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Return on Experience: Measuring What Matters in Events · Event Industry News Podcast

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Hello everybody and welcome to the Event Industry News podcast live from the Allianz Stadium
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in Twickenham. My name is James Dixon and as ever I wish you a very good morning, afternoon or
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evening whenever or wherever you may tune in to today's podcast from. We are in this wonderful
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setting today and there may be some sort of bit of b-roll footage for those of you watching the
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video version of this podcast to just, oh there we go somebody was just about to walk across the
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camera shot as we're recording. Wonderful, yes the joy of the live event and actually bringing
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the podcast into a live setting which I was just talking to my guests who we'll meet in just a
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second about the joys of actually being sat here face to face and actually doing the podcast with
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people in the room. Usually I sit at home at my upright piano on a video link with people so
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it's a wonderful change and a really kind of invigorating experience to be able to sit in
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a room with people and for a bit of context before we really kick into today's conversation
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we're at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham today because we've launched the new Event Industry
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News Conference of Meeting Guide, the new digital supplement so you can search on Event Industry
1:12
News for that. So we've launched that today, we've had a stadium tour with some invited
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guests, event organisers to showcase these amazing facilities that they've got in the stadium
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and the new on-site Radisson Red Hotel. So a really big thanks to Johanna and the team from
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Allianz Stadium here at Twickenham for their hospitality today and for affording us the
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opportunity to to set up the podcast and have a little bit of a chat. So why don't we get into
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that right now. My guest today is Jock O'Callaghan and it would be fair to say that there's no real
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way that I can introduce and really succinctly in 10 seconds say what my guest does today because
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you do so much. Jock a very warm welcome to the podcast first of all. Thank you very much for
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having me. And yeah you were introduced to me via email you know a few days ago as most of my
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podcast guests are over the years and a shout out to Alastair Turner from APR Marketing for making
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that introduction and saying look I really think you should take this opportunity so
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let's find out a bit about you you know who are you and what do you do? As you said my name is
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Jock O'Callaghan and I am the co-founder and director of Art Tangent Festival which is an
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award-winning festival that takes place in Somerset every August. It hosts 12,500 guests
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around 120 bands, international audience and international lineup.
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They also run an experienced consultancy business called UBQX which looks to help Allianz
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measure their return on experience as well as their ROI and I am a doctorate student where I'm
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looking at the quantification of experience and why experiences matter. Wow so all of that stuff
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and people who work in events you know claim that they've got busy lives anyway
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you're jugging the organisation of a large summer greenfield festival
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doctorate or the consultancy side of things. I suppose the first thing that I really want to
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extract from your intro if you don't mind and I've got some notes here I may or may not refer to them
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but you said something really interesting there return on experience and over the years of
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recording this podcast I've spoken to loads of different people in the events industry
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and return of investment is it's almost a boring phrase in some respects it's so like oh really
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how do you actually justify return on experience I suppose it's such a different way of looking at
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it in some respects and if your return on experience is good my instinct tells me straight
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away that return on investment is naturally going to follow. Exactly that I think we experience
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designers event organisers tend to measure everything on financial terms and of course
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our events and experiences need to be profitable otherwise they can't continue however there's a
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real importance to understand the perceived and actual value of the experience over and above
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monetary terms and it's in that space that I'm developing or I have developed tools and
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methodologies to help my clients measure that and to extract meaningful data meaningful insights
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and use that as part of their iterative design process to optimise the experience for the end
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users. And you know saying all of that I'm going to be pretty blunt and say how does that manifest
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itself because we hear those sort of terms all the time or develop these tools and methodology
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and data and stuff like that but you know how does that meaningfully present itself back to
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event organisers? So event organisers tend to look at sentiment analysis through either reviews
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through survey data and whilst those are important things to tap into there is a an issue with some
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of that data from my perspective at least insofar as we all suffer from something called memory
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recall bias which means our memories distort over time as humans we're we're storytellers
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and we like to embellish our stories and with that embellishment we can distort the actual
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experience that's been had and therefore our memory recall of it can be somewhat skewed.
