{"id":108,"date":"2012-04-26T19:08:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T19:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janusdialogs.com\/?p=108"},"modified":"2014-03-06T16:37:12","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T00:37:12","slug":"measuring-the-modern-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.janusdialogs.com\/?p=108","title":{"rendered":"MEASURING THE MODERN EVENT"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/em><\/address>\n
WHAT FOLLOWS IS A POST FROM A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE WHO HAS BEEN A THOUGHT LEADER IN THE AREA OF MEASUREMENT FOR MANY YEARS. IT RELATES TO THE NEW NORM OF EQUALITY AND USER GENERATED CONTENT.<\/em><\/address>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

The history of the event industry can be characterized as an unending search for the next big \u201cWOW\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s corporate events and conferences are filled with the best ideas and technology from television, entertainment and social media. They are complex and expensive undertakings requiring large internal teams to develop and support the content, a large portion of the sales force to host the audience, and armies of specialized freelancers to execute the logistics.<\/p>\n

Often corporate events cost more then a Super Bowl campaign. Which begs the question of why measuring the business impact of an event has never been an integral part of these complex undertakings.<\/p>\n

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Dynamics Driving Corporate Event Measurement<\/strong><\/p>\n

We believe that a sea change in corporate event measurement is underway, driven by two very different forces.<\/p>\n

The first is obvious, economics. CMO\u2019s in every industry are under increasing pressure to demonstrate a return from every line item in their budgets. For the first time, innovative companies are conducting market research to determine how the effect of events at influencing brand perception, accelerating pipeline and ensuring customer loyalty through education.<\/p>\n

The second dynamic is that customers are now making enterprise level purchase decisions based on their own independent online research. Traditional marketing departments have lost control of the dialogue, and are no longer the only source of product information. No one knows where it goes from here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Development of The AIR Score<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is needed is a way for event marketers to identify the issues most likely to garner online commentary from their attendees. Working with our client Scott Schenker, Vice President, SAP we developed a technique called the AIR Score, short for Audience Impact Rating.<\/p>\n

The genesis of the AIR Score was the realization that the two most commonly used reporting conventions, \u201cTop Box\u201d and \u201cAveraging\u201d are both designed to present data in a way that all but ignores those most likely to be part of an online discussion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Pitfalls of Top Box Scoring<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cTop Box\u201d system adds the percentage of responses in scoring boxes 4 and 5, and reports the total as the result of the question.<\/p>\n

This yields sentences like \u201c80% of the respondents found the xyz aspect of the event to be somewhat or extremely valuable<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This approach has two shortcomings:<\/p>\n

1\/ Top Box scoring paints an unduly rosy picture of the results.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTop Box\u201d scoring combines the \u20185 ranking\u2019 which indicate that the respondent is \u201cextremely\u201d positive; with the \u20184 ranking\u2019 which indicate that the respondent is politely noncommittal \u2013 the \u201csomewhat\u201d 4s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This example clearly demonstrates the problem. A \u201cTop Box\u201d Score of 80% can be derived in many ways, which in no way can be considered equal.<\/p>\n

2\/ Top Box scores provide no insight into what is going on in the other three boxes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, a veteran executive or manager with the time to read through the data should<\/span> pick up these distinctions. But they are not readily apparent in the reporting that most people rely on to make decisions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Pitfalls Of Averaging<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the name implies, averaging focuses attention on the middle, not on what is going on at the fringes\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This example demonstrates that while \u201cAveraging\u201d is more responsive to the audience then the \u201cTop Box\u201d, by design it mutes (damps) the extremes, the respondents that we are the most interested in.<\/p>\n

The AIR scores in this example shift 20 points, moving from Good to Poor, clearly signaling an increasing number of Detractors. The Weighted Average has a subtler downward trend, within a range \u00a0(north of 3.5) that is considered acceptable by many companies. This is an important distinction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong> What An AIR Score Does<\/strong> The AIR Score was developed to provide event sponsors and managers with a metric that enables them to quickly identify the issues most likely to influence the larger universe of clients and prospects post-event. The AIR Score is calculated using the data from a Likert <\/a><\/em>scale<\/a> response.<\/em><\/p>\n

AIR categorizes the survey respondents into three segments.<\/p>\n