Ep. 273- EVENTS are Changing! w/Event Industry LEGEND – Dahlia El Gazzar 🧠- Stop Pleasing the C-Suite and Focus on Your Audience!

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Welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And we have a friend of mine. We have an industry giant here. Oh, my God. So who's here? We're talking about events today. All things events.

Webinars, events, workshops. Doesn't matter.

And about three years ago, I knew nothing about events, and I started to get into the event world, put on events, and every person I came across said, well, do you know Dalia? I go, what's a Dahlia? And everywhere I went, they go, well, you must know Dalia. I go, I don't know who Dalia is.

And then I got to meet Dahlia, and Dalia took over half my brain because she is events. When you talk about events, there's nobody more relevant than Dalia El Gazar. Her agency, Dalia plus Agency. She knows it all. She does it all.

Dalia, I'm so excited to have you here.

Jay, I'm so excited to be here with you.

I mean, you should just change your name to Events. That should be your name. Hi, my name is Events.

And you should say. What are you going to change your name to?

Doofus. Doofus.

Absolutely not. No spam as a designation after your name either.

Exactly. We're not eating Spam. So before we get into how we're going to fix everybody's events, how did Dalia become the. The queen of all events?

How did this all happen?

So I'm. I'm actually. It's not queen, and it's not diva, and it's not Maven. It's a fair.

I'm a fairy godmother of the industry, and I will claim that other than being troublemaking, troublemaker, and ruckus maker, I'll take fairy godmother. So the. The reason why I am in the events industry is because of the awesome people that are in it. And I. And I'm not. This is not, like.

Oh, let me sugarcoat any crap. It's. It's the truth.

And I stumbled around doing events because of a very random event that I put together way back in the day, which was a camel race, and I negotiated with Bedouins because I lived in The Sinai in Sharm el Sheikh and December 31, when the boats were not allowed out because it was a diving haven, everybody wanted something to do on January 1st and they were too sloshed to go out on the boats. So I went, negotiated with the Bedouin, said, we're going to put a bunch of numbers on camels. We're going to call it the annual camel race.

And we brought in buses full of Italians, Germans, Swiss, you name it. And it became an annual camel race. And to this day, it's there.

That is unbelievable. That's how this started, by the way. I had dinner in a Bedouin tent and it was like the greatest meal I've ever had in my life.

The nicest people I've ever interacted with.

Well, if you can negotiate and be with Bedouins, you can do absolutely anything in your life.

Yeah. And they have to be nice to you. It's like their thing. Okay, so we're not talking camel racing, although that should be a whole separate episode.

Let's pivot. All right. Now the person who's listening to this is like, well, I don't do camel racing, but I do, I'm a director, consumer marketer.

I do a pop up event. I'm a B2B marketer. I do a little, little webinar. I do an internal workshop. Maybe I only have a, a meeting for 10 people in my organization.

Maybe I put on a massive event. I'm an association. What is going on with events? Are we doing them right? Are all events amazing?

All events are not amazing. There are some events and I know event profs will agree with me on this. So some events maybe all suck in some shape or form.

And there's reasons for that. I think first and foremost there's three things that need to be taken in consideration in regards to events. Events is a huge bucket.

It's a category that everybody tries to fit everything underneath, whether it's an association putting an annual conference, webinar series, whether it's summits, regional roadshow, whatever. When you think of an event, it truly has to be some kind of experience that is laser focused on what the stakeholders want.

And a lot of times when event organizers are putting events together, they have C suite, they have someone saying, look at the dollar signs. We need to have a big splash of some kind.

Then the budget doesn't, you know, get to like serve that or the, the plenary session has to have a huge led, like stage on production where if you really focus on what your attendees want and like even the micro targets that you are trying to get to an event, events will be designed in a very different format. And so there's a lot that goes in it. This is why everybody is drowning in data right now, but not using it the right way.

They're going to tell the C Suite. You have to pause for a second because we have to really like nail down what our audiences want.

And this is where trade shows are going to change because consumer behaviors are changing.

