Is AI the Death of In-Person Corporate Events?

Henna Haroon:

There are going to be two versions of me in this game. As we advance to this slide, I want you to guess which one is real.

Two versions of a short introduction play: one real and one AI-generated.

Henna Haroon:

You get to choose between version one and version two.

Which one was real, and which one was fake?

You're right. The point we're trying to drive home is that it's incredibly believable. This video snippet took me about three minutes to create. I uploaded a picture, a sample of my voice, and a separate sample of my movements. With those three elements, I was able to generate an avatar in seconds.

From there, I can simply put in a script, describe the enthusiasm level or the positions I want it to hold, and tell it what to do. It's like having a puppet of myself.

I used myself because I didn't want to get too creepy and do it with other people, but that's what we know as a deepfake. We now live in a world where a huge amount of the content we see online is AI-generated. That means more of what we're seeing is not necessarily based in reality.

And when you have that level of projected reality that isn't real, you lose something that's core to the human experience: trust in what you see.

If what you see isn't necessarily what you get on a computer, where does that leave things like in-person events?

I'm Henna Haroon of Henna Haroon & Associates. We're gathering today for a mini webinar with my good friend Trevor Packard, who runs Displayco.

Trevor and I started having a conversation about the lack of trust in what we experience online at the same time that we're being inundated with online content. There are auto-generated emails with little bits of information sprinkled in, and ultra-realistic ads that seem to come from individual humans and can be catered to individual people. But sometimes they still don't ring true. There's this growing sense of, "I don't really believe what I see anymore."

Trevor has decades of experience in the events world, so we thought we'd bring you some of our ideas around what that means for in-person events.

We'll also leave you with an event checklist to help you plan and execute in-person events more effectively.

Trevor, I'll let you introduce yourself.

Trevor Packard:

Hi, I'm Trevor Packard. I'm based in Houston, as is Henna, and I'm a co-owner of Displayco. On November 2, I'll have been with Displayco for 34 years.

I've seen a lot of changes in the events and trade show industry over that time, especially in the post-pandemic years.

During the pandemic, events were essentially cancelled and shuttered for about a year and a half. We went from a company of roughly 50 people down to 15 in the course of a few months, and that lasted for about 18 months.

We didn't know whether events would come back. During the pandemic, we had technologies like Zoom and Teams, and people tried online and virtual events. There was a real question about whether those things might replace the human experience and the live-events industry.

That became an early test of technology versus the human experience.

The good news for us is that live events came back with a roar. We used to compare it to a bunch of people standing on top of a cliff waiting for the first few people to jump and see if they hit the bottom or floated. Once those first few shows happened successfully, everybody jumped.

To me, that's some indication that live events are going to be very difficult to replace with virtual technology.

Henna Haroon:

Totally agreed.

And for everyone watching, Julio Santos is also with us. Julio is on my team and handles a lot of the marketing operations you see in the background.

Henna Haroon:

To quickly answer the question about trust and whether people still value being there in real life, here are a couple of basic stats.

Seventy-four percent of attendees say in-person events are the best place to discover new products, and 70% say hands-on product experiences accelerate purchase decisions.

Today, we're talking primarily about B2B in-person events. That includes trade shows, but it can also include user groups or any event where you're bringing clients together in larger numbers to share information about your company.

I always like to say that sometimes you've got to put your hand on the metal. When there's a physical product, that literally means getting your hands on it.

Coming from the SaaS space, the equivalent is a live product demo. It is incredibly useful to have a human being there walking you through it, teaching you, and answering questions in real time.

Chatbots are great. Do they replace that experience at this stage? They don't. And the numbers bear that out.

Henna Haroon:

Let's look at a different way of measuring success.

Would you rather defend 1,842 badge scans, or 31 relevant meetings, 19 new opportunities, nine opportunities that progressed, three that were confirmed lost or delayed, and a meaningful revenue projection over the coming sales cycle?

Those numbers obviously depend on your sales cycle, but to me, the number on the left is a vanity metric.

I don't believe in badge scans as a meaningful success measure by themselves. Of course you collect contact information, but historically there have been people at shows whose entire job was to scan badges. And often they're scanning people who are simply walking around collecting swag.

What does that really mean? Can a company that has invested a meaningful amount of money in the show really leverage that?

My answer is no.

What it really comes down to is knowing what you want before you go to the show. If badge scans are your primary KPI, you're probably not thinking about the event strategically enough.

You need to define the non-vanity metrics before you go. You need to know what real progress looks like, how you're going to prepare the people attending, and how the wider team will work together well in advance of the show toward the same goals.

When Trevor and I have worked together in the past, the most successful events have been the ones where that team is created early. That includes the people building the booth, sales, marketing, and everyone else involved in making the event work.

Trevor, how do you see that?

Trevor Packard:

I hate to keep referring to the pandemic, but I do think it was a restart or rebirth for our industry to a certain degree.

