bring people in and make sure that they know the true value that we're providing? And how do we make sure that it's worth the time that they're contributing? That's probably the biggest trend. And I'll I'll pass it over to Kathryn to see what you're saying. I get it, though. I mean, that what you said, the whole feeling of we're all aware and awakened to the fact that, you know, our audiences are behaving differently and we need to be really mindful of that. And plan for that is absolutely the foundation of what everyone is is seeing. And I would say really specifically within event marketing, I like to say there's there's probably never been a better time to be in event marketing. Quite frankly. It's there's so much opportunity around creativity. To me, that is the biggest shift that I've seen in terms of how campaign management is going. Event marketers are also probably now product marketers instead of going, okay, well, what I own is launching registration. You know, maybe we'll help with some reg setup. We've got a 30 week campaign registration is going to open all the way through the the thank you or NPS or reminder emails and and that's kind of our plan and we've got our same price breaks and there was never a shortage of work to do, but there was a bit of a formula perhaps to it. And sometimes when you get to scale in a business, that can be great. But it became it became the reset where we said, okay, there there's new, new event format. So are you leaning to in-person events? That is the space that that we're going all in on right now. But in-person virtual and hybrid, you've got options, you've got community building as well. But for marketers who are usually owning the revenue and the volume number for events and then taking all of that through launch plans, go to market keynote announcements and what you're managing for all of your channel strategy, you get to change the way that you're doing things because with COVID too, with with so much more digital communication and advertising, everything really did become oversaturated. That landscape is changing so much email communication change. If you think of sort of all of the different channels that you have to win on and so you have to look at different channels. You have to look at how you're communicating through your own channels, and you cannot. If you ever do a SWOT analysis or a mapping exercise to any of the competitors in your space or in any adjacent spaces, it's very easy. You'll probably combine everything together and go, Oh my gosh, we're all kind of saying the same things. And so the chance to win is by saying something different, doing something different, not just being reliant on a lot of the same levers that we've always had to pull, which is around speaker announcements. Those, those are big speaker announcements and price breaks, big part of event marketing strategies. But the pieces that you can pull forward in terms of how are we really thinking through evoking those those feelings of connection and memories and emotion and how do we get people to to make decisions earlier or or in in a new way? How do we test new channels? Are we relying on, you know, we as marketers, depending on where you sit within the marketing function, you get really tied to attribution. Where are we getting everyone from and what channels are converting? I've also seen more of an openness to brand and kind of doing the things that you need to do to build a moat around your event as opposed to just living in that direct response channel. So for anyone, whether they're in social teams, product teams, brand teams, general specialists, it's a really exciting time because everyone's just willing to shake, shake things up. I love it. Is that for you? Do you recognize that as well Martin? Yes, of course. Everything Kathryn said, you know, exactly that was supposed to be a joke. You are supposed to laugh because that was such an amazing answer that Kathryn just gave is like, how do I even touch that? Oh, I mean, how do I even come close, but so I would say my perspective is a little bit different because although I am in events and I'm an event professional, I'm not the one who's generally behind the scenes of actually putting on the events. Right? So I'm watching it somewhat from a distance as a marketer, so I'm still able to kind of see and then I'm involved in it, but I'm not the person who's running the campaigns or looking at the data when it comes back from the campaigns. I'm moreso see the effects of it, right? So when I get there, I'm there to deejay the event and I'm saying hmm attendance is a little light. What didn't happen, you know, and what did I see at this event that didn't so much happen at that event? Right. So I think, like I said, everything that Kathryn said, I was right here for it. I think silos are coming down in general right. And so now we're we're less at a point where you can just have this one little focus where you can just be like, all right, my job is to just get people to my event. Now it's like, well, what is okay, you get people to your event, but is it actually converting into something after the fact? Right. So it's not just about your one little piece that you have your hands around. It's about the whole and how all of those pieces fit together. I'm even seeing that within the event itself. My role used to be I was at a the afterparty or I was at the, you know, the conference celebration. But now it's it's much more likely that I'll be doing little bits and pieces throughout the course of the event, tying everything together. And I have talking points that are driving lead generation, right? Whereas before I was like, just get over there and play some good music