News
Bjorn Wigforss (Microsoft): “Events and live communications are becoming more integral parts of the marketing mix.”
Bjorn Wigforss, Vice President and Advisory Board Member of The European Best Events Awards (EuBea), has almost 20 years experience working for hi-tech companies including 10 years in events communication having spent 4 years as Global Events Director at Nokia and 2 years as Events Marcom Director at Microsoft. He is also a President for the Nordic and the Baltic region of United Networks of International Corporate Event Organizers (UNICEO), frequent speaker in the event industry, the chairman of the Finnish Evento Awards jury.
“Despite the big increase in the number of submissions I was pleasantly surprised to see that the quality of submissions improved year-on-year” said Bjorn Wigforss. “The short listing was extremely hard and many really great events that were submitted didn’t even make it to the short list – which was a list of more than 100 events. These events generally received really high scores and feedback from the jury during the EuBea Festival. There are a two trends that stand out to me. Firstly, event agencies are getting a higher level of competence in really leveraging digital methods of engagements, in particular using the event as a way to amplify the messaging to a wider audience. Secondly, fr
om a client perspective, my observation is that events and live communications are becoming more integral parts of the marketing mix. What I mean by that is that traditionally most have been face-to-face “moments” and the focus was much on making the event simply work out, logistically. Now more and more events are becoming led by the creative, and the creative is more and more mapped to the overall marketing activities such as brand and product campaigns. To summarize these two points, both from a client and an agency perspective, the industry is now embracing and taking advantage of the digital revolution. Events that successfully integrate and leverage digital elements generally generate a much higher proven impact. When that happens events can become a more important method of marketing. As this convergence happens the borders between events and other marketing activities are being blurred. It means that clients and agencies must get new competencies and boost the ability to lead more multi-faceted projects.”