Is experience taking over from content as a deciding factor to attend events?

As you can imagine much of my time with clients is spent discussing strategy around events and what we, as stakeholders, should be considering to futureproof our key conferences and awards. Many voices in the events industry (IBTM 2025, “The IBTM Trends Report”) claim that the quantity of business events run globally continues to increase. While that may be the case for corporate events, I don’t necessarily see any evidence of the same level of growth with association meetings. In fact, many associations feel that their annual conferences are being challenged through training and education budget cuts across both corporate and academic fields alike.

Return on Experience

A term which has been mentioned to me a few times recently is Return on Experience (ROE) pitched as a successor to Return on Investment (ROI), the former being based on a combination of practical outcomes from event attendance and post-activity sentiment. It has even been suggested that experience is starting to replace content as the ultimate deciding factor in attendance at events.

To be honest I get that. If my training budget has been cut and I have to choose between two similar meetings, I’m probably going to attend the one I’m likely to have the best experience at. That not only includes the programme, but who else is likely to be there, who I might meet, and in all honesty, how much fun I’m likely to have. “Enjoyment” has a great effect on the brain. Benefits include improved mental and emotional health, cognitive and learning advantages, improved motivation, and social and relational growth.

Is content no longer king?

So what happened to “content is king”? The first reference to this term dates all the way back to 1974 (Click & Baird, 1974, Magazine Editing and Production) and actually refers to the selection of photographs for publications. It’s only in the last thirty years or so that it’s been adopted to refer to any kind of content. And content is still important. Attendance is never going to be signed off if a programme isn’t curated well with an adequate depth of knowledge exchange. I’m just not sure it’s enough any more to be attractive on its own merits.

The “experience” team

It looks like experience is going to become the differential between a potential delegate choosing one event over another. If that’s the case, we need to start thinking about how that might affect the entire ecosystem of our events, from strategy, through to marketing and sales, and to delivery.

Perhaps I should rename the Brightelm logistics team the “Experience” team?