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Interview:
Ron McDermott from Skyline Displays.
By Stuart Ayling
Ron McDermott is Australia's
leading trade
show and exhibition trainer. He was previously National Sales Manager
for Skyline Displays (specialising in modular display equipment for trade
shows).
This interview was conducted while Ron was with Skyline Displays.
Stuart Ayling:
Ron, give me a rundown on Skyline Displays. What services do you provide? What type of businesses are your clients?
Ron McDermott: Skyline specialises in the design and manufacture of portable and custom modular display equipment and large format, high impact graphics. Our products and services are used in a range of events, namely, trade shows, exhibitions, conferences, careers markets, field days and in export marketing.
Our clientele come from all walks of life, but I suppose they would broadly fit into the three categories of large corporate, public sector
(that's Government, Defence & Education) and up-and-coming SME’s.
SA: Skyline has been around for many years, can you share with us some of the highs and lows you've experienced over this time?
RM: Skyline was formed internationally in the late seventies, with Ken
Cunz, our Australian Director bringing the business to Australia in 1984. We celebrate our 19th birthday in April.
Our first “golden age” commenced in 1990 with branding established through inflight magazines and a drive to become
national in our focus. This period in our growth saw Skyline in six mainland capitals and, for the next eight years, an exponential growth curve.
In the late 90’s domestic and international factors contributed to the worst downturn in our industry in twenty years, so the new millennium brought with it its share of challenges. The
dot com
blow-out, implementation of the GST, non-existent post Olympic marketing budgets, a number of state, territory and commonwealth elections and September 11th all led us through an 18 month period where our industry nearly died and our very survival was threatened.
And, whilst these new realities caused us to re-evaluate our business structure, trim costs and become
lean and mean, it was our Eye Power Educational Seminar program that has led our recovery
and started us toward our second “golden age” as a company.
SA: Being a national company, which marketing activities do you use?
RM: Whilst we built our brand with in-flight magazine exposure 10-15 years ago, we have not found anything near as effective as that since. That is, until Eye Power.
Eye Power is an educational outreach that does very little “sell” of our products and services. Rather, it provides empirical evidence to support that event marketing is the quickest and most cost effective way to reach your clients, and expose yourself to new prospects.
Since first releasing Eye Power in July 2001 at the Australian Institute of Marketing / Society of Business Communicators conference, we’ve presented Eye Power 35 times to nearly 1,700 attendees in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Toowoomba.
We’re now launching Eye Power Plus workshops that zero in on the two high interest areas of Exhibit Design and Promotions & Measurement. These run separate to the
standard Eye Power seminars and are particularly targeted at former attendees who want to extend their event marketing knowledge in these areas.
SA: For many service businesses seminars are a great marketing tool as they provide a forum to share knowledge and expertise with clients and prospects. Tell me a bit more about how EyePower seminars work for Skyline.
RM: Eye Power works because it takes the focus away from selling “stuff” and puts it back to where it should be, selling “solutions”. By educating our clients, we give them the information that enables them to brief us, and their other event marketing partners more fully. This forces us to listen better to their needs and, invariably leads to specifications that help them meet and exceed their stated objectives.
Skyline provides premium products and services to the market. We provide the Eye Power and Eye Power Plus seminars at no cost because we
receive return on our investment many times over through working with a better educated clientele.
If attendees come away from Eye Power believing they should be involved in event marketing, then they need the tools to do it right.
And who’s got the tools to do it right? We do of course!
SA: You've been running regular EyePower events for around 18 months now... how do you keep finding more participants?
RM: That’s the tough one! It’s not easy, especially in Brisbane to keep finding 40-50 new people every four weeks. We employ a variety of marketing methods, direct mail, mass
(broadcast) fax and individual e-mail invitations. Interestingly, mass fax works the best of these.
We also rely on our sales team to bring in the clients they may currently be preparing proposals
for. We ask them to commit to personally pulling in 5-6 people each. And finally,
MicroHire, our national Eye Power partner does their own database marketing and usually account for about half a dozen attendees as well.
SA: How does the EyePower seminar fit in with your sales process? Do you communicate with seminar attendees in a structured way?
RM: Eye Power fits beautifully into the way we sell. We are almost evangelical about our products and services and really just need an audience to whom we can convey our enthusiasm for what we do. Being a
top end product provider, we are only rarely going to be successful when treated like a commodity (just another display provider). Skyline designs such great
solutions, it’s great to have a forum which demonstrates our products are anything but a commodity.
Presenting Eye Power gives us amazing credibility in the eyes of attendees, so they continually come back to us with questions, comments and stories about their own event marketing experiences. These not only get used to further enhance and update our own seminars, they also keep the lines of communication open with these clients and potential clients, and they stay open!
SA: How do you see your seminars being used in the future? Do you expect to introduce many changes?
RM: I mentioned earlier the two new Eye Power Plus workshops. The first of which
- Exhibit Design - was introduced this month (March 2003). Being smaller and more intimate, these provide the ideal setting to really work over these specific areas. And
we gather just as much knowledge by listening to our attendees, as we are able to
convey to them!
As for Eye Power, it is a phenomena that has a huge amount of momentum behind it and, I think, it will continue on for some time, albeit with updated statistics, case histories and images.
SA: Do you have any other comments or suggestions for our readers about using seminars as a promotional tool?
RM: If you offer a premium product or service, your best tool for selling to your market is to educate them.
You have to educate them honestly, in full knowledge that, in some instances you may generate business for your opposition. Yet, through providing education, you are held up as an expert by your market and the market’s perception of the value of your products and services is also lifted in the process.
SA: OK now, looking across your industry, what is happening in the world of exhibitions, trade shows and regional
road shows?
RM: Within Australia, we experienced a very strong resurgence at the beginning of 2002. As a company, we experienced one of the best six month runs in our history and profits were excellent. Yet, in the latter half of 2002, that recovery faltered, with the usual September/October peak failing to eventuate. I believe this is due more to a case of our market getting a case of “cold feet” in the face of delayed recovery in the U.S. especially and, possibly, a fear of war in Iraq.
2003 has started very much as a year ago. It’s like the Australian market has said, “Let’s have another run at it!” and we’re inundated with quality work. If the global recovery can take hold in the second half of this year, then Australia is very well positioned and has hit the ground running.
As to the type of shows people are attending, that is changing as well. Attendees appear to be moving away from large “horizontal” shows, and are favouring more and smaller “vertical” events. Similarly,
road shows, which became very popular in the early nineties, then fell from favour, are back, often with several non-competitive companies combining their resources and sharing costs.
SA: Before we close Ron, what's your advice to companies who are thinking of exhibiting, or want to create a display?
RM: Define your objectives, learn all you can about event marketing and write a great brief setting out exactly what you want to achieve. Of course, you can learn all of this through attending Eye Power!
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