Unique Contributions

The future of events

• RELX • Season 2 • Episode 4

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In this episode, YS Chi speaks with Brian Brittain, chief operating officer of Reed Exhibitions. In a normal year, the organisation runs over 400 events across all continents. During the pandemic, it has had to navigate show cancellations and moving event dates. But sometimes crisis creates opportunities. We hear from Brian how the company has accelerated the digitisation of products that augment the face-to-face events experience. We learn about hybrid events, customer communities and online product showcases.  An American living in the UK, with Brittain as a surname, Brian gives us a flavour of the future of events.

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.

Brian Brittain:

It doesn't matter who the visitor is, it doesn't matter who the exhibitor is. At some point during one of our events, you will be inspired, you will see something new.

YS Chi:

Hello, and welcome to our second series of Unique Contributions, a RELX podcast where we bring you closer to some of the most interesting people from around our business. Today I'm excited to be joined by Brian Brittain, who is the COO of Reed Exhibitions. As you may know, Reed Exhibitions is the world's leading events organiser, hosting hundreds of trade shows and conferences every year throughout the six continents. It goes without saying that the events industry has been placed under tremendous stress over the last year due to Covid-19. But sometimes crises creates opportunities. The industry's ability to adapt under intense pressure has created some of the most incredible innovations. In this episode, I'll be asking Brian what innovations he's most excited about and how technology is helping to build back better. Brian, thanks for joining me today, it's great to have you. Now, you're currently in the UK which is definitely showing positive signs of improvement, together with the spring weather. So on a personal level, how have things been for you over there during the last few months?

Brian Brittain:

Oh, thanks YS for having me. Wow, 2020. Definitely would not recommend. It'll get no stars. If you honestly need proof that time travel didn't exist, I'd say 2020 was it. Surely someone would have warned us. Seriously though, this pandemic, it has been an eye opener of what could happen in our age of global travel. We've all experienced personal losses and change life plans. I firmly believe it's going take time for us to heal completely. But even with the negatives, there have been some good news out of this. If you think about it, the world's technology stack has held up amazingly well. It's enabled businesses to continue and families to stay connected. It wasn't that long ago, there were concerns with the internet itself would collapse just due to e-commerce. Think about what we're doing today. That's an amazing positive. For me personally, the extended family all over the United States, we've been able to stay very close. We took the tradition of the UK pub quiz and had weekly pub quizzes with everybody in the US, and it's been a lot of fun. It's not quite the same as a hug. But you know, it's better than just a letter.

YS Chi:

That's right. That's right, and in the midst of all this, you recently changed jobs as well right? You moved from being CTO to COO at Reed Exhibitions. For this to happen during lockdown couldn't have been easy when you can't meet people face to face. So what was that like?

Brian Brittain:

You know YS, a lot of us are experiencing new jobs during the pandemic. If you imagine five years ago, you join a company via video conference interviews and receive a new laptop in the mail. People would think you're having a laugh, but YS, it is reality today, that is what we're experiencing. For me, this has come down to two things. Communication and team support. Communication is key when you can't be in the meeting room with folks, you can't have the quiet conversations, you can't read the body language. You need to ensure your team and your peers are aligned to the desired direction, the outcomes that everyone is looking for. Those quiet conversations are incredibly important. Understanding, truly listening to what the other is saying will make it outrageously successful. Drive by five minute video calls and virtual tea breaks. Those really do work and things that we've all used during the last little bit. But the other piece is team support. Having the support of your management team, your peers and your organisation is key. The team wants you to succeed. Your team wants to succeed. And quite frankly, without the support of the team, you won't succeed.

YS Chi:

Right.

Brian Brittain:

I'm incredibly thankful for my RX and RELX team members and the support they provide me. We are truly in this together. But the sense of teamwork does come through constantly. So is it easy to have a new job in a pandemic? Nope. Just adds a new layer to the challenge.

YS Chi:

So you talked about listening. Do you think we as a group at RX and at RELX have become better listeners? Or do we have listening skills that we perhaps ignored in the past, more than we should have?