This is where the content and formatting is going to change because nobody or like nobody wants to sit in a plenary for 90 plus minutes in the dark with 9,000 people or going back to back to sessions. Would you go to a program that's back to back from 9 to 5, 9am to 5pm?

No, absolutely not.

And I couldn't agree with you more that it's funny you mentioned consumer behavior and we're talking about B2B events and I think that that's really, really valid and important that everybody, the topic of what everybody's going to have their event about, whatever it is, right. It's probably a boring topic. Okay.

But it's the packaging around that topic, the experience around that topic that you are kind of like buffering it with is going to make your event either be great or feel like torture. I mean, do you subscribe to that, that you need to be kind of packaging the kind of the boring stuff with the fun stuff?

Of course.

This is why the whole idea of surprise and delight for attendees and even if it's for doctors or on a medical side or health care, they need to think of what are those experiences within the event that will either surprise and delight their attendees, will be mind stamping even from a content perspective or what are they going to leave the conference with or the event with that will make them feel more valued and more empowered and that kind of emotional that you like aspect that you want to evoke within your event participants.

Even if it's like you know, the wallflowers that are being sent to as exhibitor personnel and it's their first time and they're in a whole like, you know, trade show floor, they have no idea what they're doing, they need something to grab onto when they are at that event so that they can say, yes, I'm going to go back. So all of these aspects are, are, are needed when designing the event. And sometimes it's a hit or miss.

People want to rinse and repeat and they take the playbook from last year and they just say we're going to do it the same we did because it was okay. It wasn't great, but it was okay.

So let me ask you a question. Okay. Now I'm that marketing manager that's out there and we're going to put on, you know, this in person 100 person workshop in St.

Louis about medical device garbage. Who cares? Whatever. And now Dalia gets hired. You're now that marketing manager.

And last year we had this boring speaker and we served some horrible food. When you say, you know, to reimagine events, whatever, like what, what does that actually mean? I mean, are you adding in like a comedian?

Like what is. How do you make it not fun? Feel like torture?

So if it was a medical event, if they don't have an MC with, with charisma and like, you know, some energy, then you have to think of it that you got to bring someone in. So that's. One second is. So it's the talent that you're putting within the production for an event.

As a marketer, I would bring in someone that can evoke that like energy and bookend the program that way. The other thing is from a marketing perspective, I would say take it a step further.

And there are medical, you know, teams that are putting conferences together and embedding. For example, let's do a lab, let's bring out the devices. Let have it be, you know, not only a show and tell or only in a 10 by 10 or a 20 by 20.

Let them play with it, let them be in it, let it be immersive. If the, if the devices cannot be flown in, for example. So like you have other than a health or medical association, I mean you have a.

Which is the biggest manufacturing association. And every three years they take over Vegas and their trade show like booths or expos are the parking lots of the hotels.

And they bring in all these construction, you know, big equipment and they have people demo it right there. And so this is the type of design elements that you need to get out of your comfort zone. Bring someone in that can just inject new ideas. Go crazy.

Go crazy is right. And also, you know, I don't care if you're organizing a 20 person thing within your company, right. I was just at an event and we were sitting.

It was a table, it was a dinner. At the start of the dinner, the person who was leading those little events that, okay, everybody go around the table.

And I want you to say, whatever your first job was like when you were a teenager, what was it and what did you think about it? And by the end, everyone felt super connected. Doing things like that matter, right?

Because a lot of times when you come back from any event, you forget what you learned, but you don't forget how you were made to feel. You were inspired, you were motivated, you had fun. This is what we're looking for, right? Is that what we want out of any event?

We want a memorable thing. That's just not the content itself.

Exactly. It's the exchange. It's the connections that you make, and then it is the allowance of you to continue those connections after you leave.

So there's a disconnect when someone says, I went to an annual conference and I'm looking forward to next year. So you have all this time in between when, when you and I are at Inbound, there are certain connections and conversations you're carrying on.

Whether it's via Instagram Live or whether it's the forums that HubSpot has, for example, you need that continuation. Even if it's a dinner or a breakfast.

