▌▌Production companies Meeting planners for larger conferences will work with a production company or creative agency which in its turn contracts an AV company and other suppliers. Such production companies stage the opening show, produce exciting performances and will create a great experience for the closing night dinner.
They will create a theme and design and produce creative elements based on the meeting theme. Usually they combine artistes such as dancers with audio-visual productions such as music and video, a light and laser show with a set and stage. Great opening shows have been provided for meetings by wonderfully creative directors. When impressing the audience (motivation) is the key objective of the conference, this is certainly a good way to spend the money. If, however, a conference is mainly educational, secondly networking and only then aims for motivation, one may think twice and reallocate some of the €100,000 that goes into the opening show. It is obvious and very gratifying to create a big wow effect and one one spectacular opening show could almost say it is “cheap” to spend so much money on one spectacular opening show. Cheap in a way that it is an easy success, just as it is a guaranteed success to book the best hotel and provide the best champagne and food. Everyone knows that it is going to be much more difficult to create a wow with substance than with a show. The industry today knows how the wow factor can be created through exquisite hospitality and a big show. In a way, this makes it vulnerable because this only impacts meetings on the first of five measuring levels towards ROI: satisfaction. See 2 Return on investment on p. 45.
it is “cheap” to spend so much money on
Roughly speaking, we can say that the meeting industry is geared towards the hospitality side and the AV and production company – two partners which could potentially help to develop the content side – are not really helping because of a lack of knowledge and focus.
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