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Interesting. So what I'm encouraging experienced designers and event organisers to consider
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is real-time live metrics that can track people's experiences and give them meaningful insights that
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will help them improve and optimise the experiences that they're delivering through their events
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but also how some of these insights has the potential to unlock new audiences or new design
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elements that perhaps aren't immediately obvious when you're sat in a room coming up with the ideas
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or from the sentiment analysis that you do with the reviews. Yeah it's interesting because I'm
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going to take myself out of event person for a second and put myself into the you know the
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position of being somebody going to an event and you're right you know you do get that sort
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of distorted sometimes tainted view you may have a wonderful experience and one even some minor
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negative thing happens to you and for some reason that tends to log in the brain sometimes more so
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than the predominantly positive experiences that you've had so how we analyse that and we should
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apologise we are recording here and because it's a live environment people are just finishing up
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their lunch they're just wandering across camera with no thought but there we go we're in a live
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environment but yeah as I was saying you know sometimes I've had to wait a week two weeks
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sometimes longer to actually think back I think oh that was a that was a fantastic experience but at
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the time I took away a little bit of negativity and I guess is there a time element involved in
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waiting to get some of this data as well do we worry too much about getting it immediately?
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I think it depends what data you're trying to extract so if you want to measure the impact or
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the legacy of an experience you should argue that to do that straight away that that transformational
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process hasn't had the opportunity to start to grow so you should ask that three months six
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months a year down the line ten years down the line even so it's really about being able to
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identify what information is you're trying to extract from these learnings and knowing what
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you're going to do with it so so many companies when you speak to them say they know they offer a
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great experience but when you ask them to define exactly what that experience is they're not able
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to do that so you cannot measure success if you don't know what you're measuring against
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so this is why I think it's important for companies to understand the importance of
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measuring some real-time data and understanding if they do their sentiment analysis or their survey
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data later that it could be heavily distorted you know your train has been delayed you're
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annoyed that your train is half an hour late it's going to have a knock-on implication for your evening
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therefore you're going to score the survey data probably slightly lower because you're reflecting
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your own mood rather than the experience of the event so it's a cautionary tale let's say
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I'm not not diluting that data to be insignificant or unimportant I think it's just being aware of
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the weighting and the value you give to that but also understanding what you're going to measure in
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real time at your events that will give you these insights to optimize the experience for your end
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users. And one thing I was giving some really really useful notes in advance of today's podcast
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and maybe some talking points things that we could expand on while we had the opportunity to have you
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on as a guest today and one point that jumped out at me was something called imagination poverty
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and earlier on in today's some of the sessions that the panel sessions that we've delivered in
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front of the audience here at the Allianz Stadium earlier on today we've spoken about
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having these kind of linear ideas of what certain events should be and how they should
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be labeled at the top as well and how we really need to just start thinking a little bit differently
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and do you think that there's imagination poverty stems from some of the constraints
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and the terminology that we've almost been tied into historically in the events industry and
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that's a root cause of why sometimes we don't deliver events that are really personal
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and personalized to people? I think there's two answers to that one is that too often companies
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are stuck designing in a more traditional way that we've designed events so you come up with a concept
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you think about the practicalities of that concept you decide whether or not it's going to be viable
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to run it you're then going to pre-production into production deliver the event debrief start again
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I think we should be creating events based on what we want the end user to feel
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as the residual feeling from having lived that experience and then work backwards from there
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so how do we then how do we design for that legacy for that possible transformation that our
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participants may have the other problem is I think the industry has got lazy okay suddenly you put a
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few people in a room and you call it a festival that's not a festival you engage with more than
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one sense it's immersive no it's not immersive so it's this dilution of terminology that is is
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damaging the events that we're running because people are now frustrated well I've certainly
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been frustrated with that language because those terms shouldn't have been diluted and this is what
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I mean by imagination poverty we're not using terminology or creating new terminology that
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best represents our events and our experiences and also with our design process is stagnated
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so I feel like we need to to shake everything up rethink how we're going to approach the design