And it's people that are trying to connect, they will either connect because of the challenges they're going through or successes that they want to share or something that's making them feel needed or in place with a certain community that they're trying to form. So, like, for example, we're doing a breakfast at an industry event in December.

These organizers don't know each other, but they all have similar challenges. So I'm creating for them Oracle cards, and they each get to grab an Oracle card, and it's going to say, what do you think of this challenge?

And let them come up with the solution. But then they share it. But that's a fun way other than saying, so how. How did your event suck this year? You know, I mean, and then.

Then the conversation starts. And then when they start meeting each other at the conference itself, they already have that relationship, right? So that's.

That's the type of connection the connections come through. Content, conversation, exchange, and that camaraderie feeling.

That you evoke in them, I think that's so valuable. You know the problem?

I think what most people make, the mistake when they're putting on an event, internal event, workshop, webinar, big event, they go okay, let's come up with our plan for the content. Who are going to be the speakers? What are they going to be speaking about? But really equal to that has got to be, okay, what's our content?

And then what's the experiential thing? What's the fun piece? And then the other third should be. And how will networking take place?

Right.

You need to have it all be equal, the content, the networking and the experience, or else it's going to be horrible. It's going to be torture. And the only reason people go to medical conferences is because they have to get their credits.

Right.

Right. If you don't have a hook like that, that you need to get your credits, nobody's going to come. Nobody wants to come. It's not normal.

When your event has a 50% net new attendee rate every year, 50% of the people that come are net new. That's not good. That means you lost 50%. And that's what you see all the time. All right, I want to get into some nonsense, though, before we wrap up.

Let's do nonsense.

Oh, some nonsense. Okay. You go to quote, unquote events. You might go to a wedding. Okay.

You might go to some sort of big graduation dinner thing, whatever, or an industry event. Are you always judging everybody? Do you walk in there, be like, this wedding sucks. Look at the table cards here.

Look at how far away I am from the dance floor. The food's horrendous. Like, can you enjoy any event? Or are you always like, this sucks? And here's why.

So, like, I'm the critique of the critiques kind of thing.

Yes, yes.

Usually industry events. Yes, I am so. I am. I am that person. But you can't, you can't blame me. I'm like that with like 15,000 other people. So, yes, on that.

On weddings, I'm a bit lenient on it.

It.

So, you know, and I always put myself next to the dance floor. So that goes beyond saying so. But, yeah, I critique quite a bit.

Do you ever get asked? Because I was like, oh, you're an event person. It's like. And people say, oh, you do marketing. Do you do on super bowl commercials?

I'm like, no, I don't do that. Do you ever get hit up? Like, you do events, hey, can you help me with my wedding? You know, do you ever get that?

So I don't do weddings, but I do get hit quite a bit about, like, you know, okay, we're looking at some networking ideas. So I am known for having an Idea vault.

And so like, if you come and you say, okay, I need something for delivered that, you know, I need like bunnies to come out of hats or whatever, I know, I know a guy. So the answer is always yes.

There is always ideas and sometimes it creates, you know, it's great ideas and sometimes it gives people gray hairs and they're like, no, you're, you're too much. So.

Well, I don't think you're too much. I think you're very, very awesome.

And I want you to tell everybody how they get involved with your world and what exactly do you do and how to follow you. All of it. We're going to put in the show notes, but tell everybody how to get involved with Dalia.

And if you want to get involved in, in, in the Dalia plus world, and that's the plus in Dalia plus agency, anything that you have that is an amazing idea, technology, strategy, whatever it is when it comes to events, because events is include, like content is part of events. All of that I would love to, to hear from you. And you know, we, we work very well with different suppliers, tech organizers like you.

And yeah, it's, it's a, it's a lot of fun.

Well, and just so you know how much I buy into Dalia, Dalia is a strategic advisor for my new event, eventtastic, which is the world's largest event about events. It's going to be free and virtual. Eventastic.com we got Dahlia on board. I wouldn't do her without her was the first call I made.

So Dolly, you're awesome and thanks for being here.

Thank you.

All right, see you soon. You did it.

You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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