The recent UNIFIB Congress in Porto, Portugal, an event aimed to draw business to the emerging Latin American markets, shone an interesting light on the challenges involved in steering exhibition properties into uncharted waters.
Arguably the most interesting presentation was delivered by UBM Built Environment’s Adrian Barrick, who spoke of his experiences exporting two of UBM’s products, Ecobuild and the Concrete Show, to Asia and Brazil.
UBM Built Environment, a division of UBM, works in 70 different sectors in 40 countries. It has a large infrastructure, and as such a broad choice of ways in which to enter a variety of markets. But not one of them, Barrick argues, is likely be successful without establishing an informed local team, aware of regional sensibilities and capable of adapting – not replicating – the show in its new home.
Barrick believed the clever work begins before the property has even left its home territory, specifically in the approach adopted by the organiser.
“One of the things we looked at when we started to develop our events was the term ‘geocloning’ itself. That is, taking an event from one place and replicating it in another. We realised that really didn’t describe what we were doing, and it was in fact quite a dangerous thing to do because it smacked of arrogance. It sounded as if we had a successful event in the UK and we were just going to take it and put it on in China, or India or Brazil.”
UBM soon replaced geocloning with another term for exporting properties; geoadaptation, which factored in the need to ensure that product was right for the other market in the first place, and then developed in accordance with local sensibilities in mind.
As a result, UBM realised the only thing it was transferring was the brand. “Everything else has to be justified,” said Barrick.
“We asked ourselves: ‘What right have we got to play in this other market?’.”
So when taking Ecobuild from the UK to China, as it did earlier this year, UBM had to decide why the Chinese market would want an event on sustainable construction. According to Barrick, the organiser spent a huge amount of time looking at the way that market was moving.
“We were in China very early with Ecobuild,” he said. “We asked ourselves if it was the right time, because it’s as easy to be too early as it is to be too late. We had to look at the risks.
“One of the risks in China for example is that there isn’t a huge amount of respect right now for intellectual property.”
Being committed to the cause
The second thing Barrick claimed a company needs is commitment. “You really need to be committed to make it work. There is a danger of seeing these events as a spin-off and therefore you do not put your best people on it. The problem with that is rolling out a show in a new country is a difficult thing to do, so you need good people. Also, your partners will see you haven’t got your best people on it and think you are not committed.”
Successful adaptation needs a local team on the ground and it needs real buy-in from the local team to make it work. One of the other things Barrick said UBM has learned to do is create business plans together with the local partner, not simply lumbering them with a plan and saying ‘there you go, follow that’.
“You also need to work hard to explain what the essence of the brand is, and that takes a long time,” he concluded. “It’s very arrogant to think people will instinctively understand a show like Ecobuild, which has grown up as very much a UK show, or the Concrete Show in Brazil, which is very much a Latin American event. Why would someone in Jakarta understand a Brazilian concrete event? It needs a lot of work.”
And of course, we learn by our mistakes. “We took a UK event in the education sector to the Middle East and we made every mistake you can make,” said Barrick. “The brand didn’t translate to the Middle Eastern market, so we used the wrong name. We then fell out with our local team.
"We didn’t get a local partner, either a government body or a trade association, and we didn’t put enough money in it so therefore the show was under-invested,” he said. “It limped on for three years, didn’t make any money, and we closed it last year.
“When we did the review of it we had to think about what had gone wrong, and actually, with hindsight, that failure has been really helpful to us. We learned a huge amount about what not to do, and that is now helping us with shows like Ecobuild and the Concrete Show.”
Acquisition lessons
If exporting a product requires making an acquisition, then it’s important to research the individuals behind the company carefully. “We would spend six months trying to find out what someone’s motives are. How long do they want to stay with the business? How committed are they? What is their real expertise? Have they just got lucky, as some do, or do they know the market,” said Barrick. “You need a strategy as to how you can transfer that knowledge and connections to your organisation.”
Barrick claimed acquisitions can often be derailed by the actual process of acquiring, or the ‘thrill of chase’. He believed in many cases the parties involved are so consumed by the process of negotiating that they feel they’ve done the hard work once the deal has been signed. “But of course that’s actually where the real work starts,” he said. “Most acquisitions go wrong in the integration, and it’s that process of trying to understand who you’re dealing with and what you need to learn as an organisation that ensures the success continues.”
This was first published in the Issue 3/2012 of EW. Any comments? Email sarah@mashmedia.net
