Unique Contributions

Meet Hugh Jones, the CEO reinventing RX events

• RELX • Season 3 • Episode 9

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Hugh Jones joined RX as CEO in February 2020, and within a month, was facing the implications of the global Covid pandemic. The business, like many others, was seriously impacted.  But three years on, recent shows are now performing on average better than their pre-Covid versions. So what has happened?  What innovations have been implemented that make events different?   What does it mean for exhibitors and visitors?

In this episode, hear how Hugh Jones is leading RX towards better, smarter events. As Hugh says, "it's when the adventure begins."

This podcast is brought to you by RELX.


YS Chi:

The Unique Contributions podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting relx.com.

Hugh Jones:

Any show, it doesn't matter - every show is inherently fascinating if you take the time to learn the business. They're all fascinating, because the people who go, you are solving their issues and you can see it on their faces as they walk in the door.

YS Chi:

Hello, and welcome to series three of Unique Contributions a RELX podcast where we bring you closer to some of the most interesting people from around our businesses. I'm YS Chi and I'll be exploring some of the biggest issues that matter to society, how they're making a difference, and what brought them to where they are today. In this very special episode, I want to examine all the work that goes into a global exhibition business. For an industry so dependent on in-person face to face meetings, saying that the pandemic was devastating is probably an understatement. But some companies were able to use the pandemic as an opportunity to enhance their offerings. Hugh Jones, the CEO of RX has devoted much of his time and effort to ensure that RX can confidently say it has come out of the other side of the pandemic stronger than ever. Through his leadership, RX has made qualitative improvements to the exhibition's world. So welcome to the show Hugh.

Hugh Jones:

It is great to be here. YS, you bet.

YS Chi:

Well, before we start, you've been on the road a lot recently, how have you been feeling from all those travels?

Hugh Jones:

You roll with it and you roll with it? It just sleep when you can and you keep on going. It's no problem. It's part of the game.

YS Chi:

I bet it feels good to be back on the road?

Hugh Jones:

It does feel good to be back on the road. I wouldn't take this job if you didn't like it. And I do like it. In fact, I love it. YS.

YS Chi:

So, talking about the job. You joined RX in February of 2020, and within a month, you confronted the implications of the global pandemic? How are you emerging from this havoc of the past three years?

Hugh Jones:

Yeah, well, for those who don't know me, I think it's important to say that I joined RX in 2020, as you say, but I joined RELX in 2011. So the benefit of that is I did know who to call when things got tight, I knew a lot of people. And that was really very helpful. There's a team of people at RELX that were absolutely a part of making this a success, and they were with me every step of the way. I think that during the pandemic, of course, no one could have predicted how long it was going to go, or how deep or how it would open and close various markets. And it was difficult. It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare for me, and a nightmare for our staff. But you have to get beyond that. And you have to get beyond that pretty quickly. These days, as we emerge from it, of course, all that trouble is actually turned into something that's quite powerful. My staff is willing to make big bets, there's very little trepidation. In fact, I would actually argue that within the divisions of RELX, the RX staff right now are fearless. We are fearless. And there's a great sense of pride. And so you can kind of imagine why - given what they all went through, to come out the other side and see what we've created and be ready to embrace the world with our magic and our shows. We're ready for it. And you can see it. Any show you go to you'll see it.

YS Chi:

So to use the word nightmare, and then to come up with these greatly positive consequences. Wow, there must have been a point in time when you felt "OK, we're going to actually turn this around and make it better". When was that point?

Hugh Jones:

It's a really great question, because for me, there was an actual moment, there was an actual moment. It was in October of 2021. In October 2021 I spent the morning lighting up the Empire State Building in New York City with the Sith Lords dark red colours. And why would I be doing that? Well, because it was Comic Con that weekend, and I was lighting it up with Anakin Skywalker who had been played, if you guys remember, by Hayden Christensen. So Hayden Christensen and I were actually on the top of the Empire State Building, lighting it up in the Sith Lords colours. That's not the moment that I decided things were going to be OK. The moment was when I got back down to the Javits Center and looked at what was in front of me. We had 20,000 people waiting for entrance to this comic con, all masked, all had vaccination demonstration, and they're all patiently queuing. Now 20,000 people queuing in London is one thing. 20,000 people queuing in Manhattan, that is another and when I looked at that, sea of people ready to embrace their fandom and get their cosplay going, I knew that if they're willing to stand with 19,999 other people, that COVID was not going to win. And that was the moment that I said, "aha, we're in good shape, this is going to play out".

