Intrepid travellers Simon White and I took the train up to Birmingham last Tuesday evening in preparation for our speaking engagement at the Event UK show the next morning. With Simon putting the finishing touches to our talk on the train, and with rehearsals beckoning, I could feel a late night coming on.

The subject of the presentation was ‘Brand Promotion Through Events’, essentially a spoken survey on whether events still have relevance in today’s marketing world.

Event UK itself was a slightly strange mix of city councils trying to push their conference centres as the ideal place to hold your next flagship networking conference, and independent Mahiki cocktail bar operators parading as ‘event organisers’, but charming nonetheless.

As the moment approached, Simon and I were joking that surely at this time in the morning no one would show up to listen to us – oh how wrong we were when we walked up onto the stage in front of a full house! With my nerves jangling, Simon started talking – the basic premise of our presentation was to answer x5 golden questions…

1.how do we define success?
2.is everyone clear on the vision?
3.do we completely understand our consumer?
4.are we embracing the phygital age?
5.have we properly run the numbers?

I was there to present a case study to illustrate each question…it was all going so well until we looked at the time, realised we were only two thirds of the way through and only had 10 minutes left! Needless to say we cut it a little short.

All in all though, it was an excellent first outing on the speaking circuit and I’m really looking forward to the next one!

(posted by Joe Russell)