so we can party. So I think event professionals, especially event marketers, are called to bring everything together and realize how are all of these pieces working together in ways that may not have been that that that they may not have been prior to, you know, 2020, 2022. Yeah. Can I, can I just build on that is so spot on and actually your perspective as someone who is because it's so easy to get myopic when you sort of get inside the four walls of an organization and the fact that you have the perspective on being a speaker, if you're like, Yeah, it's probably a lot of the communication, you know, working with the organizers in that way, you know, performing throughout these events, seeing at such scale how many that you're partnering with them on and then also getting the view of an attendee. But I feel like your perspective of Oh, which events are light and which feel really well attended, like the playing field that you have to see with that, I guarantee you you're seeing all the trends of like, oh, well, interestingly, they did this really well. There was a lot of social referral pick up where like here was, here was the follow up plan and like here's how it turned into a piece of content or like a follow up campaign or, oh, this was pulled into social graphics, or then this became a smaller round, right? Like weaving that, that thread through. So it's, it's interesting. I would say it's hard to have perspective on events unless you are taking the time at some point in your cycles to sit in all those different roles and see what it feels like to be a sponsor, to be a speaker, to be, you know, to to attend an event and to actually walk through that. And it just gives you the visibility and probably a little bit more of the empathy that we all need to pull out and have a little bit more context sometimes because we're just like hammering out the to do lists every day. I couldn't agree more like some real life experience, as in actually being in that situation. I think that gives you the best perspective and also helps you to add that as a more in-depth level to whatever you're doing with event marketing. With that, I was quite curious like, can you give us some real life examples of what you're currently doing in events or what you came across recently, maybe regarding to what we just spoke about on the trends? Martin Can you start off? And that is a great question. So mainly I need to take some time to think about it. I can talk about what I'm seeing in events. I want to make sure that we don't lose the the topic that we were just talking about. And I can kind of tie things in. So I would say just in general, what I'm seeing most and this is being driven by data is the idea of, I would say, shorter sessions. That's one thing that is that has definitely been that has come out of the data of events. So how how long are attendees actually sitting in a particular session and how much are they taking in from that session has caused shorter sessions across all of events. And that's not that's not necessarily a marketing thing. But I think it's a function of the data that we've collected from events that is then come back into events and we realize that if I don't make people sit through an hour and a half, then maybe I can keep them over the course of the entire event, right? So if I'm trying to sell things at my event is more likely that if I have a faster paced environment, I will get to the point of actually selling things at my events. And so I think I need a little bit more time. I want to pass it over to Kathryn I need a little bit more time to really give good thought and I have lots of examples, but strangely I realize I'm on the outside looking in when it comes to the marketing of the events, right? I'm a marketer and I do my own events and marketing and I always have something to say to contribute to somebody else after I watch what they're doing. But in terms of event marketing advice, I'm going to leave that to Kathryn and then I'll maybe will piggyback after you drop some points in there. I got to tell you, I'm going to be looking for your LinkedIn follow up where you like audit the best marketing that you see to be like this works. This doesn't work because that perspective is insanely valuable. Yeah. I think there's two ways to look at sort of the the landscape right now. One is the product and the event design side. So what, Martin was saying, what is actually happening at the at the event and this could be I mean, maybe some of the examples I'll give will be in person, but this could be virtual. So what are you designing that is your product? How are you going to fulfill your audience's needs? Has your audience changed? Are you clear on that? Are you having, you know, growth sectors that your designing for? What what is your balance? Are you leaning more into networking? I would argue that organizers should be a lot more intentional about networking. Audiences are going to hold you on the hook for that. They cannot just walk into a ballroom going like, Oh, okay, well, let me just, needle in a haystack and find who I should talk to here. So there is the there's the design piece. And that has to be and hopefully we've all we've all gotten to this place. But you have to be joined up on that because marketers have to know it's probably going to be designed by your subject matter experts, by your editorial, by your content teams who could be from the industry or clearly they're spending all of their time, you know, planning for that programing, deciding what those somatic outputs should be. Are they doing an intentional stage design? Are your stages changing or the names of your stage is changing? What are the content formats or are they