Brian Brittain:

I do think we all had great listening skills. The difference is we would sometimes stare at our phones, right? We'd be in meetings, we'd sometimes be sending texts or be thinking about something else. One of the things I've noticed with video conferencing, although fatigue can set in and does set in, it does provide an immediate face to face. Grab five minutes, listen to what the other person is really trying to say, follow up with more detailed questions. That is one of the nice side benefits that I'm seeing out of this.

YS Chi:

Yeah, I found it challenging to distinguish between those what you call 'fly by five minute' meetings that I used to do in the corridor in person versus the substantive hour long conversations that really delve deeply into the topic we're discussing. That has been a challenge for me.

Brian Brittain:

I think it's been a challenge for all of us. Video conference fatigue is real. Being able to get everyone to focus, usually in smaller groups on a specific problem, does work. What I do think is going to be interesting as we all start to come back, and we're in this mix mode of people in the room, as well as people remotely attending. I think that's where the challenge will really start to raise its head. Before pandemic most of us worked off of conference calls, right?

YS Chi:

Yeah.

Brian Brittain:

We all know how difficult that was. Now that we have video, hopefully, that will be much more of an enabler. But we'll see when everybody gets back in the room.

YS Chi:

And we hope that we adapt as well as we have the past 15 months.

Brian Brittain:

Amen to that.

YS Chi:

Yeah. So, you have an interesting background personally, particularly in terms of what you did in your university days. You studied on one end computer science, and on the other hand, history. Now these two seem quite apart and that has obviously had benefits for you. So can you tell us a little bit about going from that kind of split studies, to Telecom, then to FedEx, then with us?

Brian Brittain:

Yeah. History and computer science, not exactly a combo most people think of. But I started programming when I was nine. My family bought me for Christmas my very first computer. You remember those computers, the one's you used to plug into the TV. That's how I started. Mine was a RadioShack, if you remember that company.

YS Chi:

Yeah, of course.

Brian Brittain:

..colour computer. While I was learning programming, my grandfather taught me a great respect for history. How we all got here, why we are the way we are. Comments that went far beyond just the dates you read in history book, and really drivin the point home that we do stan on the shoulder of giants. W have to remember that, and I ca remember Dr. Eugen Weber's history symposium that I had at UCLA. He really drove home the point that history is about cau e and effect. It's about pat erns. It's about the cyc ical nature of history. All of hese have direct direct cor elations with computer sci nce. One of the big items tha we do in that field is pat ern matching. We recognise the pattern, we understand how to reak the problems down. We hav seen it before, there will be ffects for choices we make in ur architecture. So history tau ht me how to communicate, how to write, and something I use every day. The pattern mat hing the cause and effect. Tha's a combination that's work d well for me so far.

YS Chi:

Now, you spent a decade at FedEx, one of the most well known brands in the world. I'm sure it's taught you numerous lessons about things like logistics and operations that we think of, global business. What learnings from FedEx were particularly useful or relevant to Reed Exhibitions?

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, if you look at my career history, it's a little different. It's a strange journey. It's US, UK, back to the US, back to the UK. Telco, logistics and now the event industry, among others. But there are some commonalities in these companies that are making them successful. The first one is, they're customer centric companies. In all cases, my team and I were given incredibly difficult global customer problems to solve. It's that old adage, and it holds so true, you have to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. You also need to measure the outcomes to ensure you actually solve the problem, and it's true at RX as well. We're completing our global back office transformation, that's sales, marketing and finance globally. At the exact same time we're building and enhancing our digital products and solutions to help solve our customers need to build their businesses. There's another thing that the companies have in common, and that's cybersecurity. All of the threats are top of mind to protect our company and our customers. Our RELX security and technology groups are proactive in our threat analysis and we're reducing risk as much as we possibly can. And then finally, all three companies that you called out, the Telco, FedEx, which is a brilliant company, and Rx and RELX. They have great leaders and mentors. I've personally benefited hugely through quiet and sometimes not so quiet guidance I've received in my career. RELX and RX have brilliant mentoring, inclusion and women and tech programmes that are building that next generation leaders. So it's the customer, it's the transformation. It's the personal growth opportunities that link all of these experiences and these companies together.

