Dec 18th, 2008 |
Unless you’ve been doing nothing but holiday shopping (and we know you haven’t, because the economy would not be howling in pain if you had), you’ve heard by now that MacWorld will be sans Apple after this year. John Paczkowski’s headline is my favorite: Macworld Without Steve? That’s Like “Baywatch” Without Hasselhoff. Two major theories have emerged: Apple execs are sadists and enjoy watching IDG execs howl as loud as the economy, or Steve Jobs is sick again. Neither is a pretty picture. And of course, it’s always possible that it’s both. Either way, I’m sorry for the IDG employees who must be terrified, and sorry for the city of San Francisco for the lost revenue. I’m especially sorry for Jobs and his family if he’s sick; while I’m sure the stock price is a concern, I can’t help but feel that if he is battling cancer, he ought to be able to do it with some degree of privacy if that’s what he wants.
Whether Jobs’ health is an issue or not, the announcement has prompted some to speculate about the health of the events industry generally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think this is a bit of a disconnect. Events come and go for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with their actual value to a community, and I think this is one of the cases where the circumstances are rather unique. The economy is going to take its toll on pretty much all forms of media as advertising budgets shrink, but forward-thinking companies are not going to abandon their efforts to evolve towards more conversational, multi-directional approaches, and events are the original (and most proven) form of conversational marketing. The Cluetrain Manifesto posited that the Internet had reenabled the dynamics of a classic bazaar, with all the attendant chaos, debate and overlapping voices; it doesn’t take much imagination to see that conferences and tradeshows embody that archetype literally. Events give companies a way to go beyond message to engagement, to listen as well as promote, to express themselves as a collection of human beings. As marketers increasingly prioritize these goals, they tend to see participation in live events as a cornerstone of their marketing strategies.
So is Apple making a statement about live marketing? Are they once again bucking the trend? My colleague Lenny Heymann said it best
I think the point is they love live marketing so much, they built stores to do it every day.
The fact is, Apple never really engaged in the bazaar in the way the Cluetrain authors imagined; for many years now they have not participated in events they did not either dominate or outright control, and they’ve managed their message with a degree of discipline Karl Rove would envy. But with both their live events and their tightly choreographed retail strategy, they’ve shown that while they can’t stand the heat of the public marketplace (or see no need to), they very much get the importance of connecting with their customers IRL, through humans who express the company’s value and values. I got a reminder of that when I ducked into an Apple store on this week. The experience was perfect, as it’s been pretty much every time I’ve been in an Apple store. I was in and out within minutes, impressed that the door greeter knew the exact location of the item I needed, but another woman camped comfortably at the Genius Bar might have been there for hours, sorting through her various issues with helpful and responsive staff; we each got what we came for and left satisfied and once again impressed. We weren’t sold things we didn’t need, but I happily paid $20 for a cable that probably cost $1 to produce. It’s a minor thing, but there’s something about a live human interaction that cements a relationship with a brand in a way that no other form of interaction can do.
So is there a lesson in Apple’s recent moves? I’m not sure I see one. But for marketers using events as a platform, I would take note of Apple’s ongoing commitment to customer experience in all their live marketing. Forge your own path, but borrow what works. Make the most of your live marketing, wherever you do it.
Jennifer,
Thanks so much for a thoughtful, sensitive, and ultimately optimistic piece. I have been a Bay Area-based producer of trade show events for the past 25 years, and have been getting rather sick of the ’sky is falling’ notion that trade shows are dead and gone.
I agree with you completely. They are most definitely not. We are a culture that happily depends and thrives on face-to-face interactions. While many of the bloated trade shows will not survive (remember Comdex?), those with a more focused approach will thrive. I recently produced a show for Supercomputing in Austin and the exhibitors there were thrilled with the traffic they were getting.
I will be forwarding your piece to MANY of my associates as they run amok dodging pieces of the sky ….
Ken Newman
Good post, Jen.
Here’s a sentence I wrote about this subject in an upcoming article: “Jobs’s role model is Willy Wonka. He wants to lock himself up in Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, and not have to talk to people anymore.”
Yes, that’s a joke — but it’s also serious. Apple doesn’t like open, rough-and-tumble dialogue. They like to control the venue and conversation. And if you’re at a conference, people can just walk up to you and buttonhole you and start talking. Yikes!
[...] Pahlka wrote an excellent blog post that highlights the unique value Live Events provide, while adding some perspective on Apple’s [...]
“I can’t help but feel that if he [Jobs] is battling cancer, he ought to be able to do it with some degree of privacy if that’s what he wants.”
In the excerpt above, Pahlka writes in the Indicative Mood and not the Subjunctive, indicating to me that Jobs has had a relapse of his pancreatic cancer.
Pahlka, have you heard anything more about his relapse? how many more weeks does he have left?