shorter? Are they more so? So that piece is critically important in your in your entire team. And certainly your marketing team needs to know that, be joined up on it, have input on that, and then you have the actual amplification. Okay, marketers, we're going to go do our thing. We we truly, fundamentally understand the product and the roadmap. So we know the timing of when we can announce what what those big pieces are, when we should sort of drip that out. Also, any marketer is going to be able to sit in those content sessions if you're having meetings or if they're doing deep dives that they're going and they're going to go like, Oh my gosh, that is fire like that. We have to market. This is really this is really interesting. And oh, by the way, we've got heatmaps on our Web sites that are showing us this. And, oh, by the way, we've got, you know, feedback coming in through these couple of other channels or our, you know, our feedback mechanisms where people are really curious about this. And so so that communication is really, really important because those they're going to be able to point out the pieces that you just you just know are going to land really well in market. And then in terms of the actual campaigns and creative execution, that's where your teams really need to light up and get excited. So a couple of things that we worked on. If I just think of sort of the day to day in the last the last couple of weeks we for money 2020 which is the event brand that I'm working on, we're global work, a fintech brand. It's a really cool, sort of edgy, fun industry and that's our that's our outlook for the brand as well. But we launched, we launched a key note and, you know, some of our thought process around that, it was sort of saying, oh, it's the former godfather of of of PayPal. And so we did a whole thematic launch around that sort of playing off with copy, getting everything teed up in terms of graphics, how we wanted to weave that through all of our channels. So that was one of the big campaigns we how we're thinking about our event. And I think it's funny because this is just where we're. Martin started as sort of in the changing content format. So instead of doing tracks we decided to do, we do lenses, which means how are we looking at our industry? How are we looking at it differently? What is the lens that we're using? And so one of them is offense and defense, right? You know, we're going through an interesting economic time. And if we think about that head and so what is what does that mean and how does that that play into it? And so we did a series of videos that we thought were sort of interesting in addressing what's going on in the world right now in a fresh way. And it's someone going hey, you know, Hey, Siri, what does it mean to be on offense or defense when you get you know, these my phone is going, Siri is going up. No Siri, I don't need you right now. Actually. Who knows what she is going to respond with. Always listening. Always always listening. Everything's always listening. I mean, that ad retargeting is very real. So we created some really cool video treatments. Those those are in market. A lot of them just sort of getting under the hood if anyone is you know, we're doing a lot of AB testing with different creative assets because the data piece is so important and you go, oh my gosh, with these really meaty weeks where we're putting out a lot of volume and it gives you the opportunity to to test and try new things in a really interesting way. So we tend to think of things product first. What is the subject matter expertize telling us, do we have any data that aligns with that? And then also with after you get all that, then start to get really, really creative and plan out your campaigns and your launches. And that's when it gets really fun. Awesome. So many already like real life good examples. Love it. MARTIN Did you had some time to think it over and share some of your life experiences? So definitely I had time to think things over and I can come back with some real life experiences. But that's I mean, I just realized the difference is I'm a marketer, right? I'm in events, but I'm not really an event marketer. That's why I don't have like tons of ideas because I'm not sitting around thinking about How are we going to best market this event? I show up as the deejay at the event, but that doesn't mean I can't add value to this discussion because I told you I needed to pass it over to Kathryn And then when it came back I would have some heat for us. But I have become a brand in and of myself. Right? And I'm marketing myself to the event marketers right to show. And so some of the best examples that I can give is what I'm doing personally to get things out there, to spread the word about deejay graffiti and my Kathryn said, your events are also brands in and of themselves. You need to figure out what the mode is. You need to figure out how you can push them out there. So I'll tell you, one of the things that has become most, you know, useful for me in promoting DJ Graffiti as a brand, and it's been my LinkedIn presence, but specifically creating content on LinkedIn that isn't just sell, sell, sell, right? and or isn't annoying, right? So I think for a long time I didn't put out posts saying I, I just worked with this client, I just worked with this client because I was like, what value is that really offering? I just did an event with this client. But then the way that I found to do it and actually add value was while I'm at the event, I look over the event itself and then I say, okay, great, what is this client doing that is special, that's unique, that now when I add that into the picture, it actually adds value. So