YS Chi:

Well, with that in mind, let's jump to the business itself. Now, I'm sure it goes without saying that the global pandemic has truly drastically impacted the events industry with so many shows pretty much unilaterally cancelled across the globe. So to start with, can you tell us some of the biggest challenges you and your colleagues have faced over the past year or so? And what are you doing to navigate through these most unexpected abrupt stoppage?

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, at some point in time somebody's going to write an amazing set of case studies and books about this, and it's not just RX, it's not just RELX. It's how the world has coped. But I can honestly say here at RX, the team immediately went after the challenge of digital only events, with creativity. Think about it, come March of 2020, all of our face to face events stopped, and they didn't really start up again into pockets until Q4 of 2020. That's six months with no events when we normally would be doing hundreds of them. But our teams immediately opened up conversations with our customers exactly, asking exactly what they needed to be successful. Some common needs occurred out of our customer feedback. Meetings with potential clients, the ability to showcase new products to the broader audiences, insights into market trends and thought leadership. But the pandemic hit the events business in a different way as well, which was all of the companies that were associated with the event industry. So the venues, the restaurants, the hotel, think of the small stand building businesses. All of those were directly impacted. There was though, something that happened in the events industry that I'm incredibly thankful for. 2020 really did kick the door down on digital products for the event businesses. The entire industry can see the potential digital technology and data to augment our face to face events. Think about remote networking, matchmaking, the ability to extend our customers reach as they expand their businesses into new markets. Over 80% of our exhibitors and visitors YS, want to get back to face to face.

YS Chi:

Oh, I bet they do.

Brian Brittain:

Yep, we can see it in the data. We've been measuring this since May. So we know they want to get back. But there was a second part that was incredibly important. 35% see opportunities now in the digital products to expand our businesses. That's a huge change from pre-pandemic levels. And as you know, because we've had this conversation many times over the years, we've been working on our digital products since 2015. We had a number of digital products that were already in place and helping during the pandemic. And we had the support of RELX to trial new products and approaches. The concept of try, review the learnings, modify, trial again. Each time improving the outcomes for our customers. That's core and how we do our digital products and when we talk about our scale of 100 events globally. We have the opportunity to run massive amounts of trials, always looking for those improvements for our customers.

YS Chi:

Speaking of that, can you tell me a little more for the audience about this concept of hybrid, right? And how you're piloting these different hybrid attempts between digital and in person for when we reconvene?

Brian Brittain:

Absolutely. So the hybrid event is something that the industry has kind of coined in order to explain what's currently going on, which from our perspective is a long time coming. We've been working at this for a while now. But imagine this as a hybrid of that. We're running our face to face events and you can't make it for whatever reason. You can't make it because of international travel, you can't make it because something has happened with your family. Something's happened at the office, but you want to participate. So we've created a series of products, things like online product showcases which, quite frankly, before the pandemic most people didn't really see the point of. What these are is, you've created a new product, you want to get it out there, you want to get it out so the right buyers can see it. That one hour video that's very targeted, or a conference call that's very targeted to just those buyers that are kind of make a huge difference for you. That's massive for our customers and we're seeing NPS ratings in the high 60s. I mean, that's an example of taking a traditional face to face event and really adding new products. But we've got some other ones that are coming down the path too that are making it much more of a hybrid event of face to face digital. Things like customer communities. A group of people rallied around a specific topic or interest, and target a small group of those individuals for a very targeted event that might be for a specific region. Might be for a specific topic and run a very small micro event digitally.

YS Chi:

Is this example of a year run engagement?

Brian Brittain:

Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's an example of year round engagement, and we call them communities. So there are big face to face events, which are hallmark and we believe those will be around for a very, very, very long time. But inbetween these annual events or biannual events, you can run targeted digital events that are extremely cost effective, that are very targeted, and can help our customers come back from the pandemic. It's absolutely brilliant to watch.

