September 2007
Mystery Attendees refocus association show

By deploying innovative research tactics — like mystery attendees — AAFP gained insight on how to improve the attendee experience at its annual convention. Find out what the association learned and how it’s tackling the issues.

By Jody Shee

Success is a vapor. 

When those attendees and exhibitors who show up to this year’s show vanish back to their offices, they take with them invisible impressions and resolves about whether or not to return next year — or ever again.

Technology hasn’t advanced far enough to siphon intentions from the minds of everyone who attends, so you’re left with your staff’s impressions and hopefully a pile of survey results.

Keeping exhibitors and attendees happy and returning is everyone’s goal, including Donna Valponi, Vice President of Marketing, Membership and Meetings for the Leawood, KS-based American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP, www.aafp.org).

She left her marketing generalist job at Hallmark Cards and took on her association position five months before the 2005 AAFP Scientific Assembly held in San Francisco.

As she walked that show, “My first reaction was that the logistics there were fantastic! But was the customer or member experience what it should be? I think from then up until now, that’s been our focus. We know we have the logistics down pat. What we need to focus on is the member experience.”

She developed a vision and a goal: to make the association’s annual convention and trade show a battery-charging experience. The assembly must maintain
a buzz in the networking events, classrooms, halls and show floor — or the show’s success could evaporate.

Not that the association, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, has anything immediate to worry about. The annual assembly has grown so large that few cities can handle the necessary 600,000 gross square feet (125,000 net paid square feet) of exhibit space and 260,000 square feet of meeting space. It reaps $11 million for the association.

So how does one of the country’s top medical shows continue to stay relevant despite increasing competition from new events and online education? By deploying innovative research tactics — like mystery attendees — AAFP gained insight on how to improve the attendee experience at its annual convention. Find out what the association learned and how it’s tackling the issues.

Mystery attendees offer clues
Research has to be the tail that wags the dog. In its quest to keep exhibitors and attendees happy, the association has regularly studied the final numbers and conducted surveys. But last year, it incorporated a new research tool. “We always felt like there was something missing in our research, which I felt was that whole experience factor,” says Kathy Reid, Organizational Marketing Research Manager for AAFP. “I’d just been reading about mystery shoppers, and I thought, ‘Why couldn’t we do that with mystery attendees?’ ” Thus was born one of AAFP’s most valuable qualitative research methods.

Last summer, the association recruited 19 participants who were planning to attend the October 2006 show and, in exchange for a free registration, they were asked for their impressions and experiences in conference calls, online surveys and a group pow-wow at the show, which was held at Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.

Mystery attendees represented a cross-section of all attendees — including men and women, different age groups, types of medical practices and variances in past attendance.

“We wanted to get a handle from the very beginning when they made the decision to come to when they got back to the office that Monday after the assembly. We wanted to know their whole experience,” Reid says. Months before the big event, the association gleaned the mystery attendees’ impressions of their entire show experience — from promotional materials to the show Web site to registration.

When the mystery attendees arrived at the assembly, they gathered for a meet-and-greet and were assigned events and classes to attend. On the last day, they met in a focus-group setting to talk about their experiences — positive and negative — and to discuss how the association could improve the experience. “They were the voice for all the attendees,” Reid says.

Putting research into action
Among other things, the responses have helped the association fine-tune details, like what the attendees would like to see or not see in the promotional brochure and which items they would rather see on the Web site than in the printed materials.

The length of the keynote speaker and the relevancy and depth of educational sessions also were scrutinized. The mystery attendee feedback has confirmed and fleshed-out concerns other attendees have shared in surveys.

The natives are getting restless. Change must follow the research. Some changes recently implemented or in the works include:
1. Revamp educational programming. The physicians who attend assembly are there mainly to earn continuing medical education (CME) credit, which they must do to not only maintain their AAFP membership  but also their medical licenses.

Through the mystery attendees, the association learned that its CMEs are sometimes perceived not to be any
different from the classes they could get elsewhere. “So we need to change, maybe to new topics,” Reid says. “In addition, we learned that we’re not
messaging our CMEs to say ‘advanced.’ We need to give the impression that our CME is not so basic. We also offer more advanced courses to our members.”

2. Trim session times. In the past, courses typically have run two and three hours. Now they’re being trimmed to 60 and 90 minutes, scheduled in concurrent blocks. “So like in high school, everyone is in the hall at the same time. That encourages more networking. It also makes the place feel full and exciting,” Valponi says. “Before, people were coming in and out of classrooms on a more staggered basis. It just didn’t work. Plus, it allows us to do a longer coffee break.”

3. Offer dedicated exhibit hall hours. From 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., classes have been eliminated. To encourage attendees to walk the show floor, they’re given 10 $1 food vouchers each day, which they can use toward buying lunch from the concessions in the exhibit hall. “It doesn’t begin to pay for the whole lunch, but it creates traffic and buzz within the hall,” says Sondra Biggs, Director of Meetings & Conventions.

