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Beyond the Gimmick How INCEPTION Turns Events into Measurable Revenue · Event Industry News Podcast

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Hello everybody, welcome along to the event industry news podcast with me James Dixon
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wishing all a very good morning afternoon or evening whenever or if you tune into today's podcast from and
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today very much
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so what we you know whenever my guests tunes in and joins today's podcast from because they're
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They're away at the moment. They're abroad with a five-hour time difference
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but I'm very very grateful to anybody sort of gets up early and
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And puts a little bit of time in their diary
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To join us on the podcast and have a little bit of a conversation about what they do in the events industry
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My guest today is a first-time visitor to this here event industry news podcast
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and I'm looking forward to finding out a bit more about them bit more about their company what they do in the industry and what
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Their thoughts are on the industry at the moment. Joining me today is Mark Hutchinson
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Mark is the managing director of inception mark a very warm. Welcome to the podcast. How are you? Hi. Yeah, very well
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good to be here and I'm looking forward to
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Connecting and discussing more around the subject that we discussed previously. And yeah
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Yeah, sharing some insights and a bit more about the what we do as an agency with your listeners
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Absolutely. Um, so yeah agency
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I think you know that there's a little bit of a hint into
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You know where we may be going and what you do as a business mark
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But tell us a little bit about about yourself first of all professional background and how it led to forming and running inception
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Yeah, no great. I mean like many people that I've have come across and connected with in the industry
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It's not always a linear career line. So I actually started out originally in radio believe it or not
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So I was a radio station
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I was doing a sidekick kind of young person's job where I was on a breakfast show and I was doing
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activations and ticket giveaways and sponsorships and
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For G cap media. So it was one of the local radio stations and then I actually progressed into
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managing their events team so it was like Roadrunners or or
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Or black thunders they were called back in the day when radio happened me actually, which is great
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I remember it the classic days of the road show
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Yeah, so I used to manage the team that did road shows and activations and launch events for the radio station
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and then when I saw the
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Radio was getting less funding and it was going more into other media areas. I decided to
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move on and then move into event production and technical production and I was actually at a
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LED screen and technology company that used to
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Buy in tech and then rent it into the industry or sector and into creative agencies and into permanent installations
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and then during that time I really
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felt frustrated with the creativity actually, so I was finding that getting technical equipment or
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Tech and selling it into agencies that were doing amazing work and amazing creative projects and things that really inspired me
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I felt like that
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I wanted to actually transition into more of a creative agency eventually and that's where my path led to
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actually moving into
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agency life or a creative agency and getting through and I actually worked for three of them before
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starting inception and founding it back in 2019
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Okay, so as a creative agency, what are there I know I
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Guess I know the answer to this but if you specialize in one particular area of events or you know
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Are you working on you know, very much brand activation. Is it trade shows? Is it conferences?
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Is it all of these things combined for clients?
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Yeah, I think creativity as you say is kind of it can be a broad spectrum
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But as an agency we work in B2B and actually B2C, but it is mainly across trade shows and event
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Events itself. We do pop-up retail activations as well. So that's obviously B2C
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But as an agency, yeah, we're mainly working across
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trade show sector and product launches and retail activations
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interesting and how you find in the process with that at the moment because
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I've worked
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On a personal level with a lot of companies over the years in helping to plan and run trade shows
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From a client from an exhibitor point of view
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So, you know, I work with several companies who exhibit a lot of trade shows a year
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So I'm used to seeing it from that side of the fence
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But I've also got some experience of dealing with as an organizer side of things
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And it's it's always interesting to see how the process and that evolutionary
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tail
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Has developed over the years. How is it working for you from a client coordination point of view in terms of their
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Involvement in the processes of things like trade shows nowadays
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Yeah, I think we always at Inception put ourselves in the clients shoes ultimately and that's what gives us real strength
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There's thinking about what their sort of
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Objectives are and their problems
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So we start with the commercial problem and not necessarily the creative outcome and that's right
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When we're dealing with the clients is really thinking about what they're being asked to
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Execute internally and that's what gives us a really good approach when it comes to
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Answering briefs or discussing it collaboratively with the marketing or or CMO
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I think what we're seeing in the market is obviously
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marketeers are under more pressure from
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standpoint
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But also they're also under more pressure from a result standpoint as well
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so you've got two factors there that you have to really take into consideration and I think
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Really the budget pressure
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Gets released when you start justifying the commercial outcome and that's what we find is that when we work with people
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And we look at the brand and what they're looking to achieve if we can really go first looking at that commercial problem
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Prove that we are accelerating growth. So from a trade show or retail perspectives that sales or lead generation
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That the budget
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Constraints get loosened slightly because you're starting to really justify internally for the brand or the team that this is a real
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Revenue generator and and it should be considered as a really
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serious area of the business
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Does it help now that you can track?
