An industry empowering itsel f through Digitization and fresh Talent

When we think back to forecasts of the way businesses were expected to operate today, it might c ome as a surprise to see just how many widely accepted predictions simply never came to be. The paperless office; people conducting their business alone as if buying a gift on Amazon; connected and transacting only via screen.

We in the global exhibition industry are better placed than most to know why. As a face-toface industry, we know that most important decisions are made when physically surrounded by others. While the Internet is a perfect tool for delivering targeted audiences to the events we’ve paid to attend, exhibitions stand alone in their ability to provide us with the forum we need to turn these needs into business.

It is precisely this element of the exhibition medium – the fact that buyers predominantly attend live events by design rather than by chance – that makes the industry ripe for digitization. And the way in which these in teractions are being enhanced though a modern digital approach is perhaps the greatest tide of change we are witnessing in the industry at the moment.

With digitization accelerating in businesses around the world, it’s little surprise that UFI’s most recent Global Barometer survey focused on the state of digital activity in the exhibition industry – finding that the majority of companies are responding to the accelerating process of digitization in the exhibition industry.

In f act a quarter of companies reported that they have developed a digital transformation s trategy for the whole company, a fifth have created a designated digital role (Chief Digital Officer, for example) in senior management, particularly in China and Germany.

A fifth of survey participants even claim to have launched digital products not directly

By Region

Added digital services/products around our existing exhibitions (like apps, digital advertising, digital signage)

Changed internal processes and workflows in our company into digital processes

Developed a digital transformation strategy for individual exhibitions/products

Developed a digital/transformation strategy for the whole company

Created a designated function in the upper/top management (like a CDO, Head of Digital, etc.)

Launched digital products not directly related to existing exhibitions related to existing exhibitions; a trend most visible in the UK (50%) and the US (36%).

In order to quantify how markets and regions are adapting to the digital challenge, UFI has created ‘UFI DIX –The Digitization Implementation Index of the Exhibition Industry’, which analyzes the degree to which digital tasks have been completed, from 0 (none) to 100 (all).

According to this debut index (2017), the UK, Germany, China and the US are the exhibition markets in which key indus try players are most actively engaged in digital transformation.

There are many reasons why highlighting these more advanced digital exhibition environments should matter to potential clien ts. One of the upshots of digital development is that live events are becoming both more measurable and more cost-effective. Another is that these c onversations themselves –as befits today’s marketplace – are increasingly managed and recorded. People want two-way, engaging conversations and by employing digital means to create experiences at every touch point we can empower the live experience, aiding dialogue, increasing the number of valuable leads, even creating advocates to share your message for next year’s edition.

Leaving digital development to one side, we are also seeing the industry expand in more conventional terms. Venue space c ontinues to grow in most regions of the world, and this year UFI charted this growth with its report on the World Map of Exhibition Venues (with a minimum of 5,000 sqm).

In addition to analysing indicators on key regional trends, it lis ts the largest venues for all 28 markets where total capacity exceeds 200,000 sqm of gross indoor exhibition space.

Asia-Pacific has become the market with the second

… exhibition industry markets around the world currently have progressed towards full Digitization.

By Country

1,212 largest offer (23.7 % of the total world capacity), behind Europe (45 %) and ahead of North America (23.6 %). In addition to adding new space, many venue operators have also made significant investments to upgrade their existing venue capacities.

It is important that the talent base for venue management grows in parallel with this, and education programmes still need to be developed to provide sufficient qualified talent for everyday needs. The evolution of≈ our business is increasingly shaped by a new and younger pool of talent and such programmes enable future leaders to stand out and be noticed.

One thing is for sure, these young leaders will be entering the industry at a time of fresh

1,195 challenge and a new definition for what we’ve come to regard as a typical exhibition, if such a thing exists. The ‘blurring of the lines’ between historically separate event formats like exhibitions, congresses, and conferences is continuing and intensifying. Hybrid formats like the Web Summit have evolved – at once a festival, conference and exhibition, while entertainment elements are increasingly expected at B2B events, the product of changing audience demands.

As hybrid business events thrive, we are seeing more collaboration and merging between these new organisers, established association congresses and for-profit exhibition organiser s to match these developments.

All of this development is of course taking place against an economic and political backdrop in which, despite political tensions, a rise in protectionism and a perceived fragility of free trade, both the global economy and the exhibition industry as a whole are growing at rates exceeding most forecasts.

While issues such as venue security and complications regarding travel and labour arise from issues such as foreign and domestic policy change arise from life outside our sphere of influence, the exhibition industry remains as valuable to global business as it ever has.

Main results / Indoor exhibition space in 2017: size segmentation

Globally, 61 % o f the venues have an indoor capacity between 5,000 and 20,000 sqm. One third (34%) of all venues globally belong to the medium-size segment, offering between 20,000 and 100,000 sqm. 61 venues have more than 100,000 sqm; with a growth of 27%, it is the fastest growing market segment.

While Europe is home to most of the large venues, the average size of Asia-Pacific venues is bigger than in any other region.

