Oliver Thomas speaks to Charlie Nicosia (pictured), owner of Absolute Production Services, who explains how it became the first US based corporate event production company to accept cryptocurrency as payment for services
What key challenges and opportunities has the pandemic presented Absolute Production Services?
At the very beginning, as other companies, we had everything in-person locked in and were looking at our biggest year for 26 years, and then everything came to a screeching halt. We pivoted and had to go virtual. Fortunately, we were dealing with virtual back in 2008 after the financial crisis, so, we had already had the virtual experience.
What appealed to customers was this fact that we had already been there. We’ve been there doing it for almost two decades. It was a no brainer for us to step up and make it happen for them.
It went from virtual to hybrid. And now we’re seeing it going back to virtual again with some of the lockdowns that are happening in the US because of the new variant.
Absolute Productions has become the first US-based corporate event production company to accept cryptocurrency. What made you take this step and what benefits do you think it will bring to your business?
I’m involved in crypto and got involved early. So, for me it was easy to understand and be able to implement this into the company. The second part was trying to educate and inform our customers and make it easy for them to do. Over the last 24 months, we’ve seen a number of customers coming to us asking if we would accept crypto. Therefore, it was all about customer service.
We have a relationship with CoinFlip (a bitcoin ATM operator) where they’ve been spectacular at figuring out how to make it really simple and easy to use cryptocurrency. It was about making customers understand that this is another easy way to advance what you’re trying to do and offer up another solution that folks were looking for but just didn’t know how to do it.
How can cryptocurrency be used by stakeholders within the exhibition industry to develop events?
Being able to offer stakeholders and consumers in the exhibition and events industry additional ways to pay for goods and services will not only make it easier and more convenient, but it will also help drive new engagement experiences like the use of NFTs or opportunities within the Metaverse.
This is all new and continuing to develop from an engagement and user experience perspective, but it is being driven by the next generation of industry professionals. Having been a part of many industry-changing platforms over the last three decades, it’s extremely exciting to be a part of this evolution as well. It’s what we live for as forward-thinking professionals, always charging ahead to see what’s next.
Now it’s just a matter of how to integrate it. How do you make everyone feel comfortable? Yes, there’s navigation to do. There’s different fees and different ways of handling it. But coming from our side of the industry for 30 years, and being able to implement the new technology, meant we were there to step up and make that happen.
What trends or themes do you see impacting the events industry in this upcoming year?
Smaller can be more impactful, and bigger is not always better. It’s really about looking to define who you’re going after and searching for their goal. Customers are very concerned and cautious with the dollar spending right now. It’s not necessarily about the bigger bang for your dollar but zoning in on the quality of the consumer engagement.
We’d rather be smaller and tighter and have a better ROI and experience for consumers than something that’s going to be off the charts and go over budget. Currently, trade shows are downsizing because of what’s going on with Covid. We need to think about how we can continue to make shows more efficient yet utilise their dollars in a way that’s going to get them the results they need.
