Some swear by them; others say there’s no need to audit their attendance numbers. What’s your position? By Maxine Golding
Harris Schanhaut was considering exhibiting at a new show a few years ago, and when he asked about demographics, he was thrilled to hear the salesperson say, “Well, we have this audit…”
“The salesperson was unaware of the power that audit held for me,” says Schanhaut, CME, Manager of Events Marketing for American Express Global Corporate Services (www.americanexpress.com/corporateservices).
Even with such glowing testimonials as that one, “to audit…or not to audit?” remains an open question for organizers of the 13,000-plus exhibitions in the United States. Few shows audit their numbers, despite the fact that “our member companies are screaming for justification, and auditing is the only way to get reliable information on attendance,” says Stephen Schuldenfrei, President, Trade Show Exhibitors Association (TSEA, www.tsea.org).
In 2007, the three companies certified by the Exhibition and Event Industry Audit Commission to perform audits to consistent standards will complete 44 show audits. These represent only a modest increase in the three years since EEIAC issued guidelines for independent certification. And there is no way of knowing how many noncertified audits are being conducted, although sources believe they are few in number.
Reasons to Audit There are good reasons for organizers to audit their shows, says Schanhaut: • It will build a better relationship between the show organizer and exhibit manager. • It will help build loyalty, because there is more trust between the two parties. • It will help build sales for the show manager.
Marilyn Kroner, President, Kroner Communications (www.kronercommunications.com) and former president of the Corporate Event Marketing Association, adds another: Exhibitors don’t trust the nonstandard, inconsistent methods show management typically uses to calculate attendance figures. Kroner’s background in purchasing advertising for magazines, where audits are standard, helped. “I always looked at the numbers before making a decision,” she says.
The audit establishes the potential for ROI, says Skip Cox, CEO of Exhibit Surveys, Inc., (www.exhibitsurveys.com), an EEIAC-certified auditor. And audit and demographic data influences how well and accurately a company measures performance.
“The demand for return on investment will not subside,” says Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide (www.bpaww.com), also an EEIAC-certified auditor. “Providing an audit to exhibitors to justify event spend enables them to speak intelligently with their CMO and manage their expectations.” So what’s the real stumbling block?
“Many exhibit managers — and I’ve been one since the mid- ’80s — don’t know that audits even exist for trade shows,” says Schanhaut. “I’ve been burned more than once by show organizers who didn’t break down attendees as a good audit would.” The result: poor investments based on bad information. Although this happened only a handful of times, these were enough to turn him into an audit believer, and the EEIAC chairman.
It’s all about accountability, since every dollar spent by exhibit managers is looked at much more carefully. “We have to very logically measure — not by gut, but by science — the shows we retain,” says Schanhaut. “This is particularly challenging in companies where the exhibit manager doesn’t own the budget, but facilitates multiple departments. And in this era of heightened transparency, any show not properly audited can be subject to elimination.”
That’s why one association asked Veris Consulting, LLC (www.verisconsulting.com), another EEIAC-certified auditor, to conduct an internal investigation. Its new leadership had a hunch that the show numbers were inflated, and now plans to set the record straight with an audit that establishes a new baseline.
Industry Backs Certification The most recent push for show audits emerged from the information technology sector as the dot-com boom began its bust. With budgets severely cut, major IT companies found it too risky to trust numbers that weren’t audited. Unfortunately, auditors had stopped offering a show product because it was unprofitable. Exhibit Surveys and then BPA filled the void. By late 2003, spearheaded by CEMA, the Information Technology Event Measurement and Audit Council (ITEMAC) convened. TSEA posted its Exhibition Audit Kit around the same time, and an IAEE task force on auditing practices met shortly thereafter.
The task force became EEIAC, which unified the work of ITEMAC into industrywide auditing certification standards in 2004 and continues to monitor use of the standards while it promotes exhibition audits.