YS Chi:

If I were to use a boxing analogy, you were taking a lot of punches, and then you landed a mega punch, and you thought you had a chance to win this one. But the punches kept coming, because that wasn't the end of it.

Hugh Jones:

Unfortunately, it was not the end, it was the flicker of hope, in my mind. But, of course, we've all seen the Empire Strikes Back. And so yeah, of course, COVID had more tales to tell. But at that point, I knew that it wasn't going to be the end.

YS Chi:

Now, the way you talk about those 20,000, people queued up, this means a lot to you, because you're in the business of building businesses for individuals, business for the communities and businesses for organisations. So can you talk us through how you're supporting customers, as they navigate a challenging post COVID environment in their own businesses?

Hugh Jones:

We do go to market saying that we are in the business of building businesses. And we mean it. I mean, that's what we do. We're here to make the world a better place by embracing that idea of building businesses. And so when you come through COVID, remember our customers, which are both visitors to trade shows, but also our exhibitors. They're losing their fear of COVID. They are, they're showing up for sure. But think about what's happened. They lack pipeline, they lack supply chains, their databases, their marketing, and digital databases have been significantly degraded. Costs, energy costs, etc. cost of personnel have risen. And margins are really tight. So you have this situation where yeah, COVID is fading, but our customers are desperately trying to build their business. And that's what we are here to do. So we try to create an environment where that happens. And I'm pleased to say that the figures that I see from some of the shows we're creating, they simply speak for themselves. In the last 60 days, we're recording this in early July, but in the last 60 days, which is May and June, the shows that we put on in May and June, actually performed, on average better than their versions pre-COVID.

YS Chi:

That's a big deal.

Hugh Jones:

Yeah, that's a big deal. Let's just pause on that. I mean, I'm saying that in the last 60 days, our shows that we've put on did better than the ones we put on before COVID. Wow. I mean, that is a monster statement. But it happens to be true.

YS Chi:

That is a monster statement. Now, is this a pent up demand one shot? Or Hugh, do you see this being a reinvented, better version of face to face?

Hugh Jones:

I think that there is pent up demand. If you haven't been on the world stage and you think you're losing competitive edge, you definitely want to go to a trade show to tell the world you exist. So there is pent up demand, it's our job to translate pent up demand into renewals. That's what we do. But it's also true that in tightening budget times, you want to spend your resources where you'll get the biggest bang for your buck. And a trade show is a great way to spend it. So you could have a marketing campaign, you go on the radio, you could buy Facebook clicks, or you could go to a trade show and meet people who are already pre screened ready to do business with you. It's a pretty good return. And I think that as marketing dollars get scarce because of margins, etc. I think trade shows are finding themselves to be the beneficiaries of that spend.

YS Chi:

Now, I have to believe knowing you, that this is not just do more of the same, a little better. There have been some key things that have happened during these three years that I know you have implemented and you're steering your team toward. The first thing I wanted to start talking about before we do that is the general future direction of the growth that you have planned for your team for your customers.

Hugh Jones:

So for us, it's really very important to make sure that those issues that I suggested earlier are met. And so our customers have needs that they need filled. And I'll give you a few of them for example. Our exhibitors are desperate to rebuild their databases, they're desperate to engage on a world stage, they are desperate to meet new buyers, and they've also been innovating for the past three years in a bit of a bubble. And they're desperate to show the world that they exist and they're coming out in the same way we are, in a far more powerful position. So if that's the case, if that's the desperation, what do we do to capture that? And what we do is we started three years ago, really building what we call smarter events. It's no longer sort of possible, you can do it but it would be inefficient, to walk into a big trade show with a bunch of business cards and look at stands and pass out your business card. Really the 1980s are calling if you do that. So let me just sort of paint a picture. My head of digital Gaby Appleton really starts with a great story. And it's sometimes resonates it resonated with me. So let me put it to you this way, let's say before the smartphone, if you're looking for a restaurant, you might wander up and down the street, look in the windows, check the menus, and with any luck, make a good choice. Your order, when you order will be written down. And that piece of paper would migrate into a kitchen. And hopefully you got your food. Today, you search for, review and book restaurants online, you order via apps or by scanning QR codes. Your orders are taken on an iPad, you pay with your mobile phones, eating out remains the cool, physical, visceral, enjoyable experience, but the process around it, it's been totally digitised, giving people greater choice. So it's a great way to kind of think about what we're doing to trade shows, because I bet you you all go to restaurants more often more often you go to trade shows, sadly! So what we try to do is create a world where that transformation occurs. So for example, if you're an exhibitor, we have innovative smartphone apps called Imperia, which allows exhibitors to quickly and reliably capture who's coming to their stand, their contact details. What are the product interests? Who are they? It's super easy to use.

