Insight with POP

Today I attended our local ISES meeting, held at the Minneapolis Hilton. A good-sized crowd turned out to see Ken Kristoffersen of POP, formerly known as Experiential Events, with three locations in Canada. Ken was just off a flight from India so was experiencing some jet lag, but he managed to keep the ISES folks engaged with stories and photos.

His main point was that we need to get away from the “pretty party” mentality and see events as strategic communication tools for conveying messages. He’s not so interested in décor (decorations) as much as design—the thought processes that goes into crafting your client’s message. And, he says that the force now driving industry innovation is evolving from experiential to “stimulating your guests to think.”

Intriguing idea. Anyone else have some thoughts on this?

The New Reality: ROI Matters

I wasn’t able to make the Motivation Show in Chicago last week for a bunch of reasons, but I’ve been studying the Tweets and news releases that have been pouring out of the show doors and into my email box. One of the more intriguing announcements came from the group ROI of Engagement, which is an initiative led by the Catalyst Performance Group. These folks are in the business of helping businesses measure ROI and building successful employee investment programs, with a focus on meetings and events. Their methodology, they say, has been used in “thousands of programs every year in more than 50 countries.”

Those kinds of statements usually make me leery, but the announcement caught my eye for another reason. They just launched a New ROI Resource Center on their website that looks to be a pretty good primer for planners who are just getting into the nuts and bolts of ROI. (And if you aren’t at least considering doing this, think hard because very shortly it will probably become a vital part of your job.)

The Resource Center seems comprehensive, containing white papers, a decent blog, and lots of case studies. It also has sections for training opportunities and software tools to measure ROI. At the very least, I think it’s a good starting point if you’re not sure how to tackle the whole ROI thing. Take a look at www.ROIofEngagement.com and let us know what you think.

Facebook Withdrawal?

It was fascinating to see the fallout when Facebook went down for a few hours last week. Some people actually panicked when they were cut off for a brief time from their hundreds of “friends.” These lost souls took to Twitter with their angst, many of them half-joking that now they’d have to do some real work—or horrors!—talk to real people with voices.

Equally amusing was the reaction to the hysteria, ranging from my favorite (@TheDollSays: “Facebook users are roaming the streets in tears, shoving photos of themselves in people’s faces and screaming, ‘DO YOU LIKE THIS? DO YOU?) to the laconic: (@Randy-412733: Who cares!).

Although I usually check my FB account once or twice a day, I didn’t even notice it was down. I mainly use it to keep up on family news, and a few business-related sites. The fact is, that the Social-Facebook I signed up for a few years ago has been overtaken by Marketing-Facebook and Stupid-Game-Facebook (apologies to my loved ones who actually play that stuff). It’s evolved into another way for people to sell stuff to you, and indulge in inane activities that benefit no one. Who needs it?

So will I give up Facebooking anytime soon? Probably not. It’s part of the social mainstream and as a member of the media I need to know what’s going on, and participate. (I also *blush* like the discount codes from Coldwater Creek.)

But it’s intriguing to wonder what would happen if both Facebook and Twitter went down at the same time, along with MySpace, Linkedin and all the groups you belong to. What kind of withdrawal would you suffer?