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experience put the end users first make it human centered design for personalization so that the
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participants become the main character in their own story throughout that experience and use terms
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that are appropriate for the type of event that we're creating we love a buzzword in the events
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industry and I think we're very guilty of it sometimes aren't we saying oh there's a new
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buzzword immersive right we're going to create immersive experiences you know it's an immersive
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theater experience you know when the boat is going across the stage we're going to spray some water
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on you you know and I've no doubt that some of these phrases and some of the terminology has
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come out with very good intention somebody's created so ultimately that term has come from
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somewhere somebody has created something that is that term that is immersive if we use that as an
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example but then as it becomes a buzz and it becomes a trend like you said it gets diluted
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down doesn't it you know people think oh well I'll have a bit of that and I'll throw it in there
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with no real understanding of what it means which then dilutes the message and it gets to the point
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where you hear those sort of terms and you almost roll your eyes a little bit and I think excuse me
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I think it's also lazy marketing to some extent but I think part of the problem as well is that
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whilst companies might be delivering fantastic experiences not being able to define to define
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what those experiences are means it's then very easy to slip into using terms just because they're
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the industry buzzwords so again if we're talking about designing for the end user experience
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to be able to do that we needed to have defined what that end user experience is as the legacy
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which means we have to be able to define it which therefore means we need to find the
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right terms to be able to define it to then sell it in and not use diluted terminology
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do we always have to define how do you measure success if you don't know what you're measuring
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or what you're measuring it against so everyone defaults to profitability of course events need
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to be profitable otherwise they can't run again but what does it mean if you design for an event
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that has such a good legacy that you guarantee your repeat patronage people coming back again
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that your reputation exceeds other companies because you've delivered that fantastic experience
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we're in an attention demanding economy economy everything is vying for our attention whether
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it's emails or whatsapp message whether it's streaming services whether it's gaming you know
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we need to make sure that we know what we're selling to our end users so that we can sell
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it in in the right way and make them want to come back and spend their time well at your event
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is this message relevant to only a small percentage of the events industry and to expand
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on that question and why I ask it is that what I call the sort of the bread and butter of the
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events industry the day-to-day is not necessarily in wonderful spaces like this there's a huge
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amount of work that goes on this but you know provincially if you go around the country
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every hotel located just off a motorway junction has probably got 40 or 50 people in there
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hosting a small business conference for a local law firm or some accountants or
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some teachers whatever it may be and I've always considered that to kind of be the sort of the
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bread and butter the ground zero of events and I've always found that conversations like this
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as good as they are and as as genuine as they are and that the points you're raising are fabulous
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do they actually ever filter down to the lower level or we only ever sort of talking about
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these these conversations only relevant to that upper echelon of the industry
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I think the designing and experience wherever there is a human there is an experience so it
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doesn't matter what industry this is in I think we should be human centered in our approach to
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whatever it is that we're designing whether it's the design of a stadium like we're in today
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whether it's the events that will be held within it whether it's going to get your coffee I mean
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there's a reason that Starbucks must spell your name on the cup they do that nine out of ten
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times if you're a regular and then on the tenth time they'll spell it correctly because it creates
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talkability that is an intentional decision that's been made by that company as a marketing
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stunt so it doesn't matter even if the event is ground zero as you call it the event should still
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have some sort of profound impact on the attendees otherwise I'd argue it's not worth doing you put
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all that effort into creating the event and you want somebody to walk away with a feeling inside
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them that they have learned something that their time has been well spent and that the attendance
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of that event was of benefit to them so I think it's applicable to not just the events industry
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wherever there are people there is an experience design consideration and do you feel like attendees
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and delegates at events should be respected as well as part of that process because an example
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that's quite fresh in my mind is I was I was working down in Bournemouth last week at the
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football stadium to help support and deliver AV for a small conference for care home managers
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and anybody who knows anybody who works in the care sector knows it's it's a phenomenally
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pressured job and the people who are in attendance at the conference were care home managers
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so there has to be a certain understanding that these people are coming out of a place for the