any advertising, any content piece that you put out there should be intrinsically valuable in and of itself, right? So not just for you to preach like, hey, buy this thing, hey, buy this thing. It's like, Hey, I'm giving you this value. And so now you had a reason for reading this piece of content or this advertisement, and then that is going to drive you towards, you know, that's going to drive you towards attending the event or that's going to drive you towards going back to watch the video and dig in. So an example of that that worked really well was: I deejayed, the very first in-person event for Amazon and then another one for AWS when they came back from COVID. So it was a hybrid event where about 300 to 500 people in person and then broadcast it to 100,000 plus people each time. And so I came and talked about how there was a strong focus on including both audiences, and that is something that I hadn't really seen prior to COVID, right? Because a hybrid event actually was we're here in person and we put some cameras out so people who aren't attending can tune in. Right. That's what hybrid events used to be in large. And I mean, I'm speaking to what I experienced. I'm sure some people were much more in-depth about it, but especially I know Kathryn was because I can hear a voice that you don't leave any t uncrossed or I undotted. But for the vast majority of events that I experienced, it was kind of like we put some cameras up around the room and then that's the virtual event experience. But now it's like, okay, are the people who are attending virtually, are they engaged? Are we? Because we now see that we have to break down the silo of just like we're having an in-person event. And you were just a second class citizen who gets to watch. Now it's like, wait a minute, we can't do that because people watching virtually will actually feel left out. And if we're all driving toward the same goal of whatever the goal of the event is, then we have 100,000 people watching virtually and only 300 people in this room. So we definitely can't let the people who are watching and not here be the ones who are left out or feeling second class. So that being said, I made a post about that and that was my biggest post ever. Of course, Amazon commented on the post, but over a million views on that post, tons of comments and everything. But it's because I made a post and it wasn't just if I just said, Hey, I deejayed for Amazon. My network may have, you know, enjoyed that. But the fact that I actually brought in what Amazon did, well, now all of Amazon's people shared that to their network. The Amazon itself shared it and amplify that post, and that's why it really took off. So that's that's probably the best example that I can give you, Let me tell you. That's amazing. Can I add one thing really quick? Because I think you said something really powerful. Well, first of all, I was going to say kudos to you for being an example of saying like, I want to think on that because like, none of us just ask for time to process. And it's like that's that, that was so powerful and amazing what you came back with. But what you said was as a personal brand, personal brands have been at the forefront of exeptional marketing, and that's what B2B should be picking up on that. But realizing how people actually want to consume content on LinkedIn, being able to just say things in sort of a like a fresh new way and thinking of yourself as a media company, right? Not having everything be about just sell, sell, sell the same call to action, which is where as marketers we fall very easily into that trap. And as Martin was saying, when you think content first value first in your LinkedIn is amazing, so I’d incourage anyone to go check it out and follow because it will, because it's full of great tips and it's entertaining and there's there's clips and you know, it's thinking of it as a media first instead of just coming from, you know, I really want to I want to post something, sell something, refresh a dashboard. It gives you the perspective to to zoom out and think about it in a way of how audiences actually want to consume content, which is that they do they want to they want to learn. They want to be entertained. They want to be native, to the platform that they're on. And so I just think that's a great a great example because personal brands should absolutely be often looked at as some of the best modeling for how to run your social campaigns and how to communicate and how to create content. Without a doubt. I love it like this conversation, there's so much like real points that I think partially because of COVID, but also, yeah, it is just inherent to even marketing, right? It's really about the audience. And even if it's business to business, it's still a human that you are actually reaching out to. And in that sense, I think it's really powerful that that is what you're currently dealing with. I really love that in general. Just to kind of quickly recap, I think it's very much the bigger picture really came in. I'm not sure if I kind of extracted that correctly of what you were saying, mainly Kathryn is that. Yeah, right now it's not just the quote unquote small part that you used to do, but it's really taking everything into account and really making sure that it's value driven, not just selling. I really, really like those inputs in that regards. I assume that with all the experience you both have, you probably have some nice either horror or funny stories that you would like to share and very curious, maybe, Kathryn, you can start this one off. Oh, gosh. Okay. Sure. I do have I do have a funny story. So this was back it was a number of years ago, but it was still when for in-person