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Revenue generation further down the line on something like a brand activation than you could have done 10 15 20 years ago
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You know because never let's say from a straightforward merchandise point of view you take a clothing brand who might be you know
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you know, they can trace sales and things like that, but
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You know the technology that we have to track
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Interactions at things like brand events now
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It's so much more advanced that actually that there are real tangible ways of tracking whether or not an event has generated
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Income profit sales, you know post activation. Do you understand what I'm saying there? No, definitely
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I think it's looking at every opportunity to insert a metric because ultimately if you can get that trigger like you're
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you're
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Mentioning there that you can then give the report after and that's at every level from 12 time to interactive
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activity with experiential screens
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Etc or tech and you can then make sure that you're looking at those metrics pulling them together and then coming up with a really strong
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ROI and report on on the event itself and that was
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Historically always a challenge is reporting on ROI in the events or trade show sector because as you say
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Some people just be looking at it as a transactional moment where they were just looking at number of leads generated
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well, ultimately that could be
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Leads generated that are people being scanned where the sales people run off and get as many as possible because they're being
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Cast with that really that's not quality first
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So we're looking at multiple different
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metrics and also the the final result as well and you do need to be doing that because the sales cycle on some of the
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Brands and businesses that we deal with can be up to six or twelve months. So you've got to be
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Mostly looking at it and justifying the the investment
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It's the Rambo approach sometimes to lead generation, isn't it? I've got a scanner in my hand
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Let's just zap every badge within, you know, a three meter radius of our stand, you know
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and it's not I've said for a long time that you know sheer quantity of
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scans on your badge scanning app or your
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Device it is not meaningful data by any stretch of the imagination
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You know, there could be 500 people walk past idly and you know, if you've scanned those that's not 500 genuine leads, is it?
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No, definitely not. That's why we come up with
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Activations or the way in which we designed the the space to make sure that it's qualifying
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The people that approach ultimately so is it someone that's just there to get you know freebies or to get a free coffee?
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Yes, they can do that. Certainly in the brand can still look after that sort of person
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But really we need to be creating the space to qualify them so that if they are having more of a serious conversation
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there is a space to go for that to have a demo or have a one-to-one conversation rather than being any old
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person that's approaching the booth
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If you are looking at things like dwell time as a more realistic sort of
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Analytical data point. How are you actually analyzing and monitoring dwell time in in you know case to case?
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Yeah, that's a good question. So we we can use sensors we have done on big larger environments. Yeah
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People
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Through mobile phone signals and other tech really and we've done that to look at heat mapping and dwell time
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We do that only to make sure the flows correct. So people around demos etc making sure that
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Yeah, the way in which we're looking at the floor plan and space itself on a on a trade show or a consumer event
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We we really want to get that insight to understand the flow and how people are interacting with the space and learn from that
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and ultimately you get a metric off the back of that where you can give someone dwell time and then
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ultimately that should link in with your next metric which could be
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Interactivity or a brand experience or a demo?
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Are you a are you able to model that in advance of events nowadays with the technologies available?