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day but they are constantly wanting to keep their eyes on what's happening and be able to react if
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they need to to that and when I first started doing these the morning session was like a three
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hour long back-to-back session with like a 10-minute break and we've really we've adjusted
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it slightly so that it allows shorter sessions with with more frequent breaks because what they
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need to do is to break off back into their into their work life so they maintain it so that brings
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me back to what I said about do you think that there has to be a level of respect and understanding
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of of what your customers and your visitors your guests your delegates your audiences want I think
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that's exactly what I mean by this human-centered design so thinking about your attendees first
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we tend to default to designing for demographic profiles however I think we should be designing
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for psychographic profiles so by psychographic profile I mean designed for people's needs wants
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challenges motivations so using your care home example there is a real need there for the
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attendees of that to have regular breaks to be able to engage with you know the work that they
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do to provide the care that they do so by designing for that end user it it forces the
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format to some extent because you know you have to put these breaks in if you started that design
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process by saying we're going to run a conference and this will be a three-hour session and we're
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going to produce it this way it's going to be in this venue with this type of lighting etc
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that's not considering the attendee so by measuring return on experience as well you're removing the
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financial element albeit temporarily but you're measuring whether the event that you have created
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has impact in the right way for your users from a psychological point of view how much
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have we morphed and I suppose evolved to an extent as an industry to cater for the changing way in
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which we consume any form of information now whether it be video content text content
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social media content I don't know what the stats are but I think it would be fair to say that you
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know it's fairly common knowledge that we we have our attention spans are much shorter now
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we we have the ability to pause live tv yeah pause film so you know when's the last time somebody
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watched a film you know from beginning to end without pausing it and going for a break or
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checking on their phone how much um has the industry adapted and morphed to that changing
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way that our attention spans now sort of you know consume content it was touched on earlier with
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your conversation with al around sort of personalization so I think again this leads back
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into this cycle of psychographic profiling of your audience to understand their needs and motivations
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so it could be let's use a festival app for example you've gone through and selected the bands that
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you want to go and see so that you get reminders to go and see them yeah but the app could be
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developed so it says well you've liked this band but you haven't liked this band that's similar so
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we recommend you go and see this band because you've got a gap in your schedule and it's helping
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you choose your own story through the festival but it also could mean that that tent that would be
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otherwise quite empty because it's a lesser known band suddenly becomes full because the app has
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spotted your choices and and tallied the sort of for fans of its similar band was like this
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so again it's about putting the human at the center of the design
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if we design so there's the option for customization and personalization if you're a
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more passive participant you can you can involve yourself more passively and we'll probably get
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more out of it so I use roller coasters as an analogy if you love roller coasters and you're
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forced to watch somebody scream past you and you're never allowed on that roller coaster
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that's going to be a terrible experience and if you hate roller coasters and you're forced to go on
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it you're probably not going to enjoy it at all but put people in their right element someone
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might absolutely love seeing people scream past and roller coasters but never want to sit on one
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and vice versa people want to be on the roller coasters and not watching yeah so allowing people
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to pick their own route through based on their available effort levels how happy they are to
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immerse themselves and selecting things that feel that that event has been designed for them
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in turn will have a higher perceived value of the return on experience for them yeah and and you've
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you've mentioned something there to do with festivals and using an app to suggest a band and
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when we think about that as a as an algorithm that's built into the streaming platforms now
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the way that we consume music now by streaming platforms they were they've all got algorithms
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built in haven't they so that you listen to this you play one song and it will suggest the others
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and so on and so forth so that technology is there I think sometimes again bringing this into
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the sort of the wider events industry there are certain elements of the events industry that use
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bits of technology really well the other elements of the events industry haven't quite tapped into
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and realized that they could adapt that existing technology to actually make their life a little
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bit better the one-to-one matchmaking that we have in business events now with apps where
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you register all your information it knows who you are as a delegate what you do what your spend
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budget is a year etc etc and these platforms will match match make you together that technology is