events or conference and trade show where you printed a trade show guide. Right. And they were really, really big deal. I mean, now everything's sustainable and we're we're paperless. And I mean, you would spend weeks and weeks preparing these. Every exhibitor had a listing sometimes with like hire a designer just to do this. And they were really, you know, a really big a big output. So get to the event and no one can find the the the trade show guide ship shipment 10,000 trade show guide. So, you know, and it's like, oh, we've got the tracking. How can we can't find anything you're looking so we've everyone combing the entire Las Vegas convention center looking at every nook and cranny at some point someone even going into the walk in freezer, which ironically what they found in there was linens that were missing from an exhibitor shipment. We have no clue how that happened. So that's all that find the linens for one exhibitor. Very odd. Keep looking, keep looking. It turns out they were shipped instead of using our the premium label where you go to the dock and you track everything. They just delivered them right to the front door of the convention center, which is a no no. And they were just in some random room. So find them, have them go up to the show office. And we, you know, we're like like we're heroes. We've found it. This is what events are all about. We got it done in the nick of time. We'll set them out in reg right before it happens. Cut open the box. You take out like the first one, this glossy, beautiful four color. Hold it up and it's got, you know, the city name on top and then the year, and then the logo. So hold it up and we all look it at it, look at it and it says “Las Veegs”. So there was a little bit of a typo, a little bit of a typo. So anyways, there we go. That's what we had to work with. So we spend all this time finding all of these trade show guides. And that was just how they had to roll out and live and learn. And you come up with a little bit of a tighter, you know, proofing process, like make sure that your manifests are all that there's always like, you know, pieces to come out of it. But that was one where yeah, we might have celebrated a little bit, a little bit too early on that one. I can imagine. But I'm sure that your attendees would remember that actually, you know, a typo, even though it might not be the best from your perspective, it's something that stands out to someone. Maybe they had a good laugh about. It makes it extra memorable. So it becomes like, Well, we got to roll with it that moment, you know, it's showtime. Absolutely. Martin can you share either a horror or a funny story from maybe a performance you did or something you experienced? Well. Yeah. I've got a I've got a horror story that's not too far off from from Kathryn's. But when I first got into the kind of event props community, right. So I decided the way to introduce what I'm doing to the community was to do a virtual event platform tour, right? So I set up four events over the course of four weeks and went to various different virtual event platforms to do a DJ graffiti party and have everybody in the chat going crazy. I'm playing music, taking requests, and it was awesome, but. In promoting that. All right. I will put all I'm going to tell all of my you know, stuff I shouldn't really be telling and shouldn't be putting this out there. But I pulled a list from I bought a not even buy a list, but I scraped a list from somewhere, had a list of all of these event planners that I'm inviting. Then I go in my email program, I put my email. Email looks perfect, right? I test the email comes into my inbox, the personalization is there, it's on point, then I send it out. The email went out to every single person and it's like, Hi Martin and invited inviting them to the event. So it looks perfect to me, but it was not perfect to all of them. And so like here I am, you know, kind of touting the fact that I'm this marketer who is a deejay and I'm bringing my marketing expertize together with deejaying, and I'm sending a horribly personalized email that sends my name to everybody. But still people turned up. We still had a great time at the event. And honestly, I mean, I think I got a couple like mean messages back in response, but nobody actually hit me up and clowned me like they should have and said. Why did you send me this email that was like this? But but really, like, I just want to tell everybody, just keep going, right? You're going to make mistakes, right? Just just keep going. Keep at it. It's not that one mistake that's going to hold you back. It's the everything as a whole. And is it okay if I have one? I have one thing that I really want to hear from Kathryn. And I don't know if we have time for it, but I would love to throw this in here. So what I have been seeing in the industry as a whole is wide groups of people that get caught up on whatever the new buzz theme or topic is. Right for me as a marketer, I've always tried to think holistically in terms of what is our top goal, and then how do all of these bits and pieces of everything fit into that goal, right? And so I think what I've seen in the industry is everybody is like, okay, it's about belonging right now. It's about empathy right now it's about engagement right now. And then everybody gets kind of on the buzz word and going in that direction. But sometimes whatever that thing is is not really that important for you, right? If if all people need in order to take the action that you want them to take is to watch the content that maybe networking isn't that important, right? I mean, maybe it is. Maybe community and network is important, but maybe it's not right. And so I would