YS Chi:

Right. So this is not about replacing but it is supplementing, right?

Brian Brittain:

Absolutely.

YS Chi:

So I love calling the word that I have used now for about 20 years, and that's the word ambidexterity. So it sounds to me like RX is becoming truly ambidextrous because you're such experts over decades of doing face to face and now you're adding this digital capability. Now becoming completely ambidextrous.

Brian Brittain:

I think that's a brilliant way to describe it. We've been talking about digital augmentation, we've been talking about hybrid, but it is about becoming ambidextrous, there is no doubt about it. I truly believe that digital will be a way to unlock new markets and new possibilities for our customers. There's no doubt in my mind. We can see it in the data, we can see it in the results. And as we become more ambidextrous, we will be able to create new products that run with our face to face events. But the face to face events as the data continues to show is incredibly important. People need it. And our recent exhibitions that we've run in China and Japan are showing that folks are coming back in huge numbers, and it's been absolutely brilliant.

YS Chi:

Yeah. You made a couple of points that you know people ignore and that is all about the community around the exhibitions. The small medium enterprises that support these exhibitions, before, during and after. It's really important. I have another question around the particular characteristics of exhibitions. Your team is so accustomed to having dates out there and working toward a specific target date. Suddenly, not only does COVID happen, but it's a moving target. You don't know if you're going to open in three months, six months, nine months or two years. How did you all cope with that moving target?

Brian Brittain:

The target is still moving and will continue to move as this pandemic works its way through the globe quite frankly. So our event teams have been incredibly flexible. We work with the venues themselves and we'll work with our customers to find out if we need to move a date, what we would do. But there's something else which actually kind of ties back to your ambidextrous comment earlier. We can still run micro events and digital products while we wait for the face to face to come back. That's what we do. We have run a number of digital only events that prove that the model does work. It's not the same, but it's a brilliant way to augment it.

YS Chi:

Yes, I think that we had become quite accustomed to the things that we're good at, and perhaps taking some things for granted that now are surfacing. It seems like your team is really perceptive about what they are and giving it a go.

Brian Brittain:

They've been incredibly creative. We've been solutioning with our customers, with our partners, and it's been fun to watch. But everyone is going through this slightly differently. Everyone is learning the best way to cope and they're adjusting their businesses. We're seeing it across the rest of the RELX group as well. We just happen to be the one that's going through the very difficult bumps right now.

YS Chi:

Right, I mean opportunities do come out of crisis, don't they? We observed it in 2008 crisis, when a lot of people gave up on face to face in pretext of, well, companies are cutting marketing dollars so they are not going to travel to conventions and exhibitions. Look what has happened since then. It's been at the, and hit the pinnacle just before COVID. So I have to be optimistic that even this one will be a temporary pause to hit new pinnacles.

Brian Brittain:

I would agree with you. I am also very optimistic about that.

YS Chi:

To be really optimistic, we need to talk about what our customers are going to actually get. So yes, this abrupt halt, and you talk about technology, data enrichment experience. What does a customer, meaning exhibitors and attendees, expect to get in the near future that was not visible just a while back? What does it really mean to them? Can you give us just a couple of examples?

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, yeah. So we've kind of talked about the online product showcases a bit and we talked about the communities. But let's go into the future just a little bit. With the correct privacy credentials, having privacy at the heart, we will have the ability to show you as an exhibitor, and quite frankly, as a visitor, when someone in your network is nearby you at one of our events. So think of it this way. If you're an exhibitor, would you want to know if a CEO of one of your clients is walking by your booth? Yeah, you probably would. You'd want to have that conversation. If you're a visitor, you want to know that someone in your network is actually nearby, and you'd like to be suggested where they are so you can go track them down and have a good conversation. Because networking is vital.

YS Chi:

Absolutely. Connecting is one of the most important reasons for exhibitions. It's not just to display and learn.

