David Levin’s interest in exhibitions sparked into life on the vending side of the exhibition stand. Having stood at the helm of several exhibitions through financial media company Euromoney in the early Nineties, his career carried him into the technology field where he became an exhibitor at – among others – the celebrated technology show Comdex; a show he acquired a decade later as a digital-only offering, as UBM’s chief executive.
This acquisition became just one of the many progressive decisions that defines UBM as a torchbearer for the reinvention necessary to succeed in the global exhibition industry. Here, the UBM CEO tells EW editor Antony Reeve-Crook about the firm’s worldwide development and strategic realignment that saw it go from halving its live events portfolio in 1999, to becoming the world second-largest organiser.
How did you get into the industry?
I was the COO of Euromoney in the early Nineties. There was a big bust-up at [now defunct exhibition organiser] Blenheim, and I was approached by Phil Soar, who approached me and said “You’ve got some conferences; but you’ve never done
an exhibition”.
We then set up a series of exhibitions in partnership with Phil, inside of Euromoney. Some of them were fantastically successful. He and I were co-partners in founding events like 100% Design. Then I left Euromoney. As I left the publishing world, I entered the technology sector, where I ran Psion and effectively became an exhibitor at exhibitions such as Cebit and Comdex. Then I moved to Symbian, where we were a participant at 3GSM in Cannes and Barcelona. At Symbian we ran our first shows at London’s Excel in 2001/2002. Because I’d been actively involved in setting up exhibitions – through the Euromoney exhibitions partnership with Phil – I took much more interest in them, as an exhibitor, than most exhibitors.
What happened when you joined UBM?
When I came to UBM, the very first business we acquired was an exhibition business. It was ironic, because in the first year we bought Media Live, the US company that had acquired Comdex. I went from being an exhibitor at Comdex, seeing everything wrong that had been done to that brand – which conditioned my thinking about how you can mess up a great franchise – through arrogance. [The show stopped existing in 2002, UBM brought it back as a virtual only event in 2009].
I got into the industry as a passive investor, then an active director, then as a client and a customer. Then, eventually, I joined UBM as CEO.
If you’d had to guess what UBM would grow to be back in 2004, you wouldn’t have put us as the second biggest in the industry. The heart of United Business Media’s [UBM’s former trading name] former Blenheim shows went to Reed, the heart of its Miller Freeman shows went to VNU. All managed inside this company, from the same office.
It’s interesting that in the same room the decision was taken to get out of exhibitions, the decision was later made to come back in.
Where is UBM today?
This company used to be a conglomerate. It had a nice exhibition business, but a small exhibition business. We made a conscious decision in 2005 that live media was going to be really exciting, so we decided to grow it, both organically and through acquisition. Exhibitions were the highest margin part of the business even back then.
This is a company that sold half of its exhibition business in early 1999 – 2000 timeframe, then dramatically turned its strategy around to say ‘We want to be in that business. We got out, but now we want to be in’. My tenure here has been sorting out the other products, in particular the online and the data stuff. And at the same time developing and growing the events business.
UBM was a holding company, but it wasn’t an operating company, and had been exiting the exhibition business. We executed a significant turnaround and changed. One part of this pivot was to change what we did, the second part was to change where we did it, geographically.
What’s your geographical expansion plan?
In 2005 we made almost half our money in Europe. Now we make relatively little money in Europe, we now make our money in America and China. The Asian stuff was a little bit of acquisition, and a lot of organic. The American stuff was one big acquisition. [UBM’s growth in the US can be largely attributed to the one-off acquisition of medical specialist Canon Communications in 2010.]
When I arrived, they first meeting I had with my management team was in China. The second was in India. We said look, we’ve got a nice but nascent business in China, nice business in HK, but we’re really not present in the emerging markets. We didn’t have anything in India, we didn’t have anything in Brazil, we didn’t have anything in Turkey. We had bits and pieces in Southeast Asia, but nothing to really speak of. So we made a big decision to invest in the emerging markets, and that decision has obviously born fruit.
How have you engineered your entry into new markets around the world?
We’ve always looked for a local partner who wanted to stay with the business, and that’s how we enter each of these markets. We’ve done that in Turkey, and it’s how we built our Chinese business. We’ve still got our original investment in China. The founder has 30 per cent and we’re glad he’s still there working with us.
The first wave of investment was in BIC, Brazil India and China – you can’t invest everywhere, so you have to prioritise. Two years ago we began the second wave. Now those areas too have reached critical mass, and they’re going to keep going.