love to ask Kathryn, how do you come up with the KPIs that you put out there for any particular event? And how do you make sure that those KPIs are tracking the things? It's not just a vanity metric, you know, but it's actually tracking the things that are going to move the needle. And so that's my question. Yeah, well, it's a really good question because if you're just jumping on whatever the semantic trend is of the moment and assuming that that serves your audience and serves your customers well and is exactly what your brand needs, that that very well could not be the case because absolutely every single vertical is going to be different. Every single audience base is is going to be different. You can have and they only care about, you know, their continuing education credits. And, you know, networking is not where you're going to win. There's other audiences where they're going to say, oh, I'm here for technology. I'm here for a meeting set up. And you really need to make sure that you have a mobile app or a matchmaking or you need to lean in on AI functionality because what their expectations are around that as opposed to fun evening parties, that's just not that's a nice to have so but one you're exactly right and it's easy if you're just kind of, you know, refreshing LinkedIn all the time or maybe joining certain events, what you do! So it's like all those things you're probably the best, like trend hunter, you probably be like, Oh my God, I was on, you know, 12 events. And last week I heard everyone mention this and it's like, but then you're doing events, you're like, well, I don't know, no one really cared about that. So that's really insightful. First and foremost. But the way that you stay connected to what your North Star needs to be is you have to have a level of subject matter expertize in your organization, and you have to have a way to connect to active customers, and you have to have a way to connect to prospects through potentially a research arm or audience insights. Because customers are right, they're going to have a very different relationship with you and you can get a lot of feedback coming through that. But that's going to be very different than sort of markets where you're underserved or why people aren't opting in to your experience and why that's that's capping growth. So you it's good to kind of have your finger on the pulse of, oh, I think a good example is like everyone talks about, oh, okay, well, maybe we want to build a community or we want to build a subscription base or we want it, you know, everyone's doing they're doing business three, six, five, not just two days out of the year. And so we need to be we need to be that that resource for them. But if you look at the industry and go, wow, actually, okay, we audit it from a competitive landscape and it's completely saturated. There's market leaders that are doing a phenomenal job. There's not room for us to insert ourselves in terms of a content platform. We also talk to our our customers and interestingly enough, their what they're trying to solve is X, which is nothing to do with us just producing more content. We could we could actually achieve that two days out of the year. We just added, you know, this networking functionality at our event or did this for our alumni, my base or our enterprise clients. And that's the thing that they want. And then you also go, Oh, okay, well, we're going to do a level of surveying audience insights and we're going to see where more broadly, other than relatively globally speaking, small subset of buyers who are our customers, what they're thinking, the challenges that they're tackling. And then you get that and go, Oh, okay, so our customers are here. More broadly speaking, this bigger subset, this is this is what's on their mind. These are the challenges that they're trying to solve. This is you know, what they're interested in, what their budgets look like. This is funny. We've been chasing these competitors every when we were doing research, these are the four platforms that they mentioned has nothing to do with this we’re there getting information. So then you take all of that and then you do you form it into your okay, what is our what is our North Star? I would argue that having more than three is probably really hard for anyone to manage, but you have it roll up into one main goal. I'd say ideally three quarterly goals because you have to have KPIs for everyone, certainly in your marketing function that fits. So if it is revenue or a launch of X or this level of volume or this level of growth, you can still give KPIs for each individual that aren't just vanity metrics because you do have to measure it at, you know, at a certain level of progress and at the channel level. So if you if you say, okay, well, we are looking at this as an omni channel campaign and likely if we see brand impression share increasing to this and we see our Web traffic increasing to this, and we're doing a series of virtual events as a lead up and we're we're seeing 35% growth there. Those are all the leading indicators that we believe will get us to where we could close X percent of business and drive revenue, if that's really what your funnel looks like at this point. So I'd say having a process for having the right conversations and not just assuming that you can solve everything internally with your team and thinking like, Oh, we know absolutely everything that we should do and then making sure that everyone on the team does have that one North Star, but they have three very clear KPIs that they know how they're connected to it. And then revisiting those every quarter is probably a little specific, but that's how I would actively roll that