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It might seem like a bit of a left-field question
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But I asked it recently on the podcast in that, you know trade shows and brand activations
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Nobody debates the level of planning that goes into them
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But in terms of actually getting anything from it and seeing people interact with it for the first time
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Often that is literally left to the moment when the doors open or the activation opens itself
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I'm curious to know whether or not you're able to building any any sort of like testing and sort of modeling
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You know utilizing tools that you've got available to you nowadays
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I mean ultimately that comes down to experience as well
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So it's working with a team and our team are really experienced with how people do interact with spaces
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and I think that's something that's undervalued sometimes is
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Thinking about the multiple different touch points where
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sightlines and how a different brand messaging and also the brand itself is being
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Is being presented but also how people would interact in the space as they walk into it
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I think it's
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Definitely when you work or you execute and you're really thinking about that flow and the way in which humans interact
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ultimately with space it's sometimes not thought about
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Enough and when you get a space that works very well
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you can see it in action and really it plays into making sure that the position of the brand is correct as I said and
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also
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The campaign on straplines really front of mind for anyone approaching
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Now that it's interesting that you that that point that you raised there ties into something that
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Mark Mark was good enough to send me some sort of ideas and some notes
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prior to the podcast today and there was a really sort of
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Interesting sentence that jumped out at me and it was right at the bottom of your notes that said the uncomfortable truth a lot of
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Engagement quote-unquote is theater and clients are starting to notice and I kind of my mind started race
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I thought well, first of all, what what do you mean by that?
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I started to interpret it in two or three different ways actually, but I'd love you to expand on that if you could
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Yeah, no, definitely. I think it's
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Ultimately when you see a brand that they're coming out with an activation or a statement and it looks almost feels
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Gimmicky or unauthentic. I think that's the biggest thing
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So what we look at is how is it being connected to the brand's identity and its personality?
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Is it reflecting what they stand for?
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Who they are as a brand and also is it going to connect with someone on a deeper level?
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With how you want to we're seeing a lot of brands sometimes come up with big statements that are
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amazing huge amounts of money being spent with hanging screens or
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Lighting rigs, etc, etc. But are they ultimately
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Supporting the brand and reflecting them as a brand
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Itself and I think sometimes it's really important to think about
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that and whether how the how the brands transitioned into a physical space and not just
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Looking at spending the most amount of money on theater, etc. It's got to feel authentic
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That's interesting. So, you know
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B to B particularly is a competitive marketplace
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If you're talking about events where you might have your competitor under the same roof at a trade show, for example
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you know
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There is always been this thought that well, we need to spend a lot of money. It needs to look great
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It needs to feel great needs to be lit. Well, it needs to have the best audio. Everything needs to look cutting-edge
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Sometimes depending on the brand and what message you're actually trying to send out
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It sounds like you're saying actually it might not need those elements. It still needs to look good
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It still needs to feel right, but it is to feel right in the context of what the brand is about
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Yeah, definitely and I think
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Creativity and our ideas win ultimately
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so if you've got an idea or creative that is
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More intelligent and more aligned with the brand and it's it's messaging that will win over someone spending lots of money on on
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the biggest screen for example
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So if the campaign message or or the spaces is designed really with that in mind from the very start
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That's really reflected when you come across
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the space and also
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Pets for analysis is done often
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we look at other brands and how they're showing up to events how they're positioning their campaign message their demos and then we ensure that
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the brand that we're working with it has a competitive advantage by
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Ultimately coming up with creative and more intelligent and ideas and approaches
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hmm of the
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Excuse me that the actual
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So suppose I'm going to call them data outcomes
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But the actual sort of
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Metrics and the data that's generated post event nowadays have you as a as an agency?
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Been able to actually trace how budgets are changing either
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increasing or decreasing indeed based on you know
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Tangible metrics and data that clients are able to see now from it and actually coming back to you and saying actually
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We've been able to clearly see what we got from this and actually we think if we invest a bit more with you
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We can get this out of it
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Yeah, I'm definitely we have seen that and ultimately that's what we look for and get real satisfaction from actually is
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starting to work with a
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Global brand who's just launching out
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They're starting to either they've got funding or they're trying to you know
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Look at the key players within the industry and come up
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to their level and that's where we really
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Look for those sorts of clients to work with and align with because it gives us great pleasure to see us
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Creating that identity for them that competes at a very high global level and also ultimately we support them with their growth
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so they could for example do a three-star sponsorship and then
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Also have a medium-sized space at an event. We do we work with them by coming up with the activation
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It could be the trade show booth. It could be experiential elements
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and we really try and drive their growth and then ultimately when we see the results coming through they
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Start spending more money. They've seen the justification of the spend within their boardroom. So the CMO and CEO
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From the results and they start actually taking out larger sponsors. So they cut sponsorships. They start becoming five-star sponsors. They start
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Spending more budget etc. And that's because they've seen the growth off the back of it and for us
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that's we take great pleasure from that and also
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We ultimately become a strategic creative partner for them and we position ourselves as that as an agency
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Where are you seeing?