YS Chi:

Well in advance of the show?

Hugh Jones:

Yep, in advance of the show. And during the show. And in our last show, we had 100% usage. So every single exhibitor uses this tool.

YS Chi:

Wow.

Hugh Jones:

That's cool. You don't have to make business cards or kind of, you know, you don't need that.

YS Chi:

I mean, you brought the exhibition business to the 21st century?

Hugh Jones:

Yeah, that's probably a good way to put it. But you know, we do more than that. So because we can capture that we can capture who the visitors are and what they're looking at that's cool or not cool. We can see those interactions. So then you can create things like interesting dashboards, for exhibitors, to say, what type of person is coming to you? What type of products are they interested in? You can get actionable insights to improve your event performance. You can even say, here's how you're doing at the trade show. And here's how your competitors are doing at the trade show in real time. So you can actually benchmark yourself against the competitor, right there. If you're a visitor, I mean, trade shows are big places. YS, you're walking along way, yeah. So imagine if you walk in, and then based on your activities, you as a visitor are scanning things and saying, I like this, I like that. And then we real time, say hey, YS, if you like that? Why don't you go see this person 50 feet down on the left. This person has time to meet you at four o'clock. And we think based on your activity, you'd like to meet them. And again and again and again. So what we're trying to do is it's much more than just kind of a big hall with exhibitors, and visitors and business cards. I'm trying to make every single step that a visitor takes useful.

YS Chi:

So this is really exciting use of technology, and you can't talk these days Hugh, with anybody, whether that's your driver in a taxi, or someone serving you, or is your colleague at work, without touching on that magic word AI?

Hugh Jones:

Right. Right.

YS Chi:

And I know, Gaby had a lot to do with being able to bring this data analytics to the RX team, but tell me how machine learning or large language model or as we call it, Gen AI - how does that potentially affect your industry, and specifically, RX?

Hugh Jones:

Well, I think that Generative AI generally, if people listening to this podcast are thinking about places to invest. One way to think about it is what does this technology do that allows business cases that would heretofore been way too expensive? Would have been way too difficult to get all the data, amass it, collate it, look at it and come up with insights. So what is it about AI that actually now it unlocks value that historically never would have been possible? For us, there are a lot of ways it unlocks value: for one, people want and expect personalised experiences. So AI aids our product development to offer real time recommendations to buyers and sellers on who to meet based on your behaviour at the show. It aggregates and improves product and customer information, so you can imagine all the skews at a trade show. You're talking about 10s of 1000s, almost impossible to actually get your human brain across, but lean on us and let us help you. But also, if you have a question, or you need an avatar to guide you through a trade show, the way of chat based interfaces, using AI at a trade show will accelerate all of that. It'll accelerate the obvious things like customer support capabilities and understand your profile and an exhibitors profile. But it does more than that. It then allows you to place one foot in front of the other in exactly the right direction every single time.

YS Chi:

That, as we know, is nevertheless still an expensive process and very sophisticated process. Now how has RX acquired that kind of resources and capability expertise so quickly?

Hugh Jones:

I mean, we work for RELX and being part of RELX...

YS Chi:

Ah there you go! The benefit of a family!

Hugh Jones:

Yeah I mean, we have a number of advantages. YS that none of our competitors have. I mean, our digital strength, depth, talent we get to lean on. I mean, I hope people listening this podcast realise that at RELX, we have over 10,000 technologists...

YS Chi:

That's right...

Hugh Jones:

...that we can lean on. And so, and we do lean on them quite a bit. I mean, that dashboard I was telling you about YS where you can see how you're doing as an exhibitor versus your competitors, that's reusing learnings from similar inside platforms from LexisNexis and Elsevier. Our work in B2C shows which are like the comic con I mentioned, that digital work there benefits from ScienceDirect's experience in the user journey, and user behavioural attribution analytics. We use Cirium's carbon calculation to determine impact of participants travel. We use Risks ability to screen to make sure that the people coming to our shows are people who should go to our shows or exhibit at our shows.

YS Chi:

So you really get to take some shortcuts?

Hugh Jones:

Yeah we do, at RELX, we do get to lean on some of the very best.

YS Chi:

Now before I run out of time, I do want to touch on a couple more things. And one of them is how has the team held up through all this thing? I know you've got people absolutely in every corner of the world, and it had to be challenging?