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there let's maybe morph that into the live music world or to the festival world and there's this
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cross-pollination maybe of technology that I feel we're not taking full advantage of yet
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I think that's an event industry problem is that if you're an event organizer your job is constantly
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about finding solutions you you have to find a way around things so we become very independent
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in the way that we operate because we're problem solvers an event is a series of problems until
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the event is finished and it's a series of problems to take it all back down again until
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it's gone but we're not very good at being transdisciplinary we should be looking to other
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industries and involving them more to challenge our thinking to enhance what we're designing
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and to to be able to provide these more personalized experiences yeah and I guess
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how that actually manifests itself in real life I've used that word a lot today manifest but
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whenever I'm having these types of conversation be it in a live event on the podcast
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again I'm always kind of bringing it down to trying trying to picture it how it would present
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itself in a real life application go back to buzzwords like immersive and you know looking at
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trends in the industry and everything but you know fundamentally what we want to know as organizers
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right well how can I actually deploy that how will I see that in real life you know with with my
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with my people and I guess trying to present that visually can be it's still quite difficult isn't
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it sometimes when we when we look at how we generally do event briefs and stuff the documents
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they're shared okay they're shared digitally but ultimately it's words on paper a lot of the time
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with a small element of the visual aspect do you think that the the visual element of event design
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needs to improve as well and that will help us ultimately tap into you know this personalization
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of events I think the aesthetic of an event is always important but I think the step that we
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should be taking which is an aesthetic consideration to stomach to some extent is enabling people to
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attend and participate in a way that's comfortable for them like I'm a compulsive doodler when I'm
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when I'm listening to something because it helps focus my attention some people have a you know
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can't help but fidget so what about if we created the spaces where somebody's a very active listener
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they just sit still and watch there's a space for them to do that and that corner over there is for
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those people that have just got ants in their pants and can't sit still and it's permissible
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for them to you know be wiggling around because that's the way that they're going to engage in
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their learning so they're more kinetic learners I think we should be designing to enable people to
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absorb the information in a way that they can best absorb it and that's not for the organizers
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to design as such it's for us to create the environmental factors that allow for it and
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for the participants to engage in whichever way they feel most comfortable well that ties into
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something that I wanted to bring into this conversation about ultra accessibility and
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again I feel that we're in a literally a confined way of thinking in certain events and again I'm
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going to use an example purely because it's relevant to me and I can picture it and that is
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the content theaters at the event at live trade show where we had this year four content theaters
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within the show floor at excel and they are literally defined bordered spaces with a wall
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so you can see where they are and I think we're very much still in the train of thought that
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all the content takes place within that physical area as well and when we talk about accessibility
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and personalization we maybe need to still retain those physical walls because from an
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operations point of view it helps us and you have to have that defined space but in terms of the
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content delivery we have to allow ourselves the luxury of being able to break out of those walls
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a little bit physically using wireless headphones using the streaming capability of a camera being
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there somebody be able to log into it within that venue but in a completely different space
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and I think this again this is a boxed way of thinking and compartmentalizing event spaces
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maybe needs to change as well yeah I completely agree it's about it's so difficult to design
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an event for the different accessibility needs of people but we can only I believe that we can
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only improve that by constant feedback so here's where I'm going to be slightly contradictory is
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that we have to reach out to people after the event to get their feedback on it but I think
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as event organizers we should be looking at challenging our own design thinking through
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the lenses of different access needs so is it somebody who is physically in need of the use
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of a wheelchair is it somebody who can't sit still is it somebody that has a high sensitivity
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towards lighting and are we are we checking our design through analyzing it against again it comes
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down to psychographic profiles I think the psychographic profiles of the users and if that
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in that process an error is identified if that's done at the design stage there's an
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opportunity to rectify that if the event is already live it's too late yeah and and this
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might seem a really sort of basic example but some people are compulsive note takers
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and they love firing up their laptop and listen to something you're going
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thundering away on the keyboard taking notes while they're listening to something
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and I don't know a business event that affords people really the luxury of being able to do that