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It's okay on the one hand
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It's okay for a company and a brand and a client to come back to you and say look this is great
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We want to go bigger and better or we've got this new idea now for Nexus
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We want to do something different, but the s-word will creep in at some point sustainability. They'll look at it and they'll go, right?
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Yes, we're getting good return on this and we're seeing that it's worth the economic output
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From the business because of the economic input that's coming in but from a sustainability and a messaging point of view
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Where is that and how is that manifesting itself in this process?
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Yeah, no, definitely. I think as an agency we always look to embed sustainability into our process
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so from the moment that we start working on something we're thinking about how we can create assets or
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Branded environments that can be reused and that could be as a whole element
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That's the same size as what we're looking to create build or it could be in
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different smaller pieces as well, so we all always promote
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reuse and also
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Storage and we can offer that at a global level as an agency
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I think some of the clients sustainability was really hot a couple years ago now that
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Budgets are getting tighter. We're not seeing it as much in briefs to be honest
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But I think as an agency it doesn't have to cost money to be sustainable
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It just is the thought process and to really care about it
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And that's where we're still promoting it and we're still coming up solutions that people can
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use and and and
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Take forward into their their global trade show or event
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Campaigns
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How savvy have the clients become nowadays with all the tools that are at their disposal?
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We're exposed to so much more media and content nowadays that you know in a short space of time
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You can just pick up your phone
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And if you're looking for a bit of inspiration or some ideas
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You know and you've got a blank piece of paper in front of you
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You know pretty quickly you can start getting a bit of inspiration from any number of sources
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your clients coming to you now with
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Much clearer, you know initial briefs and an idea in their head about what they would like and how they see
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Things manifesting themselves and how does that sort of change the creative process between you and the client?
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Yeah, no definitely I think
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It's a great question, but we're seeing it at different levels to be honest when when you're dealing with one brand
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It could be their markets director CMO or event manager
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I think it's always led by the top so that could be C level or CMO and you're seeing the way in which they
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want the brand to
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Approach things. Obviously, they set that out at the beginning of the year and their metrics
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And how they would like to be tracking
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Return on investment
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Itself. So I think what we're saying is
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Sorry about that. What we're saying is
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You and me both you and me both today. I'm full of it
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Yeah, what we're saying is that
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different brands do come up with different metrics as they're they're approaching the agency, but
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ultimately
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They always have an element of return on investment and that they're asking us to come up with how they can track that
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But sorry, I'm just gonna have to cough again no no no
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I've been terrible for I've been carrying it since I flew back. I was abroad last week
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Sorry to digress podcast listeners, but yeah, I was abroad last week and picked up the typical sort of flight home
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Sniffle, you know and two days later a bit of it's been terrible today dry dry throat
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So I feel your I feel your pain mark. I'm just gonna I was gonna that that client
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kind of led a
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Briefing approach can be a good and a bad thing
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I've often thought you know in terms of you know
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It's great when a client comes to you with a great idea and a clear vision of what they want to achieve
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That can make your process so much better
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But the flip side to that coin is there might come with an idea that they think is absolutely brilliant
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That you then maybe got to just pick apart a little bit and go back to what you were saying earlier on in today's conversation
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About what are your actual objectives from this what you're looking to achieve reverse engineering the process a little bit
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Do you still do you find yourself in situations like that where the ideas come in in a very enthusiastic level?
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But maybe just have to be tweaked
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To actually let the client realize that it might not meet the objectives of the outcomes that they want
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Yeah
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Definitely. I think what we're saying is yeah, if you see something that is on the in a brief or discussed in it
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It's come out of left field or you're thinking well, why is that included?
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I think it's as an agency how you create value in that process is pushing back and questioning the brief
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So it's working through it with them and understanding where that has come from
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and then ultimately sometimes we've done that with some clients and
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It's reshaped the approach and the group itself from us. Yeah our perspective. That's where we create real value as an agency
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Yeah, absolutely
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And I suppose what one thing that we haven't asked yet is is are you able to sort of you know?