Brian Brittain:

Absolutely, and that's something that our seven behaviours has taught us. We can never forget, networking is a key point of everything that we do in exhibitions. But also, inspiration is another key point. It doesn't matter who the visitor is, it doesn't matter who the exhibitor is, at some point during one of our events, you will be inspired, you will see something new. Even if you're targeted and want to go after one specific conversation with one specific partner of yours. I guarantee it, on the way to that conversation and on the way away from that conversation, you will spend time looking around. You will get inspiration, new ideas, new concepts. Every single one of the events I've been to that's happened. Things I never knew about, I was able to learn about and move them into other products. It's been absolutely brilliant, but you're absolutely spot on. Networking is key, but inspiration is the other.

YS Chi:

To try some of these things I understand that you recently launched something called Digital Centre of Excellence for all the conferences and the team to draw upon. What can you tell us about the formation of this centre and the impact that you want to have on the future of the business?

Brian Brittain:

Okay, I am really excited about our Digital Centre of Excellence. As you know we've been working on digital products since 2015. The pandemic has opened up some opportunities for us to create new products for our customers. We needed a dedicated focus to expand what we were doing into new areas. So our Digital Centre of Excellence, it's got three major goals, three major areas it is focused on. We're going to continue enhancing our digital event products so those products that happen to be digital for face to face events, that will continue. We've got a great roadmap sitting there. The CoE though will also start to look at the new opportunities that have opened up in our business to consumer space. So think about our ReedPop, our New York Comic Con or Gamer Network capabilities. In all of those, whether it be ReedPop or Gamer, we have seen new pop up events, pop up panels, subscription for special content. These are things that we knew were there. But now we have been able to prove that they actually worked very well, and now we're spending more time and focus in that space. Then lastly, this Centre of Excellence will be working on new products that will actually leverage our vast datasets that will augment our face to face with new insights, that our customers need. Going completely digital in 2020 enabled us to have focus on these new digital products. We were able to test, were able to prove, and we've seen items that have paid off. Recently we were joined by Gaby Appleton from Elsevier.

YS Chi:

One of the stars of our group.

Brian Brittain:

Absolutely, and we are so thankful to have her on board. She ran a number of digital products, including ScienceDirect and Mendeley. She also supported the NHS track and trace with their COVID app. So she's got a huge amount of digital product experience and her leadership will be key in driving our digital CoE's success, and I cannot wait to see what she and the team come up with.

YS Chi:

Absolutely. I don't think she'll be short of ideas and she's so brilliant. Speaking of B2C spaces, I am very curious to know, what are the key distinctions between a B2B characteristic and a B2C characteristic that Reed Exhibitions is learning from our ReedPop group? I had Lance here as a guest some time ago, and it's a fascinating difference.

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, Lance and his team are absolutely brilliant creating those experiences in the face to face world and in 2020 they've done quite a bit of work on how to build similar experiences in the digital world. Scale is probably the biggest one. So you're still trying to get the right connections, you're still trying to get the right network, you're trying to enable our exhibitors to get to the right visitors. But the attendees, they're different in a B2C space, they're going there for the love of the product, they're going there for the love of the event. They're going there to meet their friends, they're going there for...

YS Chi:

not to make revenue, right?

Brian Brittain:

...not to make revenue. They're not necessarily going there in order just to buy 100,000 widgets to make a new product. They're going there because they are fans. That enables us to go into other areas. So you start talking about Twitch, you start talking about YouTube, Vimeo. All of these are new channels for us to get the right value, right entertainment. In some cases, the right special features, the right panels to our attendees o these B2C events. Lance and t am have done a absolutely s ectacular job. Our Gamer Netwo k team, they are the exper s in gaming. If you want to know what's going on in a game from n editorial perspective, you go take a look and have a c at on the Gamer Network site, and that's the big differen e. We are going to have convers tions and enable huge amounts of participation with fanbase

YS Chi:

Of course. Now this is again another real confirmation, which is absolutely b illiant. It's very different th n than B2B. Having said that, B b is a lot of fun too. that whether it be micro communities you're creating, or these pop up events in B2C spaces, this is true ambidexterity because we have been about deep broad comprehensive environment. Now you're taking these smaller verticals and doing pops, quick flashes, quick micro communities and I think that having skill set on both will be very useful for what is to come. I'm really glad to hear what you're all doing.