The dedicated exhibit hours have been a welcome change to Jessie Hayes, Exhibit Manager for exhibiting company Elsevier, a Philadelphia publisher (www.elsevier.com). “Before we had to wait for attendees to come out of sessions. Now this gives us specific times to meet with attendees, and if we are having a book-signing event in our booth, we can base the author’s schedule around the designated times.”

4. Increase traffic on the show floor. According to a traffic density study, AAFP measures slightly below average on the number of physicians who occupy every 100 square feet of exhibit space during the show (1.4 in 2006 compared with the 1.7 medical-meeting average). “Partly the reason we’re below average is that our aisles are too wide. For people walking up and down the aisles, it looks sparse. So we’ve tightened up our exhibit floor by eliminating all but one of the 20-foot aisles we used to have. The
coffee breaks will help us address that as well,” Valponi says. 

In between sessions, 30-minute coffee breaks are held in the exhibit hall, which encourages networking and booth visiting.

Classrooms in the back of the exhibit hall are another way the association plans to bring more traffic to the floor for the first time this October. “With some classes on the exhibit floor, I think it would give us more one-to-one contact with attendees,” Hayes says. “Sometimes when they go in and out of classes all day, they don’t want to go to the exhibit floor. They’re tired. This gives us more eye contact with the attendees. It will definitely help.”

5. Build community and recognize member achievements. A new “wall of fame” will feature members who have won significant awards in the previous six months. “We have a Bristol-Myers Squibb award that’s just for residents. There are 20 of them, and they’ll be up there, plus the Family Physician of the Year will be up there, among others,” Valponi says.

6. Add new activities on the show floor. Celebrating the AAFP’s 60th anniversary, the exhibit hall will feature the Center for the History of Family Medicine, which will showcase historical medical artifacts and information about family physicians over the past 60 years.

7. Bring in more big-name speakers. AAFP has traditionally hired celebrity speakers, like Newt Gingrich last year and Mary Matalin and James Carville this year,
for its opening ceremony. “But all of us on our team agree that’s not enough. It may be that on a daily basis we’ll start bringing in speakers that have something powerful to say to our doctors,” Valponi says.

Addressing new realities
While 2006 attendance nearly reached the show’s peak attendance level set in 1998, AAFP must continue to prepare for changes in its membership and their educational needs. 

For example, research shows a graying of attendees. The average age of a show attendee is 48. “We’re not attracting younger family physicians, so we need to get a handle on that,” Reid says.
“How can we entice younger ones to come to get that average age down to represent the average age of the population of all our family physicians who are members. What do they like?” The median age of female AAFP members is 38, while the male median age is 50.

Only about 10 percent of AAFP’s active members attend the annual assembly. “We try to move the meeting across the country, but regional shows might be the way to go in the future. There are for-profit organizations and companies that produce regional shows. What really big change will we have to make to get younger people there?” Biggs asks.

In addition, attendees aren’t coming back as frequently as they used to. Whereas it used to be every two years (trading off years with a partner in their practice), now the average is every three years. 

To complicate matters further for all medical show producers, physicians now have a number of options to earn their CMEs. Doctors can take classes for CME credits at their local hospitals, from their local AAFP chapters, from insurance companies and online. Reid’s team is trying to determine how the association can differentiate its CME offerings at assembly from what doctors can get somewhere else.

One way is to offer more evidence-based classes, which earn doctors double credit. Evidence-based classes are those in which the subject or solution discussed has been scientifically proven to be the correct method or procedure to take care of an illness — where data supports the findings. “Those classes have to go through a more rigorous process to be approved and designated,” Biggs says. Of the 400 courses offered at the assembly, 100 to 150 are evidence-based, with more added each year.

Biggs has a hunch that another way to increase attendance is to move the show to more locations. Because of its space requirements, the AAFP Scientific Assembly has been restricted to five or six cities. But because some cities recently have built large convention centers and others have expanded space, the show will be able to move to new locations in the next few years. “We won’t see the change for a number of years, so we don’t know if that’s going to be the answer,” she says.

Using technology to enhance the experience
Technology may not be the silver bullet to solve all problems, but it may help to solve some.

This year, the show will feature a cyber café and laptop lounges. In designated areas on the show floor, the association will offer wireless hot spots for attendees. In another location, at a cyber café, printers will be available for attendees to print their boarding passes.

New software this year will allow doctors to go to the cyber café and electronically post their evaluation forms, which are necessary for doctors to receive their CME credits. In the past, they’ve had to fill out handwritten forms and leave them on a counter. This year, before they leave the convention, physicians will be able to print themselves a certificate of attendance that will show the number of hours they earned over the four days.

This will not only simplify the process for the attendees, but also it will eliminate the need for AAFP staff back at the office to input information from paper forms. Doctors will be able to go to the AAFP Web site to view their records and the credits they’ve earned.

On-site registration also will be easier this year, as attendees will be able to register themselves online at the show.

Much of AAFP’s show progress has come from researching and acting on the results. “Research is something most organizations cut in budget times,” Valponi says. “I was very pleased as a marketer to come on board and find out that research was so important. I think we’re progressive because we’ve actually used our research and tried to make it work for us.”