First published in Exhibition World April/May 2024 Issue 2

Miranda Martin, MD of tfconnect, recommends examining transferable skills when hiring for events.

Having been an organiser for 15+ years, with stints at Brand Events, Montgomery and SME London, working across B2B and consumer, indoor and outdoor, exhibitions, events, and festivals; I’d humbly say I know my way around an events business. But most recently, (for the last four years), prior to my thus far short tenure at tfconnect, I ran Tom Kerridge’s Pub in the Park, an outdoor food and music festival series serving 140K visitors annually. I currently find myself looking back in on the exhibitions world I now re-inhabit.

Whilst the core principles of running any event remain the same in my view – in short, creating an epic value proposition and building and delivering a receptive community - what strikes me is the divide between festival people and exhibition folk. Yet the transferable skills that serve both sides of the event industry are glaringly obvious and rather desirable.

One can’t deny that Consumer, especially outdoor, is a gamblers game, with a more exciting (!?) risk profile and nail-biting revenue generation timeframe. It breeds a certain type of show person, and often highly skilled creative, content, visitor experience and digital marketing talent. Trade poses a more secure financial profile, with commercially ambitious, savvy, and focused entrepreneurs at the helm.

The exhibitions world seeks to ‘festivalise’ its events in an ongoing movement towards customer centric, experiential shows. And festivals wish to change their financial profile by diversifying revenue generation away from ticket sales only. The perfect solution is a flow of talent between the two, to drive creativity and ‘festivalisation’, as well as commercial safeguarding. Whilst it doesn’t appear that talent move between festivals and exhibitions that often, I believe it’s because they don’t see the opportunity that lies before them.

With a bird’s eye view across the industry, I’ve been buoyed to see phenomenal growth in exhibitions. Certainly when global clients talk about YoY performance, the narrative is positive with stories of up to 250% increases in revenues in just one year. And with this growth comes a need for great talent, and there are some exceptional candidates out there right now, from Commercial leaders, PD’s, MD’s and COO’s to marketing, digital and transformation specialists.

We’re also seeing a focus on commercial rigour, especially in the UK, which begs the question about systems, process, and culture. We’ve all got used to a mix of home and office working, but how effectively can a business instil commercial best practise with people at home? This is a question on everybody’s mind, and we haven’t heard the end of it, but we are seeing businesses move incrementally, to increased days in the office.

One of my first outings in my role as MD of tfconnect was to attend International Confex, co-located with The Event Production Show in the UK. The ‘event for events people’ attracted a truly global representation of our eco-system, for a roaring two days of the industry at its finest. A self-fulfilling cycle of positivity with suppliers investing in impressive stands, organisers roaming the aisles with money to spend, and people like me bumping into so many familiar faces. It was wonderful to see the industry at its best, back to pre-Covid levels, and to talk to lots of brilliant people exploring exciting opportunities.

It goes without saying that whist the drive remains strong to digitise communities across event products, to better understand, serve, and commercialise; there is nothing better than a good old fashioned, live, face-to-face experience. This interaction is truly fundamental to the human spirit. In a crude way, Covid validated what we do in a profound sense that some may not have realised otherwise.

That said, the M&A activity we’re seeing will continue to diversify product and services, with the trend towards a mix of exhibition, conference, confex and media continuing.

All in all, we live in exciting times for our industry, where a strong appetite for growth and talent prevails. In such a healthy marketplace, we should all be proud to be exhibitionists (I mean exhibition professionals).