For show organizers, “there are enormous benefits in verifying their attendance claims,” says Steven Hacker, CAE, President, International Association of Exhibitions and Events (www.iaee.com). “Information is consistently recorded and its quality is high. Plus, it gives exhibitors a tool for making decisions not just about which events to select, but how to budget appropriately for a particular event.”
Hacker dismisses those who claim exhibitors are not asking for audits. “It’s like a doctor saying, ‘I didn’t give an inoculation to a patient because he didn’t ask for it.’ An audit is a standard of care, and its cost is nominal compared to revenues, no matter how large the event,” he insists.
When certification became available, Veris took on audit duties for the International CES. “CES wants to be known as an industry leader and example for all trade shows,” says Toby Palmer, PMP, Veris’ Senior Manager and Chief Technology Officer,” he says. “We thought more organizations would follow their lead and want to audit their shows.”
Hacker admits that the industry has yet to see an avalanche of show organizers racing to audit. “We expected this would be a long ramp up,” he says. Still, his message to the industry is to “get with the value.”
Reed Signs On Reed Exhibitions Americas (www.reedexpo.com) gave audits a huge boost with its wholehearted embrace of certification. In 2004, Reed conducted trial audits for the National Hardware Show and several other events. With a vigorous internal audit system in place, third-party validation was a “simple thing,” says Chet Burchett, President. By 2006, more than 20 exhibitions were audited, with one notable exception. Attendance at the annual JCK Show is highly controlled and under tight security, so a third-party audit is an “unnecessary redundancy,” he explains. Cost was no factor in Reed’s decision. “Audits simply are the right thing to do,” Burchett says emphatically. “We conduct our business in the best interest of our customers, and an audit gives them the confidence that what we’re telling them has been confirmed by a third party.”
Exhibitors do care, he says. “We’re part of the marketing world, and most of the other people at the table have a version of third-party audits or verification methods. If we want to sit with everyone else, we should play by the same rules.”
When Reed started auditing its shows, Burchett heard the same question again and again: “Who’s making you do this?”
Nobody complained or requested audits, and Reed felt no external pressure. “We do a lot of things for exhibitors that we think improves their experience and provides better value. It’s all part of the package,” he says.
He’s never wasted a moment trying to figure out if audits bring in more exhibitors. “The wisdom of our decision is borne out by what matters — good increases in audited attendance, outperforming industry averages and improvements in customer satisfaction.”
AIA Buys In The American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org) just concluded its third year of independent auditing of its annual conference: 840 exhibitors in 200,000 NSF and between 18,000 to 19,500 attendees. Like Reed, the association does not audit because exhibitors are demanding it or questioning show numbers.
“The audit verifies who attends, and it takes away fears that we are making numbers up,” says Christopher Gribbs, Associate AIA Senior Director, Convention. “I can quote the numbers with confidence.”
At first, he was uncomfortable with the unknown of the initial audit, but three years of consistent numbers have only added to his confidence level. AIA uses BPA Worldwide because the auditing company knows the questions to ask and the data to look for, and tests and certifies the numbers to standards. And the audits become a vital tool in site selection. Gribbs can hand convention and visitor bureaus at destinations under consideration a singlepage profile that references independent audits of registrants and actual attendance.
While he deems the cost for auditing “reasonable,” it’s still “one more line item and one more contract and one more task” he has to handle and review. And audits do have limitations. “They are only good if auditors can conveniently reach the names in the database for verification,” he explains, pointing to a snag AIA hit this year.
The association disputed the first round of numbers BPA provided. During the ensuing back and forth, Gribbs learned that AIA did not obtain enough demographic information from those who registered and attended. That meant many names were missing phone numbers, street addresses and e-mail addresses. However, if AIA had one piece of information besides a name, such as a city or state, it could cross-reference the attendee with the AIA member database to get contact information the auditor could then verify.