Hugh Jones:

Well, it is challenging. I think the important element to remember here is that the people who work at RX are brilliant tacticians. They are excellent in a crisis. They are tactical geniuses. Think of what it takes to put on a show with 10 or 40, or 50 or 120,000. People just think of all the stuff whether it's, whether it's catering or security or anti terrorism or queue management. The people who work here at RX are tactical geniuses. And so when they're confronted with a problem here at RX we like to say, "when we hear the word no, that's when the adventure starts" YS. And it's just like that. That's the way we think. The air conditioning could all go down. The fire department shows up and says your aisles aren't wide enough, and you'd have to close down. Every single show, will have some drama. Every show. And yet our people always, when they hear the word no, that's when the adventure begins.

YS Chi:

Problem solvers.

Hugh Jones:

Yeah. And we're really, really good at it. And it's humbling to be around such talent. And I've seen them in action, where you'd think people would kind of crawl under a desk and hide, and the folks that RX will stand up and be prideful, and say, I've got an idea, why don't we try this, or this, or this. And it's something to be prideful of. And it's throughout RELX. But here at RX you see it every single day.

YS Chi:

So one of the things that I understand that your employee groups have stood up and made it very clear to you and your leadership team is a commitment to ESG. And we can't talk about the transformation of RX through this COVID period without talking about ESG. You've made some significant commitments. Tell us a little bit about it, and what are the things that you are going to do to try to accelerate this?

Hugh Jones:

There's a large association within exhibitions called UFI. And we co-founded and events pledge alongside of UFI, which commits us to reduce our show emissions and make sure we achieve net zero by 2040. We're rapidly progressing along that. The first thing to do is measure it well. So we'll go to venues that can measure our greenhouse gas emissions. The other thing to do is then make sure that you solve for it. And so shows are changing YS, I mean, the materials that we use to build stands are very different. They have to be reusable. The future of shows will be more digital walls that can be used on a few different places or Legos, you know, like little building blocks that can be taken down and then popped up again in another show. They don't get thrown out. Carpets, carpet technology. It used to be you'd carpet the whole place. Now you don't carpet the whole place, but you also, you don't use the same material for carpeting. And also the types of venues that are used in the industry these days. If you're powering your venue in a way that's not able to be offset, you're gonna find fewer shows that big players like RX will actively choose where to put a show based on your carbon footprint. And that's pretty significant. We launched our new sustainability playbook for RX to not only teach ourselves what to do at a show, but to teach others in the industry exactly what we can do. It's important to understand this thought, though, the trade show industry is in fact, a carbon consolidation event. If you go to a trade show, and you have 30 meetings, you have one plane ticket, if you have to go to 30 meetings around the globe, you got a lot of plane tickets. Yeah. So if you really want to consolidate that carbon in the same way a Tesla and a battery, yeah, you gotta still charge the battery, but you don't have to charge it every day at a gas station, same thing, you want to consolidate that use so that you can mitigate it. And trade shows are a great way to do that if it's done ethically.

YS Chi:

Exactly. But you are really using your industry leadership to get the circle one, circle two, (Scope 1/Scope 2) that are affected by our exhibitions, to also comply?

Hugh Jones:

Yes. So we do expect the future will be completely offset. So that that means we need certainty that the visitors are offset and the exhibitors are offset, not only what happens at the show, and not only what happens within the walls of RX, all of it will eventually need to be offset, that is correct.

YS Chi:

It's a formidable and very respectable goal to have set. And I was there myself at London Book Fair, where RX and Elsevier division had collaborated to measure the sustainability of the booth and what it took during this show. And I was very impressed by the effort to try to measure it so that people can tell what it is that they need to improve.

Hugh Jones:

Well, if you don't measure it, you can't solve for it, and if you do measure it, then you can charge for it and you can offset it or you can mitigate it at the beginning. Right. So you got to be able to measure it or it doesn't really count.

YS Chi:

Yeah. And we brought the mayor there, and he was obviously quite pleasantly surprised that this was going on already. One other thing that I do want to ask you before we have to go is a little more about you. Tell us a little bit about you because yes, you did join in 2011 into a RELX family business from your previous business. And then you made this significant pivot. But this is not your background, is it? I mean, your background of energy and enthusiasm hasn't changed, but the industry has!

