EVENT INSIDERS GET REAL: a conversation between 2 small business owners in events

For a recent piece being published on the impact of the pandemic on small businesses in the event industry, I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Jay Barba, owner of Warren Z Productions. warrenzproductions.com

Jay's company produces business events ranging from large corporate high-end productions to small charity events. His small business also does a lot of creative production beyond the events they stage. Jay lives with his wife and two cats in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Patrick West is the owner of Be The Machine, an experiential marketing firm that stages events and custom media programs mainly for Fortune 500 brands including Dunkin', CBS, and MTV. He lives in Mamaroneck, NY with 3 teenagers and a wife who, lucky for him, is a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Below is an excerpt from that conversation [the final published piece to appear in other outlets]

[Jay’s comments are in bold, Patrick’s in plan]

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Let’s cut right to it. How are you doing these days? And, please, let’s be honest here.

Not great of course. I had 3 events cancel on me, and prospect of new events in the near future seems grim. I have one on the books for October, for now, but mostly nothing else on the horizon. I do have a couple non-event projects in the works, since I do AV installs as well. But the events side is not looking great. I assume the same for you. And are you thinking on how you may pivot - take the skills you have from live and experiential events and apply them to a tangential field?

No, I am not pivoting. I happen to be very fortunate that my firm was very lean when this crisis broke. We also had just started to transition from one series of activations into the planning for others. We had cancellations that were inevitable like the Final Four and a PGA event. But it’s not as brutal as I expected for my company’s jobs specifically. Though for the events and experiential industry, it is an undeniable disaster. To spin it any other way is a straight lie. Or ignorance I suppose.

I've been pretty lean as well, so we can weather storms for much longer. It’s the bigger event production companies that I feel for. Well that's a lie, I don't really feel for them. But if you were a larger event or experiential company with a big staff or multiple levels of upper management, you’re kind of screwed now. And the guys I know who are sitting on gear such as audio, video, lights, etc, that has to be super rough. The big question has to be: is this just a 6 month dry spell or will the very idea of events be forever changed? If I owned, say, a bunch of very expensive video switchers, for the record I do not, should I wait for events to come back? Or just sell that gear now before the market is flooded?

It's our point of view that big events are locked down until fall. And even then they only come back in a small trickle. Any production company or agency pretending they are doing a tradeshow in June or a festival in July is in for a rude awakening very soon. Every single marketer or client who sponsors or funds big events won’t touch a big activation this summer. They have frozen or pulled all of those dollars. So, to answer your question, if you are sitting on expensive gear or a fleet of vehicles, you have no choice but to just sit on them. There’s no market to sell! They will just around collecting dust and losing value as you pay to own and store them. For your batch of clients, what do you think has been transpiring in their C-suite meetings these past 2 weeks? 

C-Suite? No clue to be honest. Over the past couple of years most of my events have been smaller, a lot of non-profit fundraisers. I was talking with them up until cancellation, they were just trying to figure what to do, if they should cancel. They were all asking me what everyone else is doing. For non-profits that had to cancel their galas or fundraisers, its rough because galas are a big source of their income. 

Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about non-profits. That is its own industry and they are totally decimated! Damn, that has a crazy domino effect on people who really need help.

We were talking if there was a way to replicate that online, but we all agreed it just doesn't work. For non-profit galas, I think there is no substitute for being in the room together. It’s not just the live pitch, it's also the sense of community for being there together. And, let’s be honest, for rich people to show off how much they are giving in front of other rich people. You cannot replicate that with a live stream.

Yeah, there has been noise in the experiential world about virtual events or streamed events. That might make for a helpful small webinar but I don’t know a single sponsor who would take that solution seriously to replace any real event.

When do you think big events come back? Or, is the definition of what a big event forever changed? Will a 10,000 person event now just feel wrong? Will a 1000? 500? I think there will be a crowd number at which people feel squirrelly being in it, for a long time, I just don't know what that number is. And smaller events will be much quicker to return. Or … and this is a big question: will events now have to provide a sense of security as to WHO can attend? It likely won't be real, but will future events need to assure their audience that everyone there has been screened in some way, for health and safety?

I’m a big believer that mass gatherings will not happen this summer. And I want to be wrong! The government was comfortable using crowd sizes as they shut down gatherings. I would suspect they will be the source of defining the size of events that can happen again. Not in an official way, but more like a guideline. And businesses will very carefully fall in line. No company wants to be the one to openly shun safe gathering guidelines. But it strikes me there will be tiers of gatherings allowed. 50 for a week or two. Then 100. But I seriously doubt it gets very specific, even though it should. We should be applying different rules based on geographic location, indoor or outdoor, age of attendees, and other crucial factors. Right now we just drop blanket policies on everyone. It’s stupid. It will restrict our entire society for getting back on our feet, not just the events industry.

