The glamour of award season and black-tie conference events can sometimes overtake their purpose, how can we keep focus and ensure these events are a mixture of fun and commercial success?
As the new publicists for the Hospital Caterers Association, this will be our first year running the HCA’s Learning and Development Forum press office. For us the goal is to increase positive exposure of the event and the organisation as a whole, which we aim to do with the introduction of several new communication platforms.
These platforms, when executed with experience and expertise, are tried and tested tools to increase positive exposure and engagement, but they cannot stand alone. Publicists cannot be successful without the support of trade bodies, caterers and suppliers.
Fundamentally, something is needed to promote, and what is craved in huge quantities is new launches. As far as communication and impact is concerned, the only old last season item acceptable at conference is a tuxedo. Everything else must be absolutely brand new.
Feed us new products, new information, new case studies, reports or statistics. Nearly new, launched only a bit, launched a few months ago, or even the criminal ‘launched last year’, will not cut it if you want to be authentic, stand out and secure meaningful coverage.
All sorts of business drivers dictate the timing of product launches, but ideally dates for key trade conferences such as LACA, HCA, NACC, TUCO and Hotelympia should form part of your marketing and communication strategy and this requires business launches to be timed correctly.
Launching something at a conference has to be on the agenda. On the caterers side, this is the time to release case studies, research and thought pieces. If there is nothing new, then updates on older initiatives can be considered but, again, only if the data or research is new.
So whether you’re a conference thought leader, networker, supplier, caterer or just plain partygoer, focus on the new. And we don’t expect to be let down; every year brand new and excellent innovations are delivered – from leading research by trade organisations to modernising and cost saving products from suppliers.
With the unstoppable trend for premiumisation, it’s interesting to consider what we might be promoting this year. Perhaps we will see a new dawn for corned beef, a luxury alphabetti spaghetti or, in this year of ‘Great British Food’, a culinary fusion of sweet and bitter – salted lemon curd anyone?
If you are launching a new product at this year’s HCA forum contact the press office at gail@opendoorpr.co.uk.