A lucky escape

This week was the Interactve Marketing event at Manchester Central. With an increased focus on Digital within Photolink we spent some time considering whether to exhibit. Although we are a fairly large agency we still have to carefully plan how to best use our own marketing budget. Finally we decided not to exhibit but committed to attending both days as delegates.

Oh my god, I think this is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I arrived on day one with a pocket full of business cards, expecting to launch head first in crowds of digital hungry visitors wanting to network and learn techniques that could be applied to their own organisations. Theoretically with the subject matter being Interactive Marketing I cannot think of a single business in Manchester that should not want to learn about this.

Tumbleweed is an understatement, the halls were practically deserted. Desperate exhibitors who proudly stood in front of their miserable shell schemes tactically planned how to ambush delegates with rain forests of brochures. This resulted in the few delegates that were there retreating to the only safe haven, the lecture theatres. In total across the two days I attended six lectures. Three of them should be ashamed that they are calling themselves digital/marketing experts. However, credit where it's due I thought the presentations by Mediavest, e-Consultancy and KMP Internet were very good.

On day two we decided to give the event a second chance, foolishly hoping that all registered delegates for some reason had blocked out their diaries for day two. The delegate numbers were even lower. I spoke to three exhibitors who were quite rightly appalled at the event.

I can only conclude that this event was very poor. With a great city, a good location and a subject matter that should leave delegates as excited about Christmas as they were as children, the organisers of this event failed miserably and should seriously look at exhibitor and delegate feedback before planning a repeat event in 2009.