Coming out of it, everybody was excited just to get back together and get back to shows. There was a rush back. But at the same time, the costs of events escalated significantly.

After that initial excitement, CEOs, accounting teams, and leadership started saying, "We're back at events, but now we really need to look at the ROI. What were our objectives for going?"

In the past, trade shows were sometimes treated as a blunt instrument. You went, got leads, came back, and followed up.

Today, with the cost of participating and the way shows themselves are evolving, companies need to be much more deliberate.

We're seeing shows fracture into more specific target markets and fewer broad, massive shows. That means people need to approach them more surgically. Look at the booth, staffing, objectives, and overall plan, and align those things so you can actually evaluate the return afterward.

It's no longer just, "Send the salesperson to the show and bring back leads."

There's much more happening around the event, and the entire life of the show needs to be evaluated more deeply.

Henna Haroon:

Exactly.

There can be many objectives beyond acquiring new leads: retention, building customer confidence, strengthening partner relationships, learning about the market, and advancing existing opportunities.

There's a lot happening at these shows.

Henna Haroon:

Trevor, you've talked about different styles of exhibiting. What broad styles have you seen over the years?

Trevor Packard:

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but I've been to exhibitions around the world, including South America and Europe.

Traditionally, North American exhibiting was often taught around trade-show selling techniques: trial close, close, get the information, move on.

Then you'd go to Europe and the experience could be much more relationship-oriented: come into the booth, sit down, let's talk about you, your family, your life, and start a relationship.

I think you're seeing more of that relationship-oriented approach now.

There may be fewer attendees at some shows, but the people there can be more relevant and more qualified. That gives you more time to spend with them and more opportunity to start an actual relationship.

It becomes less about, "Let me scan your badge and I'll follow up," and more about using the time together well.

If your only objective is to get the list of people who attended, you can probably buy an attendee list for far less than it costs to build a booth and send a team to an exhibition.

Henna Haroon:

That's so important because it comes right back to trust and what it takes to build it.

When you do this well, you're building the relationship before the event, you're showing up in person, and then you're going deeper than simply exchanging information and dropping someone into a nurture sequence.

To me, that's a key difference between successful and unsuccessful trade shows and, more broadly, corporate events.

Henna Haroon:

One mentality I recommend for exhibitors is what I call the "wolf pack." Other people might call it hunters and gatherers.

Whatever terminology you use, you need to understand that you're creating an experience at the show, and everyone representing you needs to be aligned on what that experience should be.

Then they need to communicate and execute together.

That starts with understanding people's strengths and putting them in the right roles.

You might have people who are very strong at staying in the booth and running demos. That's important. But you also need people who are comfortable going out onto the show floor, starting conversations at the bar or wherever natural mingling is happening, and bringing the right people back to the booth for the fuller experience you've prepared.

When that works well, the team develops a great sense of camaraderie.

I recommend having a Slack channel, group chat, or whatever your company uses internally, so the team can coordinate in real time.

Someone can say, "I've got this person at the bar. I'm bringing them to the booth in 10 minutes."

Someone else responds, "Got it. I'll be ready for the demo."

You start working together as a team. By the time that person reaches the booth, you've already moved far beyond a cold lead.

Yes, they're technically a lead in the system, but more importantly, they're a relationship with a potential client.

They understand you better. They see how your group works together. They get a sense of the depth behind the company.

That's what I mean by the wolf-pack mentality.

Trevor, what's your take?

Trevor Packard:

Twenty years ago, trade shows were often treated as, "Send the sales guy to the show, get the leads, and come back."

Salespeople were the road warriors.

In other cases, sending someone to a show was almost treated as a reward. It was their turn to go, without a very clear purpose for why they were going.

Having clear objectives for the show should define what team you send.

A few years ago, I had a customer that went through an M&A transaction. Two companies came together with different strengths and different customer concerns.

One objective at the show was retaining customers from both sides of the merger. Another was introducing customers to the new company, the new look and feel, and the new people. They also needed to answer questions about products, billing, accounting, and other operational issues.

So they assembled the team around those objectives.

They had salespeople and account managers who needed to be face-to-face with customers and prospects. But they also brought technical people who could explain changes in the products, and accounting people who could answer hard questions about how systems were improving.

They had a very successful show because they met the objectives they had set.

It was also a bonding moment internally because you had people from two different companies coming together with a common objective.

That's just one example, but it comes back to knowing what you're trying to accomplish and deciding who should attend based on those objectives, not based on whose turn it is to go.

Henna Haroon:

Let's talk about the purpose of the physical space itself. Trevor, I really like the way you've explained the job of the booth.

Trevor Packard:

The trade show booth really has four purposes.

First, it needs to carry the brand. It should be cohesive with the rest of the brand: your website, brochures, colors, shapes, and overall visual identity. When someone looks at the booth, they should recognize who you are.

