While other companies are scaling back and canceling shows, Canon Communications keeps growing, growing, growing. The events are sponsored by Electronics Design News, a Canon publication recently acquired from Reed Business Information. The company's success on both the event and publishing fronts stands in stark contrast to the stagnant growth that many other companies in the industry are facing right now.

So just what are Canon’s secrets to success? The company, which was founded in 1978, has only seen this spike in growth in the last half of the last decade. To engage in any real discussion of the staggering growth of Canon’s event portfolio requires dividing the world of Canon into two separate and distinct time periods, pre-2006 and post-2006. The dividing line refers to the acquisition of Canon in 2005 by Apprise Media, which marked a new era of entrepreneurialism in the company and set the stage for explosive event growth. Exhibit A: Pre-2006, Canon had a respectable portfolio of 15 events. Flash forward to 2010, and Canon’s event portfolio is home to 40-plus events and rising. Exhibit B: Pre-2006, the company’s shows were centered around mostly medical manufacturing. Today, Canon’s events serve not only the medical manufacturing industry, but also the packaging, plastics, automation/assembly, electronics and pharmaceutical industries, among others. Now, Canon launches approximately three to four new events every year, making the company the very rare exception to the rule in this economy.

“We saw very conservative growth with the previous management,“ says Kevin O’Keefe, Senior Vice President, Canon Events Division. “Under Apprise, they really wanted to see the Canon franchise grow. Overall, business has way more than doubled since 2006.”

Additionally, Canon is seeing major growth in the international space. In 2009, for example, the company launched new MedTec shows in France and Japan; this year, the company will debut a new OrthoTec event in Switzerland. For first-time international shows, the company typically has to develop a local team in each destination to execute the show from operations to sales. “You have to get people in on the ground floor who know the market and speak the language,” O’Keefe says. “Its complicated, but it’s rewarding at the same time. Once you get there and you get it to work, you do a couple of shows, and before you know it, people are telling you it’s like the shows have always been there.”

O’Keefe came to Canon in 1995 after running a custom exhibit house in Providence, RI. Over the past few years, he’s helped lead the flourish in event growth at Canon. “It’s an entrepreneurial and innovative environment,” O’Keefe says. “Before 2006, we might debate the concept of a new event for a year. Now it could be 30 minutes, and we’re off and running. We’re not going in unprepared. We build a foundation for what the marketplace is and what we can deliver and we just do it.”

So what are the things that make Canon events distinguishable from competitors and set them apart from the pack? Here are strategies that have put Canon events in a league of their own.

EXPLORING ELECTRONIC MEDIA

The company has instilled a laser-like focus on the number of ways it can connect with attendees and exhibitors, especially in the online arena. This has been particularly effective for the print side of the operation, which has moved away from the vast number of printed products that used to accompany every trade show (i.e., show dailies) and on to ways to connect online with attendees more economically, quickly and effectively with the Internet via the magazine Web sites.

The event side of the business is also harnessing the power of the Internet. Take, for example, Qmed.com. The online portal, which debuted last month, connects medical device buyers with suppliers. O’Keefe says the service is almost like a 24-hour trade show. Think of it like a super-powered industryspecific online directory. To qualify for inclusion in the portal, suppliers were heavily vetted, and the included suppliers were chosen based on compliance with FDA and ISO standards.

In terms of user experience, the site gives visitors information based on specific search parameters. In addition to supplier listings, the site’s offerings include blogs and white papers, as well as search-specific content from Canon’s print assets, including Medical Product Manufacturing News, which is now built directly into the Qmed platform. “The online portal has taken off like a missile,” O’Keefe says.

INVESTING IN ATTENDANCE

In terms of live events, O’Keefe credits the company’s event success to heavy targeting of both exhibitors and attendees, recognizing that an effective show requires success on both fronts. When launching a new event, the Canon approach is to first identify the key suppliers and exhibitors, the big companies that have to be in place in order to attract attendees and garner buzz for the show. “It’s very important to us that we put together the best leading suppliers as exhibitors,” O’Keefe says. “If you don’t have that, the attendees won’t come. We are, at the end of the day, first and foremost in the attendee business.”

And, when it comes to the attendee business, the company puts its money where its mouth is. Instead of drastically cutting attendee marketing budgets when the economy took a nosedive, the company has actually continued to increase its attendee marketing budget for events. The reasoning? Getting the right attendees there for the exhibitors would help ensure the longterm stability of the shows. “Too many people have cut their attendee campaigns,” O’Keefe says. “The exhibitors have no forgiveness. If the show didn’t work, they’re not coming back. Exhibitors will judge us based on the leads they get. If they see from these leads that a percentage of them will result in millions of dollars of revenue, they’ll sign up for the next show in a bigger space. If they don’t see it, they won’t do it.”

The heavy attendee marketing has been critical to keeping qualified attendees coming to events and to preserving the health of Canon shows, O’Keefe says, particularly when exhibitors don’t have the flexibility or luxury of coming back when a show doesn’t get them the leads they desire. “Five years ago, people would do shows just as part of their marketing schedule,” O’Keefe says. “It’s not that way anymore.” For shows tied to Canon magazines, the company is able to leverage the databases for those magazines.

In fact, a new show that launched in Japan in April 2009 saw attendance of approximately 5,000 people the first time out, which exceeded expectations for a show that started from scratch with a totally new database. This year? “We doubled attendance this time,” O’Keefe says. “We had the right companies and we’re spending on marketing campaigns that are effective. We’re not shy about putting new shows out there because the formula works.”

CREATIVE CO-LOCATIONS

Even before Canon was acquired by Apprise, it was co-locating events in its medical device manufacturing group. Now, as the company increasingly launches new events and acquires new print assets, the strategy serves a number of purposes.

“When we first did it back in 1996, we were only involved in the medical device business,” O’Keefe says. “We got into co-locations because we recognized that of all of our exhibitors in medical, only 20 or 30 were only selling to medical device companies. The rest of them were also selling to defense and aerospace and IT and electronics and other industries. By putting some of these shows together with broad-based shows, we found that people who would only do our shows every three or four years would do it every year.”

The company positions many of the events as regional mega-events, giving more exhibitors and attendees who would have budget concerns with excessive travel costs that opportunity to drive in and shorten their travel time and cut expenditures.

For example, the company’s event for the Southern advanced manufacturing market features a number of Canon shows including SouthPack, ATX (Automation Technology Expo) South, Design & Manufacturing South and PlasTec South. “Now someone who goes to medical show events in a region will be able to see all the industries from that region and it’s a great return on investment,” O’Keefe says. “We’re doing the same thing with some of our shows in Europe. Exhibitors think it’s great. They get the market they came for, plus all this crossover. For attendees, it’s all there. They don’t have to go to six shows, they can only go to one. It’s just an efficient use of time.”

One key to making the co-location strategy work is that all of the events are still treated as completely separate events, each with its own attendee campaign to keep the messaging from becoming too broad or diluted. Each event markets to exhibitors and attendees separately, and the constituencies can reap the benefits of focused content for each show as well as overlap from the co-located events.

Although one new online initiative here and there or a well-timed co-location might not be enough to give every show the creative and economic resurgence it needs in this economy, combining a number of these approaches strategically, and fostering an environment that encourages entrepreneurialism, has been key to Canon’s success. As the company pushes forward, look to Canon to continue to embrace the core tenets that have helped sustain — and drive — growth over the past five years.