As a result, “the total attendance number in 2007 is lower than I would like…but correctly so,” Gribbs acknowledges.
“Some people don’t want to give out contact information, but they don’t understand why we need it. We will change our policies in the future and at least require a phone number for auditing purposes only.”
The Audit Process Clearly, a show audit is only as good as the database provided, so auditors spend considerable time pinpointing potential problems:
• In advance and on site, the auditor reviews the show organizer’s methodology for verifying that registrants actually attend the event, to determine if it’s sound. Seeding fictitious registrants to see how the database handles the records, viewing criteria for differentiating attendees, students, exhibitors and speakers, and observing registration and exhibition floor access control are ways to test verification.
• Post-show, the auditor selects a cross-section of records from the verified census and confirms the accuracy of the selected data through phone and e-mail contact. For certified audits, 429 records are pulled regardless of the show size, and at least 50 percent must be contacted. “All the work of counting the data is based on its accuracy,” says BPA’s Hansen.
For CES, Veris sends a team to Las Vegas to observe the registration counters and walk the show floor. They make manual notes to reference later when certifying the database. “A big part of what we do is make sure there are no duplicates,” says Palmer.
Unfortunately, waiting for a registration company to supply the final database to the show organizer can be a “real problem” in the audit’s completion, Hansen says. If not for the routine delay in receiving the data, auditors can turn around their reports in four to six weeks.
Pricing the Audit When nonprofit BPA Worldwide started auditing shows, it set up tiered pricing by show size. However, the company found that the audit process and the time to conduct it were basically the same for all shows. So a certified audit for a show of any size now costs a flat fee of $5,200.
Two of the EEIAC-certified auditors, BPA Worldwide and Exhibit Surveys, Inc., are partnering to offer audit customers an add-on survey, called Event InsightsSM. A statistically valid sampling of attendees provides indepth data about their activities at the show, their purchasing decision-making, and their level of satisfaction with the show, for example. This information can be critical to a show’s growth and sales strategies. Adding Event InsightsSM research will raise the audit fee to $10,700 (if research is conducted by e-mail) or $12,800 (by postal service).
Many exhibitors wrongly assume audits are a cost to them, Hansen notes. They also are unaware how reasonable the price is for an organizer. “When they fully understand the value the audit provides, some exhibitors actually state they are going to demand the audit…and if the organizer balks, the exhibitor will pay for the tool,” he says. Indeed, the sale of one additional booth in a show can offset the cost of a certified audit. “I know that I’ve paid more and less than that amount for a 10-by-10,” Schanhaut points out.
Yet the cost is reasonable only if an audit provides value to a show, its management or its exhibitors, counters Mary Upton, Vice President of Trade Show Operations for ASI’s five annual trade shows and 60-city road shows (www.asicentral.com). After using an audit to launch regional events and finding “zero interest” after the third event, ASI dispensed with it.
Smaller companies with less defined staff — like those in the promotional products advertising specialty industry ASI serves — don’t look at their show involvement the same way as large corporate marketing departments that exhibit at 150 shows a year and have a formulaic process to manage events, ROI and costs.
“In industries where sales don’t take place on the exhibit floor, companies manage expectations by the number of leads, catalogs handed out, conversations with people,” explains Upton. “Whether or not to audit depends to some extent on the market.”
Increasing Demand Demand for audits “will have to come down from the bean counters and CMOs who live in the audit world of magazines,” says Schuldenfrei. “Exhibit directors who don’t speak that language will have trouble when fighting for budgets.”
At the same time, the industry needs to do a better job of promoting the fact that a system is in place to certify audits, says Hacker. “We may even be able to eliminate the word ‘audit’ from our lexicon, with its negative connotations, in favor of ‘attendance verification.’”
