"Purely digital events will not have a future"

Participating in the discussion were Eugen Brunner, President Expo Event Swiss LiveCom Association, Markus Walder, Managing Director Bright Entertainment, Maximilian Souchay, Owner Live Lab, Urs Hofer, Live Communications Consultant and Michael Dancsecs, Owner of Standing Ovation (in writing).

Expodata: Beyond loans for companies, do we now also need a specific aid package a fonds perdue for the live communications industry, as the Expo Event industry association has called for?

Eugen Brunner (picture)Yes, aid packages are needed now. It does our industry no good if the federal government grants loans because most companies are not in a position to repay them. Of course, care must be taken as to which companies are granted such an aid package and in what amount. However, it is important to monitor the situation closely and on a daily basis and to assess it on an up-to-date basis. If our live communications ecosystem is not to disintegrate completely and drag an entire industry down with it, targeted aid packages à fonds perdu are almost certainly indispensable.

Michael DancsecsI could imagine that these aid packages would be provided in the form of compensation for loss of profit, calculated on the average profit of the last three years.

Urs HoferThe biggest problem at the moment is the uncertainty of planning as long as there is no vaccine for Covid-19. For example, when can the borders be reopened for visitors to trade fairs and events? The aid packages must therefore be given now to bridge the time during which no events are taking place.

Maximilian SouchayI agree with this. We must not support companies that have hardly any reason to exist, even in good times. It's about liquidity, which ensures that our industry can pay its bills, because as soon as someone can't pay, it triggers a chain reaction. At most, I can imagine a-fonds-perdu contributions for events such as festivals that have an important cultural status for Switzerland - that are, as it were, cultural assets.

In your view, what are the prospects for lifting the ban on events in Switzerland? What is necessary now?
Souchay (pictured): We are very unhappy that the Federal Council has not yet shown any perspective. Our live communications industry, the clients and the agencies commissioned, and also the visitors to events depend on long lead times. The Masters Tournament in England alone needs four months to erect the tents! The Federal Council should now communicate as quickly as possible when events can be expected again and what kind of events. There must be a scenario, a plan here for each individual industry. We would rather know that nothing at all will be going on until the end of August than the current uncertainty.

Hofer: We need a scenario such as: Are events, before the virus has disappeared, with a limited number of visitors economically sensible at all? What sense does it make to run a trade show with a restrictive number of visitors at best, if this means that the exhibitor only has a fraction of his former customer potential?

Walder: The calculus is a simple one: how long does a company have financial breathing room to weather the situation around Corona? I don't expect the event ban to be relaxed until fall 2020 at the earliest, maybe October. That means: it won't work in the economy and in our industry without layoffs.

Brunner: We now need rapid communication from the Federal Council regarding the existing event ban so that not only our live communications industry but also our customers, i.e. the entire economy, can plan again. We now need to know when the event ban can be lifted at the earliest and whether this will happen in stages, which we would very much welcome.

Hofer: This planning reliability affects all industries. A bank, for example, needs to know when it can hold customer events again. A long economic value chain depends on this, on the clients, then on the companies commissioned and then on their service providers. That's why planning reliability is so important.

How can a service company ensure that services already rendered for trade fairs or events that have now been postponed or canceled are actually paid for?

Brunner: Every service company must see to it that it works cleanly and that it has proven payment methods and that it bills quickly and competently for services that have actually been provided.

Souchay: Payment for services already rendered also depends to a certain extent on the relationship with the client. We have very good experience in terms of our customers' understanding of advance services rendered. They understand that we, in turn, are also customers of our suppliers, that we are all in the same boat. Nobody has an interest in their service provider going bankrupt now. That's not what you want from the competition either.

Walder (pictured): I agree with this. As an agency, we have to credibly prove to our customers which services have already been provided for a postponed or canceled event and we have to make sure that we can charge them. We also have a good culture of discussion with our customers in this regard.

Dancsecs: We have been planning for years with financial reserves to be able to bridge an outage of a few months. But as a pure service provider without real estate, machines and production material, this is of course much easier than for other companies. We are therefore able to bridge a few months without loans, but a worst-case scenario with an event ban beyond 2020 would probably be the end for many.

What will change irreversibly for the live communications industry post Corona? 

Dancsecs (pictured right): I assume that events are quite feasible to a certain extent with mandatory masks. But new ideas have to be found, for example for catering. I can't very well eat with a mask on. But as long as there is no vaccine and reliable medication on the market, the fear and the associated uncertainty will remain, also for planning.

Souchay: We have a very good message for the time after Corona: The current crisis makes it clear how great the need is for people to meet in person. There will be new event formats, but the value of real encounters is abundantly clear, especially at the present time, when this is not possible as usual. Who could argue with that? But there will be consolidation in the events portfolio of the business community, and the demands on the measure will become greater, such as hybrid formats. Agencies will also provide more consulting services as a result of the changes.

Hofer (pictured left): I, too, am a convinced ambassador of trade fairs and events. People like to meet people. Online meetings can only represent a limited spectrum of this. That's why live events are here to stay. Nevertheless, the digital transformation will now also accelerate in our live communications industry. For trade fairs and events, more professional flanking online measures will now be used to network stakeholders, for example exhibitors at trade fairs and their visitor customers, even over the course of the year, i.e. while a trade fair is not running. In the future, part of the creation of trade show booths and event designs will increasingly be handled from the home office and with virtual tools. This will eliminate a large part of time-consuming travel. Virtually designed processes, including those of teams, will increase. But not everything can be done online.

Walder: The combination of digital and real-time will make the difference. Consider the following example: A large wine store sent a wine package to the homes of 400 aficionados to conduct an online tasting. The customers tasted the wines live, then shared their thoughts about them online. And the conclusion: all 400 participants will want to meet physically at some point because they have already met online! That is a sensible use of digitization. Home office, on the other hand, will not catch on. I've been in too many companies to see that it leads to severely limited employee performance. In the current situation, home office is a fad that will not catch on in our industry.

Brunner: Digitization will increasingly take hold. We are already seeing this in the planning of so-called hybrid events for 2021. Digitalization has opened many doors for our industry. Many companies in the live communications industry have shown how new technologies can be combined with old familiar ones and how people can be inspired by them. There is still a lot of potential and room for creativity in this area. We are very progressive here. According to our association's event climate study, social media platforms, websites or digital participant handling are used in more than two-thirds of all projects. More than half use image and video platforms and mobile and tablet apps. Sustainability is a central and topical issue for both our members and the association. Expo Event Swiss LiveCom Association as an association encourages companies to address the related issues. I am convinced that sustainability considerations are rightly also becoming more and more important in the context of contract awarding. But physical encounters will not be replaced. Purely digital events will not have a future.

Interview: Urs Seiler, Editor-in-Chief Expodata Live Communication