It depends! Values, art and brands

Art in itself knows no values. It depends on the e thical frame of reference. That is why Peiner and Padua decorated the Nazi palaces, while someone like Ernst Walsken was putting his life in danger and enduring great hardship in the concentration camp Börgermoor whenever he used shoe polish to paint on disgarded matchboxes or any other kind of surface he could get his hands on.

Simply put: art has a wide range.

Art has to be seen in context. It is been liberated from being the faithful rendering of the optical, the playing of the most beautiful sound possible or the reproduction of life - as we know it or presume to know it. Of course, art owes this particular liberation to the technologies developed in modern times. Art can make sense, but has no purpose anymore in a free society. Stylish representation of the Divine or Divine-like has been dropped since the Enlightenment. With art, artists can pose questions, which brings them on a par with the scientists. We can confidently push aside the decorative ornamen t in the 21st century.

Famous artists are brands and they behave as such. Warhol was mass-producing in his Factory Pop-Art, and Beuys knew all too well how to control all his communicative movements.

Bob≈ Wilson and Christoph

Schlingensief are and were recognizable. One as an aesthetic stylist, the other as a moralist who “pain ted” on the canvas of society. Brands are at best good friends and good friends are not without ethos, otherwise they would not be good friends. If you want to work with Bob Wilson, you should also expect an ethos, one that reaches far beyond the aesthetic exterior.

In an anything-goes society in which – thanks to science – the power of the divine has eroded, new frames of reference are needed. People need orientation, that’s how we should interpret the roll-back to the Right which has seized large parts of western societies, some eastern societies, too, whose freedom revolts thirt y years ago led them into an orientation-nowhere. The capitalist global market econo - my is unable to provide either home or orientation. Brands will not work as substitutes for functional families. The advancing digitization will aggravate this problem, because unless we take countermeasures, it will irradicate the frame of reference many people still have in their work. The digital proletariat –growing ever more in number, if algorithms and robots are to take over routine tasks with greater precision at a far cheaper price – is culturally as well as materially addicted.

Some o f the corporate leaders of the digital world see the consequences and demand a basic inc ome: they want to ensure that people will continue to be able to afford their goods and services.

But man does not live by bread alone

In Ma tthew 4,4 it is written, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that passes through the mouth of God.” Jesus describes a cultural as well as an individual basic need of his time. The cynic Heiner Müller phrases it in his play QUARTET for ours: “Time is the hole in creation and the whole of humanity fits inside it. For the riff-raff the church filled it with God. We know it is black and bottomless. If the riff-raff finds out, it will stuff us down it.“

So, if brands want to remain meaningful in the future, the leading companies cannot ignore their social responsibility. Instead of being suspended in a vacuum where, at some point in time, the crucial criteria for success is nothing but the size of the company and the degree of its monopolistic power, they have to act within ethical co-ordinates aside and beyond the purpose of their business. From art, brands can also learn humility and impose self-restraint.

Ludwig Erhard is turning in his grave

U nfortunately, when it comes to accelerating the short-term sale of their own products, world brand companies like VW are completely unaffected by their own corporate values When it comes down to it, they won’t even shy away from fraud. These scandals happen again and again, because managers put their own profits before those of the stakeholders. Ludwig Erhard, the founder of the social market economy, meanwhile, is turning in his grave.

An art linked to values can provide orientation when it comes to being a human being. Brands, on the other hand, provide only orientation when it comes to being a consumer; that is the extent of their achiement as the example of VW shows. Consumers have not punished VW for its lies and obviously flawed products. However, values will play a bigger role in the future, because they are the crash barriers within which social developments take place. Ecological and social issues are now linked. They are far reaching and effect the new migration phenomena. There are certain facts, we will not be able to avoid. After Karl Marx and Adam Smith it is time for a new ethics. The world population has increased tenfold, resources are finite. C ompanies and brands can be part of a movement that defines itself beyond infinite growth. Once again, brands are at best good friends and good friends are not without ethics, otherwise they would not be good friends.

The Autor

Andreas Schäfer is a director and author. He attended the master class directing with Robert Lewis (Actors Studio). Productions in Israel, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels and at the EXPO2000. Schäfer writes an essay series on communication and art in the 21st century and reference book contributions. Interviews with Hellmuth Karasek, Prof. Michael Schirner, Bert Neumann, Denis Scheck, Tom Stromberg, Heike-Melba Fendel, Jan Hoet, etc. Since 2009 he is the executive editor of the magazine showcases. In 2012, an interview with the title „Durch den men - schlichen Kosmos“ (“Through the Human Cosmos”) was published. In 2011, he directed the CD production „Die kreisende Weltfabrik“ (“The orbiting world factory”) with texts by Else Lasker-Schüler. In 2014 he is curating the exhibition SOCKS FOR LIFE, among others with works by René Böll, Elfriede Jelinek, Robert Wilson, Ruprecht von Kaufmann and Andrea K. Schlehwein in the European Parliament in Brussels.

He received an Euorpean Best Event Award for that. In 2016 he realized the Project “Transit Lounge Else” about persecuted Arts with the Goethe-Instituts in Stockholm, New York London and the famous Lion-Feuchtwanger-house VILLA AURORA in Los Angeles.

TEXT ANDREAS SCHÄFER

PHOTOS LUCIE JANSCH