In its fee, BPA Worldwide includes training for sales staff in how to read, interpret, use and publicize an audit most effectively, and for exhibitors on how to best use the report in marketing decision- making. In the past year, it also has rolled out an exhibitor awareness campaign, exhibited at The Exhibitor Show and TS/2, and presented free webinars. “We’ve started to get calls from exhibitors wanting to know what shows are audited, and organizers have called us because some of their exhibitors are asking to see audits,” Hansen says.
Yet just because a show is not audited doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. “Exhibit managers don’t necessarily care that shows keep growing, as long as the target audience will be there,” says Kroner.
Schanhaut agrees. “If a show organizer can answer the questions I pose, and the information looks good, I am inclined to invest,” he says. “Either I or a local field rep will walk the show, sit in sessions and evaluate it first-hand. It’s foolish not to do this.”
Yet he and others believe that as time goes on, audits will be standard operating procedure for shows to survive. “Face to face will not be my only option,” he notes. “The avenue that projects the best ROI/ROO will be where I choose to invest.”
Maxine Golding is an award-winning writer and editor with more than 20 years of experience in the meetings, expositions and hospitality industry. Show Audit FAQs What is a show audit? An event or exhibition audit, conducted by an independent third party, examines attendance records and tests the registration process on-site and in follow-up interviews in order to objectively verify audience numbers and segment demographics of those who actually attended (exhibit-only and paid-conference, plus others, such as analysts, speakers, press and exhibitors). The auditor presents a written report of its findings, which you make public.
What is a certified audit? A certified audit follows standards specific to and consistent with event and trade show practices. The Exhibition & Event Industry Audit Council, an independent organization made up of exhibitor and event organizer personnel, has developed certification standards for trade show and consumer show audits, along with rules for event organizers and certified auditors, and monitors their application.
What audience demographics are included in an audit? Audits may include: Attendee’s job function, title, type of business, geographic location, purchasing role, budget, and sales volume.
Why should I audit my show? Many industry leaders would argue that audits not only legitimize your event in the eyes of your exhibitors, but also help legitimize exhibitions in the larger businessto- business marketing arena. EEIAC-certified audits also ensure consistency in how numbers are verified and reported.
What if I find a “glitch” in the first audit? EEIAC standards allow you to skip going public with the first audit and make a correction. However, “the audit should not yield a surprise since organizers should have hard facts from their registration,” says Glenn Hansen, President & CEO, BPA Worldwide.
Where can I go to learn more about audits? ■ Exhibition and Event Industry Audit Commission (www.exhibitionaudits.org), for certified audit information, standards, rules and actual reports of audited shows (www.exhibitionaudits.org/audits/LinuxWorldSFEI06.pdf). ■ “How Audits Can Help You Select the Best Trade Shows,” a White Paper by Marilyn Kroner, President of Kroner Communications (www.exhibitionaudits.org/WhitePaper022406.pdf). ■ Trade Show Exhibitors Association Exhibition Audit Kit (at www.tsea.org/page_206.php), which describes an exhibition audit and its benefits for show organizers and exhibitors, and provides reference materials, articles and audit samples. ■ The web sites of the three firms that provide certified audits (see above). ■ View a sample of an Event InsightsSM report, jointly offered by BPA and Exhibit Surveys, on page 49 in this issue.
Point... Counterpoint Why I believe in audits… Chet Burchett, President, Reed Exhibitions Americas: “We did trials of a few events, including the National Hardware Show, in 2004, and now conduct third-party audits on virtually all major events in the Americas. Nobody made us do it. We believe in doing what’s in the best interest of our customers, and an audit gives them confidence that what we’re telling them has been verified by a third party.”
Why I’m not auditing our shows… Mary Upton, Vice President of Trade Show Operations, ASI Show: “We participated in audits very deliberately when introducing a show so that there was no question about the validity of the number that attended. They’re not expensive, maybe a fraction of a percent of expenses. Yet I never had so much as an inquiry after publishing the information. Frankly, exhibitors didn’t care. If audits are not providing value to a show, its management or exhibitors, then they’re useless.”
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