Events Will Undergo Same Barbell Evolution as Media

If we look back on the past century of media, we have seen a dramatic evolution of what has worked. And with the arrival of the internet, what was working suddenly stopped. The pandemic is going to force the same thing to happen to events over the next few years.

Think back to newspapers in the 1980s and 90s. In the United States alone, newspapers were generating close to $70 billion in ad revenue in the late 80s. Benedict Evans has a great chart showing this. Then the internet came along and things started to change. But it was slow change. It was only after the arrival of massively successful search engines and social media platforms that advertising revenue truly cratered.

What happened?

In the era before well organized social platforms disintermediated publishers from users, media companies had virtual monopolies on the distribution of content. Why would the Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, and so many other papers all have national and international bureaus—not to mention their heavy focus on local news? Because they had a geographic monopoly on printing presses. So, if you lived in Seattle and wanted local, national, and international news, the best way to get it was to read a newspaper.

But when search and social platforms took off, it became incredibly easy for someone anywhere in the country to get national and international news from a central entity. Why read the Seattle Times when you could go to Google News and get an aggregation of news from all sources?

Suddenly, players that were once considered “big” found themselves in the very uncomfortable middle of the media barbell. They were not large enough to reach true scale like platforms, but they were also not niche enough to serve the audience as efficiently as the reader needed.

In 2023, successful media companies are either Bloomberg/NYT/WSJ/CNN on one side of the barbell or you are one of the thousands of niche publications serving singular audiences. If you’re in the middle, you’ve failed. This is why BuzzFeed struggles; this is why Vice struggles; this is why so many media companies struggle. They’re in the middle.

Okay, enough of the history lesson.

Events never underwent this change primarily because most of business hadn’t. Everything had to be in person and so, whether the event was great or only okay, people were likely going to show up. But then the pandemic taught us that this isn’t actually the case. We don’t need to go to a low-quality, low-energy event just to do business.

And what will happen is an events barbell will form where you will win on absolute scale or on quality of attendees. There won’t be a middle-ground that is profitable over the long-term. Let’s dig into what that means.

When the pandemic was first raging, I thought trade shows were done for. I’ve never liked them and so, I assumed that bringing together tens of thousands of people for one massive experience wasn’t going to work. But what I’ve since concluded is that the trade show has a very specific purpose: it’s a firehose of information in a compressed period of time.

If you work in an industry, going to a trade show and seeing every possible vendor is a great way to learn a lot very quickly. You can also meet a wide variety of people, so you’re going to walk away with something. It might not be ultra curated, but my suspicion is all 10,000+ people will find something that they gain from it.

The nice thing about these sorts of events is that the product itself doesn’t have to be amazing. You are winning because of how many people you can get there. That’s it. That’s the marketing and sales pitch.

And because of its scale, they’re immensely profitable. Trade show operators generate piles of cash because people almost have no choice but to be there. One operator told me a story about their sales team walking around with clipboards getting exhibitors to sign contracts for next year‘s event at the current event.

An industry’s largest trade show will be just fine because they are at the absolute scale side of the barbell. And just to be clear, it doesn’t have to be 10,000+ people. If you cover neurosurgery, there are only 3,500 board certified neurosurgeons in the United States. If you can bring them all together, though, you’ll win on that scale.

On the other side, we are going to see ultra curated events that are smaller and very specific. These are going to be in exciting places with great content during the day and planned activities in the evening. When I went to Digiday’s Publishing Summit, my calendar was pretty booked the entire time I was there. It wasn’t the largest event, but it didn’t need to be. Instead, it had the right people there.

With these events, quality is everything. The content has to be great; the experience has to be great; the food better be great. You are not winning because of scale; you are winning because of the quality of the product you’re putting in front of someone. You win even more if you are able to directly connect the attendees—who are there primarily for content—with the sponsors.

With a scale event, the who is less important. But when you’re on the small end, the who is everything. And that means you need to get the product right. Last year, I wrote:

If the content is excellent, attendees will forgive. If the content is great, the venue is comfortable, and the experience is exciting, attendees will rave. We want our attendees to be promoters of what we’re doing. Give them quality and they’ll come back and tell other people to attend.

On the niche side of the barbell, the operators that succeed will understand this perfectly.

I saw this when I was at CoinDesk. We were the scale play. Our event Consensus had the most attendees in the industry. Was it the most glamorous event? No. But it had scale. On the other side was Blockworks, which had their Digital Asset Summits targeting institutional investors. Both worked.

And then there’s the middle. These are the events that are neither scaled nor curated. You’re not bringing together everyone in your industry, but you’re also not bringing together niche audiences.

There were dozens of middle players in crypto. They were always underwhelming to attend because it didn’t have the scale of Consensus nor was it as niche enough as Blockworks’. I’ve seen far too many images of empty ballrooms from these depressing crypto events.

This is where a lot of event operators were puttering along before the pandemic and will die now. And it boils down to user priorities. Before the pandemic, we had to go to as many events as we could because it was the only way to network. Now? People have choices. We’re more comfortable virtually. And so, we’re going to see people attending fewer, more impactful events. They’ll go to the big trade show because everyone does. Or, they’ll go to that single, high-impact event that has the exact people they want to meet.

I’ll close with this comparison. According to this CNBC story, “around 60 percent of new restaurants fail within the first year. And nearly 80 percent shutter before their fifth anniversary.” Here in New York City, McDonalds never closes and Le Bernardin never closes. But every year, there are hundreds of restaurants that try and fail. You either want to be McDonalds or Le Bernardin. Don’t be in the middle.

Thanks for reading today’s AMO. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack. And don’t forget to let me know your thoughts about an AMO event. I hope you have a great weekend!