Over the last couple of weeks the news from government continues to hold large scale activation across our industry back, although small steps have been taken in some areas. Both the deep frustration being felt has increased, as has the focus on the need to reassure our teams, suppliers, stakeholders and, above all, our clients that we can deliver Covid-19 secure meetings and events of all types and that we are ready to do so. Yet so much lies outside our direct control that it was inevitable that any number of campaigns to support the event industry would spring up.
I took an executive decision when attending an Emergency Event Leaders Summit hosted by Mash Media that the BVEP was perfectly placed to help support the campaign that has morphed into One industry, One voice. This was very much born out of the combined efforts of Martin Fullard leading the charge via Conference News and Rick Stainton from Smyle, rallying the production, brand activation, experiential and comms agencies together.
The key to the campaign that is now being developed is to ensure an equal weighting across the different parts of the events industry and targeting the public, national press and via the campaign outputs the government, leaving a legacy that we can all use to advocate for our industry moving forward. We need our message to be clear and concise: how the events industry touches everyone’s lives, safely and by using the power of shared experiences.
The campaign brief includes the following elements:
The Power of Events to Inspire (covering product launches, brand experiences)
The Power of Events to Educate (covering conferences, conventions, exhibitions)
The Power of Events to Celebrate (festivals, music, weddings, sport, culture)
The Power of Events to Support Society (third sector, charity, government)
The Power of Events to Grow (to show our value to GDP, regional/national economy, jobs, exports, global leadership)
Moving at pace we have assembled an Action Group which met on Wednesday and are fine tuning a brief that will be used to select a PR agency to devise and deliver the campaign. Several other work streams have also been established to help share the load.
The initial target for the campaign was £30k and we have already secured pledges for that amount, which can now been made via our recently launched just giving account at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/oneindustryonevoice
Many thanks to the team at the HBAA for organising this for the campaign - get your donations in and please share as widely as possible. I’m pleased to report that several of our partners are already actively involved in the campaign and I look forward to keeping everyone else up to speed with developments.