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Tell us about some of the clients that you work with, you know exciting things that are on the horizon this year
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I often assume that when we talk to agencies on the podcast that they're all going to be under NDAs and you can't actually mention
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Any names, but you know, I always think it's fair to ask you and they give a shout out. Who have you worked with?
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No, definitely. I think some of our projects we are under NDAs and we don't share as much as we possibly
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Would like to or could
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But I mean some of our global clients were one of the global agencies for Pokemon. So they're obviously well
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We deal with a lot of their events
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From B to B to B to C and that's I mean, I don't know whether or not it's just me
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Imagine, but I'm I'm seeing sort of a big surge again in Pokemon for some reason
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I see I keep seeing it and the cards are back in fashion again with with with with young people
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You know, it seems to kind of had a bit of a resurgence if I'm if I'm right and saying so no definitely
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I mean since we started working with Pokemon
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I think it was five years ago
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I think their revenue was two two and a half billion and now it's up to five
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so that tells you the growth that the brand seen and Kovac really
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Accelerated that for the brand because as you say people are collecting. I mean
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That we've seen from the audience and the target audience for Pokemon B to B and B to C is that
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Really it's not children buying their products. It's actually people with money now
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So it's people that collected when they were younger
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They they've now obviously got older and they they have jobs now and they can afford to
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Pay for lots of these collectibles
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Yeah, yeah. I said what an amazing sort of I mean, that's a whole other subject there, isn't it?
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But you know brands taking advantage of you know
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Historical I suppose legacy of
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Legacy customers who may have spent money or been interacting with them, you know
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10 15 20 years ago and now those people are in a position to actually spend that bit more money
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You know, you see it in the music industry all the time the legacy bands touring, you know kids who loved them when they were younger
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But maybe couldn't afford a ticket and now they can they can go and see them
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That's why some of these sort of legacy bands in the 80s and 90s are still out there doing it because the people that grew
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Up with them have now got the money to go and spend and have a great weekend away at a festival or something like that
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Yeah, and I think it's really special to see that when anyone's really passionate about a brand or or a band
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I think it's really special to see that and
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Yeah, we love working with that particular brand
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because yeah, we get to see the
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The fans and how they're so passionate about about them. But as I say, we work with them across B to C
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So that is fans and retail but also across B to B
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So we are dealing with their brand licensing team and that is in a B to B
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Setting where they're having one-to-one meetings and they're looking at brand licenses that they could have with retailers
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Fabulous, it's been um, it's been great to sort of get you on it and it's it's flown past today
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I always say it's a great great podcast when it absolute sort of goes past the blink of an eye and
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Excuse me, I've looked at the clock and you know
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We're 26 27 minutes into it and it feels like we've been talking for a couple of minutes
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Um before we wrap up today mark
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It's really important as always that we let our podcast followers and listeners know
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How to track down a guest if they need to you know, get hold of them if they've got a question
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They want to ask you directly. Where's the best place to find you and where's the best place to find inception?
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No, definitely. Um
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We're we're at inception
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Uh, our office is in waterloo, so we're we're in um central london
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And we we go to a lot of the global events a lot of the trade shows
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Itself and i'm on linkedin as well. So mark hutchinson at inception
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Fantastic. That's been great to talk to you. And uh, yeah a reference at the start
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There's a bit of a time difference today
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So mark, uh, god bless him has had to get up very early this morning and and fill himself with coffee in order to have
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A bit of a chat today, but we do appreciate mark and it's been great to have you on the podcast for the first time
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Let's hope to see you again on on another episode further down the line. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks james
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On the website as well
27:51
Of course as the supplier directory if you work in the events industry and you're looking for a product service or supplier a tech platform
27:58
Anything like that chances are you will find it within the supplier directory on eventsindustrynews.com
28:04
You may of course have started your journey there today by watching today's podcast
28:08
If you have thank you very much for doing so
28:09
Please do make sure that you go in the opposite direction and search for the event industry news podcast
28:13
Wherever you get your podcasts from and make sure that you're subscribed to the audio versions of those
28:18
Thanks again to my guest today
28:20
Mark Hutchinson the managing director of inception for joining me and we'll see you all in the next edition of the podcast
28:25
Thanks, everybody