Hugh Jones:

Yeah, that's a true statement. I didn't have a background in Exhibition's YS, that's true. My background was in software and data analytics. And I used that in the Risk division, working for fine people like Mark Kelsey, and folks like that. And so I think that it was useful in that walking into an exhibitions play where we really didn't have a centre of excellence digitally, was to me a big, open playground of fun. Because I knew that the data was there to be captured and then harvested and then monetized and monetized because if harvested well, we can create more value for our customers. I knew how the movie was going to end. And so for me, I didn't know what to do if the fire department showed up and said,"we're gonna shut you down". I didn't know that. But I could learn that by the great people around me. But I did know what to do about data and software, security, privacy, all that sort of stuff, right. And so I could use what I knew. And I could lean on my good friends here. And they taught me what they knew. And then we kind of created a big team together. And I must tell you, that any show, any show, it doesn't matter. Every show is inherently fascinating, if you take the time to learn the business. I bet you YS I could bring you to a cosmetics ingredients show. And you'd find that as fascinating as a plumbing show, or as fascinating as of course, a monster comic con or real estate show. They're all fascinating because the people who go - you are solving their issues, and you can see it on their faces as they walk in the

YS Chi:

I have been to a variety of your shows, and I'm impressed door. not just by the operational excellence but also by just how much you help the industry. Like you said, consolidate, come together and get a lot of things done very efficiently in a matter of one to three days.

Hugh Jones:

There are people who wait an entire year, sometimes two years for those four days YS, and when, during COVID we had to cancel a show, like sometimes I would get a call saying you must cancel the show. It's too dangerous or we can't make it and I'd have four exhibitors begging me to keep the show on.

YS Chi:

I'm not surprised

Hugh Jones:

...with tears, with quivering voices "you must keep the show on".

YS Chi:

So can I ask? Could there be another curveball thrown at the exhibition business in RX?

Hugh Jones:

There will always be curveballs thrown. We are in the exhibitions world all over the world, there will be cultural disputes, there will be conflicts, there will be tsunamis, there will be all sorts of things. Hopefully, it doesn't happen on a pandemic type stage. But every single year, we will have some shows that have to pivot or we will have a strike. Strikes happen all over the world. And we have to deal with.... like, I remember, my president of France had to organise 150 buses in 24 hours to get people from one part of the city to another part of the city. That's scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla for us YS, no big deal. You roll with it, man, you just roll with it.

YS Chi:

Yeah. Would you care to predict a couple of interesting changes that you can see in the exhibition business for the next five to 10 years?

Hugh Jones:

Sure. Fewer people will go to the exhibitions, but more people will have bigger buying power. So what I mean by that is because of ESG conflicts and carbon footprints and tightening spend on business travel, the idea of business tourism - "you get to do this job, if you do it well, you get to go to the fun trade show", that will probably die out. More senior people will go to the trade shows and they'll be coming with very senior points of view to do big business. So you might not send 50 people to a trade show as a bit of a perk, you might send 10. Seeing full trade shows and not able to see what used to be carpet beneath their feet is no longer a good barometer of a good trade show. A good trade show's barometer is not how many square metres an exhibitor takes. The barometer is how much business is done, there will still be fun and networking and all that sort of stuff. But that will change, the face of trade shows will change to be a more serious place where business is done. That's for sure true. The other is that trade shows will take more, more risks to show industries, what lies ahead, whether it's AI or ESG. It will be our duty to lead the industries to say, what is new in hospital technology for hospitals of the future, or gems with lab gems, or whatever it happens to be. It's our duty as a trade show not to put on the same old show every single year, but to place the bets and show the industry what's coming, what's new, what should we pay attention to. And that is our duty. That is how we build their businesses.

YS Chi:

Sounds like that was how the RX business was originally built too with that kind of leadership - thought leadership- of the very specific vertical sectors?

Hugh Jones:

All of us stand upon the shoulders of people who went before and thank goodness they did. And we are all beneficiaries for it. All of us.

YS Chi:

Well, I am grateful that you are at the helm of this business, because you started out our conversation with the word nightmare. And then switched to optimism. No wonder since you're talking about technology, you're talking about your team having tactical geniuses, and you know, taking more risks in leadership. I am so glad we had this conversation Hugh. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. And I can't wait to be at more of your shows and see these changes in effect.

Hugh Jones:

And that's a good way to end YS, I'll tell you. For anyone listening to this who's an employee of RELX. Come see a show. You know us we'd love to have you. Let us show you what we do. Let us put on a show and you enjoy.

YS Chi:

And the team does put on quite a show. Thank you so much Hugh.

Hugh Jones:

You bet YS.

YS Chi:

Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe on your podcast app to get new episodes as soon as they're released. And thank you for listening. Please stay well.