Zhou Wei, vice president of Donghao Lansheng Exhibition Group
Topic: Innovative practices for China Brand Day after the epidemic.
Summary: First, moving from physical to virtual: how China Brand Day moved from offline to online. This included a comparison of previous China Brand Day activities with the 2020 Cloud China Brand Day, as well as the organization of the 2020 Cloud China Brand Day: 33 core project members, 37 days and nights, more than 50 online working groups, coordination with 37 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and the planning and presentation of 123 key Shanghai brands.
Second, moving from virtual back to physical: how the 2020 Cloud China Brand Day Shanghai online pavilion helped participating brands achieve both brand effect and business effect. This included three levels of curation for the Shanghai online pavilion and three goals: good-looking, easy to use and fun.
Third, integrating virtual and physical: how to explore an innovative exhibition model in which online and offline formats coexist and support each other. This involves online-offline linkage, combined strategy services, and a closed-loop ecosystem for commercial operation.
Zhang Gang, general manager of Beijing Kunlun Yifa Technology Co., Ltd.
Topic: How online exhibitions support trade exchanges between exhibitors and buyers, and how online exhibitions can integrate with offline exhibitions.
Summary: First, new infrastructure for the exhibition economy includes information infrastructure, integrated infrastructure and innovation infrastructure. Second, the five pillars of new exhibition infrastructure are communication technology, cloud technology for data computing and storage, big data and artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things for data collection, and mobile application technologies including VR. Third, a cloud exhibition hall provides conditions for online exhibitions, technical services for offline exhibitions and conditions for online-offline interaction. It breaks through time and space constraints. Fourth, the development direction of cloud smart exhibition halls is emerging: more professional public exhibition halls, specialization, entertainment features such as short videos and mass participation, platformization, and internationalization through multiple languages.
Wan Tao, chief executive officer of 31Events
Topic: Discussion on technological and business-model changes in cloud exhibitions.
Summary: Why: online exhibitions in the context of the times, including the challenges, innovation and value of digital and intelligent transformation in the exhibition industry, and whether online exhibition business cooperation models can generate sufficient returns. What: the core function of online exhibitions. An online exhibition is not a show, but a new business model whose core lies in reshaping scenarios and recreating value. How: the construction path for online exhibitions. Online exhibitions are not only about technology, but also about changes in mindset and the building of a sustainable operating model. They combine organizational change and business change, and can be divided into six steps: organizational preparation, digital portal, interactive traffic attraction, business negotiation, operating model and platform optimization.
Gu Xuebin, chief executive officer of WeMeet
Topic: Online exhibitions or smart exhibitions?
Summary: On industry challenges, Gu analyzed current challenges and needs from four perspectives: cities, exhibition centers, exhibition organizers and enterprises. On traditional exhibitions, he summarized four problems and four suggestions. The problems are outdated business models, complete dependence on offline physical space and weak risk resistance; dependence on, or even creation of, mismatches between supply and demand; neglect of data, content and connection; neglect of communities, traffic and communication; and a serious lack of personalized services and experiences, with too much pursuit of quantity instead of quality.
His four suggestions were to reflect deeply and change thinking and positioning, providing marketing services rather than only exhibition services; focus on industry marketing needs and use the strengths of exhibitions to extend from offline to online, building a smart marketing platform and ecosystem rather than merely online exhibitions; value data, content, connection, communities, traffic and communication; and focus on personalized and individual needs to improve visiting and exhibiting efficiency and return on investment.
On the core needs and product framework of smart exhibitions, he identified four major needs: focusing on enterprise exhibition marketing pain points, creating an exhibition marketing service ecosystem, building an industrial interconnected marketing platform, and innovating exhibition business-travel service models. He also identified four major products: an enterprise-level exhibition social marketing platform, an exhibition smart social marketing service platform, an industrial interconnected marketing platform for smart exhibitions, and a smart exhibition business-travel city service platform.
Zhou Jinglong, chief executive officer of Daotong Gongchuang Beijing Technology Co., Ltd.
Topic: How can an online exhibition business model be formed?
Summary: The epidemic triggered changes in core customer demand, forced the need to survive in digital space, popularized network collaboration and accelerated video-based business models. The most important response to change is cognition plus action. The most important part of a business model is generating revenue. Daring to charge reflects confidence in model value, being able to receive payment reflects customer recognition of the innovative model, and sustained payment validates the model. Online formats are for acquaintance, connection and marketing; offline formats are for understanding, trust and cooperation. Online and offline are forms, while digital capability is the core.
Future challenges for exhibition professionals will be more about planning capability, marketing capability, execution capability and organizational capability. The entry of internet giants into the exhibition industry will only make infrastructure more complete. For the digital transformation of exhibition enterprises, his suggestion was to use large platforms well, build small platforms well and work hard to build middle platforms.
Daotong Gongchuang is not a technical service company, but a strategic partner for innovators in the new economy. It integrates new technology, new models and new organizations. It hopes to gather more like-minded people who are altruistic, honest, innovative and intelligent in simplicity, so that they can coexist, share, co-create and win together. Its concept is: shared principles, joint creation.
At the end of the salon, President Sang Jingmin thanked all speakers, exhibition industry colleagues across China who listened online, and 31Events for providing live-streaming technical services. Online-offline integration is an inevitable trend in the development of the exhibition industry, and the industry's digitalization journey remains long and demanding. Only early planning and continuous experimentation are the right path.