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in the traditional boxed compartmentalized floor plan layout of a theatre for example
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and when I look around here today and I'm sure we'll be able to get a sort of a shot of where
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we are for context you know we've let people come in today we've deliberately not laid it
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out as a theatre because we we said from the minute they walked in the whole ethos of today
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is this you know stay and play methodology where we wanted people to be sat checking their emails
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have your laptops open while you're listening to this it's not a problem and as I said we're still
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in this train of thought where we put rows of seating in like a theatre why not offer some
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standing space for people who maybe want to stay on their feet and just stay moving why not offer
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a little bit of desk space within that theatre where somebody could set up the laptop and you
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label it as a note-taking space you know so set up your laptop if you want to take notes while
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you're doing it why not say the wireless headphones are here not just so you can sit here and listen
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to the content but take them over into the coffee bar grab yourself a coffee do some work over there
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and listen to it over there yeah this is what I mean about breaking out about the these compartments
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that we create it's the customization and then personalization isn't it yeah again it comes down
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to the event organizers creating the environmental framework that facilitates the personalization so
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you can't predict how every single attendee that comes to your conference for example is going to
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want to take notes or where they want to sit but if you provide options for them they then choose
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and therefore they will feel more comfortable in that space and they will get the optimal learning
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out of that because they're comfortable in that space in themselves and will be more engaged
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and I think again it's not a buzzword but accessibility is one of those words that's
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been said and I think when it comes to sustainability as well another buzzword arguably
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I had this conversation with people where people hear sustainability think all right
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well we need to recycle our coffee cups and encourage everybody to take public transport
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accessibility oh well we need to make sure that there's provision for a wheelchair user to be able
27:55
to get into this theater accessibility is so much broader than that isn't it you know accessibility
28:01
is like you said understanding how people wish to consume content understanding some people are
28:06
fidgeters some people have a 10 minute extension span some people may be happy to sit there for an
28:11
hour and finding ways that suit the event but also ultimately suit the audience to tailor that
28:17
in the way and we've got more tools than ever I think to be able to tailor that but we're kind of
28:24
slowly dragging ourselves away from traditional thinking and it's going to take a while and it's
28:29
going to take some failures I think you know we will try new models that perhaps don't work but
28:35
it's almost like the event industry's got a bit scared of itself that we found formulas
28:40
for events that work and we're scared to break out of them and challenge our thinking so again
28:44
it comes back around to this imagination property it's going to be the companies that really
28:48
challenge their own thinking to do something different to provide these spaces that allow
28:52
for personalization that I think are going to start to you know go ahead of the curve
28:57
and become the industry leaders and established companies can do that we haven't got to wait for
29:04
new startup companies to come through and sort of pioneer that we just need to be brave enough to
29:08
pivot to do something slightly different. I give you blockbuster video you know oh no this is how
29:14
we've always done it and nobody had their finger on the pulse and saw where the technology was going
29:21
and I may be wildly wrong here so feel free to please email events industry news and say James
29:26
is wildly wrong here but I'm sure somebody told me a story about blockbuster video and Netflix
29:33
and there was a platform called love film that did mail dvd when we all still had dvd players
29:40
so they would send you a dvd you would watch it and then you would post it back to them and love
29:43
film was eventually acquired or became Netflix and there was an opportunity I think at one point for
29:48
for blockbuster to be involved and no no that's ridiculous our model is this and it might be an
29:56
extreme example but you know who actually when was the last time anybody got a cd a cassette
30:02
or a dvd and put it in a machine to watch something and you know apologies to vinyl
30:08
collectors out there it's a wonderful thing but that's not the reality of what we live in
30:13
nowadays is it and there is a certain amount of awakening I think the event industry still needs
30:17
to do to the reality of the world we live in now and make your events fit the reality of what we
30:23
live in now 100 it's it's something that um yeah I think about I think about regularly and I look
30:29
examples like this is what more for them you know and dare I say adapt or die because that's what
30:37
we will have to do and I think in the events industry the adaptation is challenging the
30:42
traditional formats of event structures being brave to try things that perhaps won't always work
30:48
um but measuring return on experience as well as ROI return on experience is really what I'm
30:54
taking away from this conversation today um and it's been brilliant to speak to you um thanks so
30:59
much for sort of coming down here today um and I know that you you attended the earlier part of
31:04
today and the stadium tour and things like that but fundamentally you've made the effort to come
31:08
down here today to have this conversation on the podcast and it's hugely appreciated my guest today
31:14
has been Jock O'Callaghan on the event industry news podcast thanks so much for joining us and
31:18
thanks so much everybody for for watching or listening to this um my usual wrap-up I'm going
31:23
to still deliver even though I'm in a live context and I'm not sat at home at my upright piano with
31:28
a laptop balanced on top precariously and two dogs next to me um is my reminder as always that if you
31:34
are listening to today's podcast please do head over to the event industry news website where you
31:39
can watch video versions of this podcast and indeed all of our previous podcasts your journey
31:45
may of course started there today already and you're watching this on the website thank you
31:49
very much for doing so if that's the case but please do also go in the opposite direction
31:53
and make sure that you like and subscribe to the podcast on all of the various different
31:57
podcast platforms that are out there however you consume your media um and just a final word um
32:04
to our host for today the Allianz Stadium at Twickenham for hosting today's event and hosting
32:10
today's podcast today and make sure that you also have a little wander around eventindustrynews.com
32:16
for the A to Z supplier directory and indeed the meetings and conference buyer's guide that's
32:20
just been launched today as part of today's event thanks very much for tuning in and we'll see you
32:25
on the next edition of the podcast thanks everybody thanks James