These days the ASEAN region is a top priority. And we’re looking at Mexico, Turkey and Russia, but they’re very much nascent.
What’s your corporate philosophy?
In 2008 UBM created an online social network, for sharing news and ideas, and explicitly said that was how we would we drive performance. Exhibitions can be viewed very much as: ‘How many square feet? Sell it! Sell it!’. However, in this more sophisticated digital era, we can’t presume the maximum number of square feet is the criteria. So we have set up a number of initiatives.
At the heart of it there are four pillars. One was ensure we had the best ways of demonstrating exhibitor Return On Investment (ROI). The second was to look at attendee experience and say, actually, that’s got to be a great experience. The third is that we look at systemic innovation throughout our exhibitions everywhere. The fourth is that we’d look at sustainability.
How do you promote exhibitor ROI?
We do a lot to promote return on investment. Our most sophisticated market is technology. We have sat down with one of our very large customers and gone through every lead they’ve gained at a show, which they then keep and track for five years – because it can take that long. And that’s not sitting with a single decision maker, that’s simply influencing ‘influencers’ over a long period of time.
It’s quite difficult to see this at brand-led, long purchasing cycle shows. But with short purchase-cycle shows, those where we build a ‘souk’ or a ‘great bazaar’, you know when it’s a good show because you see the transactions happening around you. You know when you’ve got a good jewellery show because the traders are moving merchandise; they don’t want to talk to you. So the image of what is good ROI can be different. And of course it’s an old adage but it’s true: in this industry people say “Did you see the queue? Look how great it is!” Others would say “Did I just hear you right? Did you say that was a great queue? Why would you think such a queue was great? On which planet?”
I was at a show under the Canon portfolio, Medical Design and Manufacturing, a mature show of 25-years, where an exhibitor stood up at one of the open forums and said: “This show is alive. I thought it was dead, but this show is alive. You’re bringing back all the excitement that was here and I can feel the value”.
At [commercial and government security show]IFSEC this year it was exciting to see what was done with the academies. The sessions for people in the sector, the training and educational content, were attended by 5,000 people. But that wouldn’t have been the case at IFSEC five years ago. So at heart we treat this audience as a community. If you have a great exhibition, it’s a case of dealing with this community; you’ve got to respect them and make them feel positive. And you’ve got to make it vibrant and transactional, not just treat it as an opportunity to charge rent – that is, how many square metres you can sell.
How do you achieve this in practical terms?
We run a number of initiatives. We have something call Day In The Life Of a Customer (DITLOC) whereby we send quite a few of our people to spend a day in the ordinary life of our key customers, seeing exactly what it is they do. One of the things about exhibitions is that it’s typically run by a relatively small team of people working very hard, and their transactional relationship with the client takes place at the exhibition. In a bigger company like this they can lose touch with what’s going on. So the DITLOC days are designed to understand the problems our customers have, and bring things into the exhibition that will add value to the exhibitor.
Our industry’s got lots of really good shows with lots of really talented people driving them and getting ever closer to a given market. The tricky thing is ensuring when you get a bigger glomeration of shows, that they don’t lose their touch. The real driver is to make sure the original show gets close to its customers. Then try and institutionalise that.
How do you make sure format is correct and ‘of the time’ for your events?
That’s why we created GEM. It’s a portal where people can share content. We don’t restrict it and we share participation, come what may.
It generates a great deal of discussion and it gives people a platform for this discussion. For example, how do you get people to think about green things? Well they’re thinking about it anyway, the question is how do you harness it. For example, we’ve got a self organised group, the ‘Shanghai Green Group’ looking at how we do green in the organisation, such as recycling batteries.
It presents both a bottom-up and a top-down initiative.
Where will UBM’s focus be in two years time?
In much the same place. All of these initiatives will be more sustainable, the events will be a lot more vibrant and a lot more people will spend a lot more time immersed in their customer, which will mean that we’ve got more analytics. This will give us more of the backbone we need to start answering the tough question of why they’re spending their money with us.
And with regards to the sustainability equation, we’re going to make a lot more progress, primarily because we’ve got a couple of thousand people who really want us to make progress – and we’re giving them the ability to do so. When you discuss sustainability, the CEO can say anything, that it’s a “strategic imperative” and so on. But the thing is, hundreds of colleagues agree, and GEM is the proof. We’re not setting it up. It’s self-organised.
Will your strategy remain focused on large events?
That’s where the money is. We don’t want to be a small conference producer. We might produce the odd small conference, but it’ll always be very strategic, around an event, adding value to it.
This was first published in Issue 3/2013 of EW. Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
