Missed one of the event industry’s best events summits? EventsEvents was held at The Mermaid in Blackfriars on January 30th and proved to be a huge day of ideas, seminars and networking. Noodle Live were really chuffed to be sponsors of the event and to be running the registration using our RFID name badges for events.
So, in a day full of innovative ideas and info-packed sessions, what were the 5 biggest lessons we’ll be taking away?
1. Personal Data is Now More Valuable than Oil
Mind=blown.
I mean, we’ve always known that personal data is extremely valuable, but in this session on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with Giles Watkins, we learned that personal data now has real world value that makes it even more expensive than the black stuff (that’s oil, not Guinness). The reason you get to use Facebook and Twitter for free? Because the company are taking payment in the form of your personal data.
2. The Mermaid Rocks
We loved being at The Mermaid. With a central London location, views over the river Thames and completely flexible event spaces, The Mermaid was a great place for #EventProfs to network and a fantastic venue for one of our favourite event industry events. The auditorium hosted the majority of the seminars, whilst the River Rooms were the perfect place for a quick bite to eat and a chat with Team Noodle who were showing off our RFID name badges for events.
3. Branding is Everything
Planning an awards event? The experts at Gaudio awards had some great advice on creating coherent branding. During the Awards Awards event, tweets about the event reached 468,000 people, so having a clearly branded award that was instantly recognisable was key to their success. Bespoke awards are much easier to identify and are great for coherent branding that looks great on social media. According to the Gaudio team, consistent branding across every detail of your event will help to increase brand familiarity and improve the value of your social interactions.
4. Get to Know Your Customer – Really, Really, Well!
In the final keynote from Hamish Taylor (former CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank and Eurostar), all innovation should be coming directly from customer care. “Every time I went into a new business, the first thing I wanted to do was get a new perspective on the customer.” Taylor claimed that every company should be striving to get into their customer’s heads in more detail than their competitors are doing. Data and insight into consumer behaviour can make or break a company.
When working with Sainsbury’s, one key insight came from simply asking the question: what mood are people in when they walk into Sainsbury’s? The insight showed that they are motivated to get in and get out as quickly as possible, whilst making their trip as useful as possible. Sainsbury’s began selling easy to buy products, like pet insurance that is in a box, ready to be scanned at the checkout.
5. Creativity Is Essential to Enhance the Conference Experience
Nadim Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer of Green Power delivered one of our favourite sessions of the day when he took to the stage to talk about the importance of creativity at events. Nadim advocated for doing things differently to keep delegates interested and to deliver the highest quality delegate experience. Nadim also suggested that creativity begins at home, advocating for a highly creative process for generating ideas from the very earliest planning stages.
Want to stay informed about upcoming networking events for #EventProfs? Check out our handy calendar of 2018’s best event industry events. In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about RFID name badges for your next event, feel free to get in touch. We love a good chat – especially when we get to talk tech (you have been warned).