Summer? The government? What are you talking about? I don't think mass gatherings happen at all this year. Mass meaning over, say, 1000. And the government, at least federal, is going to have no say in this, they have been trailing the whole time. It’s the market that will dictate when mass gatherings will happen again. I do not see any standard set of rules whereby June gatherings of 100, August 500, etc. I just don't see it. It’s going to be what people feel comfortable doing. Do you think events with younger audience snap back quicker? With older audiences, like corporate events, return much more slowly?

Wow, you are even more apprehensive than I am on this whole thing. All of 2020 to be closed to mass events over 1,000 people? That is a bold statement. I disagree. I think America has to get back to living and get back to work sooner. We, as a society, will have accepted the virus as the new normal. But life goes on. Your scenario is possible but if that is true, it will mean America is headed towards a depression. My stance is that by end of summer, gatherings of under 1,000 will start to happen. And by mid-Fall, it will be up to organizers and people to decide on their own. The NFL is the major player in all of this. If they stage games with fans, everyone will follow their lead.

OK, I guess if you have a known commodity, like sports, then yes, that will go on. In the fall. Baseball? Don't think it comes back this year. NBA? Maybe in the fall. Maybe with reduced attendance. NFL? Sure. But if it’s a big concert? Or if it’s some other event, like trade shows, big corporate events, outdoor festivals. I do not think this is happening this year. Because, well, I think this is going to be real bad. I don't think we want this convo to go there, nor are we qualified to remark on that. I guess I am more pessimistic. Smaller events, with a homogenous like no tickets sales, I do think those come back in the fall. With a LOT of optics around health and safety.  

The huge opportunity for marketers is to go small, local, and grassroots. My theory is that when we start to emerge from our homes, as a society, we will embrace the smaller, local things. And that is where marketers need to focus. I agree with you-- forget the Red Sox and Dodgers. Focus on community activism. Pepsi should immediately pull all MLB dollars and invest it in helping small towns like youth baseball leagues and fields that we will need to being somewhat normal. Americans will embrace companies who help them rebuild. And for B2B companies who were obsessed with tradeshows and conferences, they will have a great opportunity to re-focus on much more targeted outreach. SAP should right now be planning for a nimble series of mini shows as they scrap their large shows. Can companies transform their approach to the over-the-top shows they had panned and still impact their intended audience?

100% agree on this. While I sound pessimistic here, I couldn't agree with you more. Once we get out of this thing, people are going to crave in-person experiences with other people. But small ones, friends, neighbors, community, whether real or imagined. To use a hack analogy, we will be going from arena rock concerts to thousands of small punk shows in VFW halls. An unnamed client of mine has been in the process over the past five years of taking all their medium-sized events and rolling them into one giant massive event. Everybody has been chasing Salesforce in this regard. I used to do one of those smaller events. A competitor, a much bigger company, got the huge event. But the client just canceled it. I think this crisis will completely reverse that trend and redirect my client and others to go small and targeted.

So, a small business owner in New York City with employees, are you happy with the city and federal relief packages? Will they help you at all? 

To be honest, I doubt it. I don't want a loan.

That was my initial reaction, too. But the loan will be forgiven if you adhere to certain terms. The biggest hurdles to me are timing and burden. Every small business owner has already been struggling with this for weeks. We cannot float payroll and overheads with roasted revenue. So as the government gets their act together, we are bleeding money. Then we are supposed to complete applications, submit paperwork, get tax records, and jump through hoops for what amounts to very little? The burden then falls on our shoulders to pay for things now in hopes we get a tax break or loan forgiveness later. No thanks!  

Best thing government can do is pass UBI for all, for at least 4 months. That will give everyone the ability to float by and hopefully restart everything late summer or fall.

The trillions in aid is impressive. I was expecting a typical corporate parachute for big business. It was more fair and impressive than I expected. Still, there is a major difference between window dressing and what is in the house. Right now, it looks nice from the outside. That was important for the market, media, and mental health of America. But it won’t mean anything by late summer if the virus still has our country in a coma. We all face some very tough decisions in terms of how we balance living life and dealing with risk of the virus. 

The only other advice I can give anybody is to take anything any institution says right now with a grain of salt. And learn how to cut your own hair and bake bread.