Second, it needs to attract attention.

When someone is walking down an aisle, you have a very short window to catch their attention. You need something that gets the right person to stop. Today that can involve technology, design, or simply having your people on the aisle starting conversations.

Third, it needs to communicate relevance.

From about 10 feet away, I should be able to understand whether you offer a product or service that is relevant to me. I should be able to qualify myself before I even step into the booth.

That means the message needs to be brief and easy to understand from a distance. It shouldn't be a wall of copy with 3,000 bullet points.

And fourth, the booth needs to give the staff the tools they need to accomplish the objectives of the show.

That might mean meeting spaces for conversations, demo areas for a technology company, a theater for presentations, hospitality space, or something else entirely.

What tools do the salespeople and technical people need to do their jobs?

That's really all the booth itself does. Beyond that, it's the staff who deliver the experience.

Henna Haroon:

Looking at the example on screen, I love the enclosure and the way it almost invites you into a living-room environment, with multiple more intimate spaces.

What else do you see in a strong space like this?

Trevor Packard:

This booth was at an AI event in Nashville. Their product was in legal AI, and their objective was to talk with people about the product in one-on-one or small-group conversations.

This was only one portion of a much larger booth.

They also wanted a space where they could serve drinks at night and coffee in the morning, so this became a hospitality area.

It was open enough that people felt comfortable walking in rather than feeling closed off. The branding carried through the space. Because it was for a legal-focused company, the design included a lot of wood and marble.

The idea was almost like a Nashville version of an airport lounge: somewhere you could sit down comfortably and have a real conversation.

Henna Haroon:

We've talked about the booth, the goals going into the show, selecting the team, and how the team communicates on the ground.

The last piece I want to talk about is follow-up.

A follow-up can be the standard copy-and-paste version: "Thanks for visiting our booth. Here's what we do. Here's the next event we're attending."

Or it can be specific to the person you actually met.

The key is being remembered after that meeting.

How do you do that? You connect the relationship you started on the show floor to the follow-up itself.

You reference something real from the conversation. It tells the other person, "I was paying attention."

AI can help you draft an email, but it cannot create the real interaction that gave you those details in the first place. That came from the work you did as a person on the show floor.

Trevor, you had a great example of this.

Trevor Packard:

Like probably everybody watching, I get a huge number of spam calls and emails. It becomes very easy to hit delete on anything you don't recognize.

Last year, I went to the Exhibitor Show in Tampa and spent some time walking around looking for new technologies for our industry.

I went to an AV company's booth and had about a 10-minute conversation with someone there.

We talked about the technology, but we also talked about our kids. I mentioned that my daughter lives in Sweden.

We got to know each other as people. We didn't spend 100% of the conversation talking about the product. We agreed we'd follow up on the business side later.

The next day, I got an email from him. It said something along the lines of, "It was great talking to you. How's your daughter doing in Sweden? By the way, I looked up the university she goes to and it looks awesome."

It was a well-crafted email that connected directly to the relationship we had started. It didn't immediately push the sale. It simply said that when we had a chance, we could get together and talk about the business side.

I couldn't ignore that email. I couldn't just delete it. We already had a relationship.

The fact that he sent it within a day or two of leaving the show also mattered.

For weeks after that same show, I was receiving generic emails saying, "Thanks for coming to the booth." Those were very easy to delete and ignore.

The emails that were crafted around the relationship started on the show floor were much harder to ignore and much easier to move into the next stage.

Henna Haroon:

There's one more thing I'd add.

If you're exhibiting at a show and you also have a speaking opportunity, don't think only about the person on stage.

Imagine you have three people.

One person can stay at the booth so it's still covered. One person is your speaker. The third person attends the session with a different job: paying attention to the audience.

Who is asking what questions? Who is reacting? Where are they from? What do their badges tell you?

That gives you an opportunity to follow up much more intentionally.

Simply attending a session is already a meaningful indication of interest. And the questions someone asks can tell you a lot about what they care about.

When I think about strategy around big in-person events, you have to look at it almost from a sociological perspective. It's not just a checklist of tasks. There is an understanding of human behavior underneath what makes a successful event work.

Henna Haroon:

Trevor, any final parting words?

Trevor Packard:

Other than the fact that we're both going to be at NBAA, I always enjoy walking trade shows with customers and looking at what people are doing.

It's almost like Pinterest for developing ideas for your own company.

You see things that are done very well and things that are done very poorly. Both can give you direction.

So if you're at NBAA, or another show we're attending, we're always happy to walk around, have a cup of coffee, look at what's happening, and talk through what works and what doesn't.

Henna Haroon:

Perfect. Thank you all so much. We really appreciate your time.

Trevor Packard:

Thanks. Bye.

Henna Haroon:

Bye, Trevor. See you soon.