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, I completely agree with you. Our big face to face events, whether that be Comic Con, since you brought up ReedPop and Lance, or whether that be MIPCOM or World Travel Market, those are still going to be our cornerstones. There's no doubt about that. What 2020 has taught us is that you can have those micro events and create value that our customers can see. That's helping them build their businesses, which is really, whether it's B2B or B2C, that's what we're here for. We are here to help our customers build their businesses.

YS Chi:

Brian, if you would allow me I'd like to pivot to a new subject that we touch on this podcast, unique contribution. That is our passion for doing the right thing and I guess many people call it corporate responsibility. We take sustainability very seriously at RELX, including RX. We were very pleased to have achieved a net zero in 2020, but we have got to move beyond this and we have set ourselves some extremely ambitious environment targets further down. Can you tell us what your group at RX is doing in this area of sustainability? Yeah YS. We've got some great news here. Started in 2019, our Australia and UK business groups started working, or they set up a working group to actually focus completely on sustainability. There were 26 folks that were involved at the very beginning of it, and it's grown since then. What they created was a sustainability charter and that actually aligns with the UN Sustainability Development Goals. All of our events are adopting this as a minimum standard. So it's making sure that we recycle. It's making sure that our venues that we utilise are properly green, that we minimise the waste that we help our companies that build the stands for our customers understand what is possible from a recycling and minimization point of view. But our events also go beyond that. So they have World Travel Market, which I brought up earlier, they have a responsible tourism programme because obviously with the vast footprint that the tourist industry has, it's important for us to be involved, to be leaders in those conversations. Our in-cosmetics group has created a sustainability corner that helps our customers find better ways to produce their products that are easier on the environment. These are part of what we see as what we need to do and what we should do for our responsibility not just to the environment but for each other, because we all have to live on this planet. It sounds to me like it is so repetitive throughout our different divisions, that these are all efforts that you share with us that are bottom up. Our employee group driving their passion and conviction. As opposed to the senior executives, kind of directing.

Brian Brittain:

Yeah it is, absolutely. I'm so proud of the team for doing that quite frankly. I think it gets back to one of the the core foundational pieces of what makes RELX employees go. It is understanding what we could do with the environment. It's understanding how we can make the world a better place. It's leveraging our data assets. That's what is kind of part of our DNA and I absolutely love that about this company.

YS Chi:

I do too. Now, we're going to try to finish on a lighter note. You are an American who went from the US to UK, back to US and now back to UK. Living in the UK, have you picked up any English habits like drinking tea with milk or drinking warm beer?

Brian Brittain:

Yes, I definitely have. I do drink tea with milk and I do complain about the weather, which is a definitely a British thing. I do sit outside in 18 layers to keep warm so I can enjoy an adult beverage with my friends. You'd think after almost 15 years in the UK, I would quit finding things that puzzled me. But sure enough, about once a month, someone will say something that I don't understand the context to and I have to go Google it. By the way that happened in the US South too where I found out that bless your heart is not a compliment. That took me a couple of months to figure that out. But I will say this, probably the most fun I get is, I'm in England, surname Brittain.

YS Chi:

Of course, I never thought about that.

Brian Brittain:

Yeah, there's nothing better than watching someone who doesn't know me start talking to me and when I answer with a very West Coast US accent, that puzzled look on their face is absolutely priceless.

YS Chi:

Brian, thank you for joining us today and sharing your passion. Your optimism for where we're taking Reed Exhibitions, unique contributions. Whether it's customer centricity, or team support and communication. I think I would say the one focal point that I'm never going to forget is our discussion about digital argumentation. About the hybrid environment and what I love calling ambidexterity at RX. I wish you and your colleagues well, and please continue to stay well.

Brian Brittain:

Thank you. Thank you for the time today and I hope everyone gets through this in one piece.

YS Chi:

We will together.

Brian Brittain:

We will together.

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.