out so that you feel like everyone is joined up in what you're trying to achieve and not feel like you're just chasing something that isn't really applicable to your audience at all. I'm sure our listeners are writing this down. I'm not sure. MARTIN If you did that, definitely watch this back because that's some very good advice right there, Kathryn. And in regards of advice, maybe Martin for you, what is the one thing you would like event organizers to know right now? Wow. Okay. I'm going to try to give this quickly. I was taking notes on what Kathryn was saying. So I'm going to reiterate a point she made and before giving my own. But Kathryn talked about speaking with your customers. I think that is so important. You know, I always advocate informational interviews, right? When you can just sit down and have somebody say things in your own words. And this was something that Kathryn said last time I heard her speak was take their words and then put that into your marketing and make sure that you're not using it just in the way you want to say it, especially in the marketing speak, but use the actual words they use about the pain points and the problems they have and the solutions that they're looking for, because that's what's going to want to resonate with them. But for me, what is allowed me to separate myself and set myself apart from a marketing standpoint is something that I call the the REO method. And these three words are unique in that the word itself tells you what you should be doing. So that is be remarkable. That is to be extraordinary and outstanding. Right. So remarkable. Being worthy of remark. If people aren't talking about you, then whatever you're doing is not worthy of remark right there. They they need to go out after the fact and talk about it. Right. Be extraordinary. So you've got what's ordinary. That's the best practices. That's the general thing that everybody wants to do. What are you going to do extra on top of that that's going to set you apart? And then outstanding. You need to stand out from what everybody else is doing. If you really want to be able to put your marketing out there and have people recognize it and say, oh, wow, you know, they need to understand your brand is they need to understand your USP. How are you unique and different from everybody else? The only way you're going to be unique and different is to figure out how you stand out. And one of the best ways to do that is to niche down. All right. So that's it for me. The REO method. That's the thing I'm leaving. That is so good. And you everyone needs to go read your LinkedIn post on niching down because that was I read that and that was amazing. So I mean that's an incredible, incredible framework. I the only two things that I would add is I would actually say that everyone has to be empowered to take care of themselves. Right now, events we work really, really hard. We're kind of always hustling to some degree. There's a next thing that has to get done and it can be really easy to burn out. And we've seen a lot of that. And so it's a time where everyone needs to continue to prioritize their their health, their wellbeing, their mental health and just make sure that regardless of how busy things get, that is always a priority. And I think the more that we all say that, you know, the the better. And to just be a student of marketing, it is always going to change. Follow the voices that resonate with you, listen to podcasts, follow Martin. I mean, really tap into the ecosystem and just know that being a student of of marketing and of events, attend events. Speaking of it, that will give you there's no no one has all the answers. No one knows exactly what they're doing. The way that we keep getting this intel is just by being a part of it, being on the platforms, posting ourselves, learning it, trying something, testing something. That's also why it's so important to share. We make mistakes because it doesn't it doesn't all fall apart. It doesn't end everything. And it's much better to act and try and go with a level of speed than to just not put anything out there. So I think, you know, those are the two pieces that I would add Such, two amazing tips or actually three kind of if you combine them and with the rest of the episode even more. I really love that, especially also taking care of yourself but also of others in the event industry. Yeah, very important one. So good one you mentioned and you said follow Martin but I highly recommend our listeners to also follow you, Kathryn, because you share also a lot of insights. With that said, we are actually at the end of the time perfect. Actually. So thank you very much for keeping it perfectly aligned. I would like to also thank our listeners for joining in for this other episode of the Event Effect. Obviously we're back in another two weeks on the Wednesday with that. I like you very much. I would like to thank you very much for listening to us. Martin and Kathryn, you want to say goodbye to our listeners? Go ahead, Martin. Kick it off. All right. I just want to say bye, everybody. Have a great rest of your week and go out and do something amazing and just just be who you are. Honestly, reach out and follow Kathryn. That's that's how I'm going to end it. Follow Kathryn for sure. Yeah. This was a blast. I had a really great time. I love that you said let's all take care of each other in the industry. We really are all in this together. And the more that we share and connect and I do love when anyone reaches out, I answer every single message. I love it, I love chatting. So don't be bashful. Perfect. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you all very much and see you at the next one. Thank you