If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that traditional approaches to driving business are not enough. Accordingly, with show attendance being difficult, at best, to forecast, CVBs are ramping up new formats for their marketing campaigns.

The Way to an Attendee’s Heart is Through the Stomach
Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau
www.atlanta.net

ACCORDING TO LAUREN JARRELL, director of communications for the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2009 was all about driving attendance. “The big question mark at the time was how was attendance going to be?” she says. “Coming out of an economy like that, we had to be creative.”

The bureau teamed up with local restaurants to introduce new programs to freshen up the city’s image as an event host. For the International Poultry and Feed Expo, an annual event held in Atlanta every January that attracts almost 20,000 attendees, the bureau created the FeatherFest, a destination campaign that recruited local eateries to create a brand new poultry or egg dish just for the event. More than 50 restaurants participated, says Jarrell.

But the program didn’t stop there. Attendees were encouraged to vote on the dishes, which were created in three categories: appetizers, entres and deserts. Jarrell’s team built a separate Web site to handle the voting process and promote the dishes and restaurants; and kiosks were deployed throughout the show floor to record votes as well.

Cost was minimal. The in-house team built the Web site and the show client paid for the voting kiosks on the show floor and the logo for FeatherFest. There were 300 votes cast and 900 visits to the Web site, says Jarrell. “The most important part of that was the client surpassed their attendance goal,” she says. “That was the goal behind it.”

The event beat its attendance goal by 1,500 bodies, hitting nearly 19,000, which is a return to pre-recession levels, says Jarrell.

‘Steroidal Site Visits’
Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association
www.visitindy.com

FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS, RIGHT? It should take about two seconds to figure out what one of Indianapolis’ main attractions is—automobile racing. Chris Gahl, director of communications for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, says they’ve begun to leverage the city’s major sporting events as a way to show event producers what the venues, and the city, can handle. “In lieu of some of our more traditional marketing, we’re doing more and more site visits centered around events to showcase the city to show planners. If the city can handle this sporting event, we can handle your exposition,” he says.

Accordingly, Gahl says they’ve increased the number of planners per group visit, reallocating marketing dollars away from traditional outlets. Group volume has essentially doubled, says Gahl, going from 10-15 planners to 25-30 per site visit. “It’s more like steroidal site visits,” he says.

An expanded Indianapolis Convention Center will be opening in February, which, says Gahl, will catapult it from 32nd to 16th largest in exhibit space, topping out at 566,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space.

When combined with the connected Lucas Oil Stadium, they offer 747,000 square feet. “During this construction phase, as part of our more frequent site visit plan, we’re offering hardhat tours of the convention center,” he says.

Gahl is also doing more receptions for producer visitors in spaces other than the hotels they’re staying at. “We’re doing more receptions in spaces that would be conducive for meeting planners rather than relying on a hotel ballroom. It allows for more unique sites to be tapped while they’re here. Would it be cost-effective to hold it at the hotel they’re staying at? Yes, but it’s better to take them off-site to soak in the city.”