The week-long conference may be a boondoggle, but for agency execs like Hofherr, chief strategy officer and co-founder of San Francisco-based full service agency Mutayzik Hoffer, it made networking a breeze.

“It used to be so easy,” said Hofherr, adding that some agencies have been too dependent on industry events like Cannes, Shoptalk and CES, among others, to cultivate new relationships and drum up new business. Without those events, “the one and done meeting is done — we’re not having spontaneous exchanges anymore.”

For many, the ad business’s reliance on industry events — the conferences, trade shows and awards dinners that key players attend annually — to facilitate networking and relationship building became clear this past spring. Since then, marketers, agency execs, consultants and vendors have had to find new ways to connect as the in-person events they’d usually fall back on weren’t possible.

Without those spontaneous exchanges at events or the ability to meet up for coffee in person, networking has gone virtual. Custom-made meet-ups for start-up execs or “speed dating” with potential clients over Zoom are new ways to foster relationships, according to agency execs and vendors, who say the efficiency of networking digitally has them rethinking the frequency with which they’ll attend in-person events to network when they’re able to do so.

“It played a big role in trade shows and conferences,” said Josh Wand, founder and CEO of recruiting firm ForceBrands. However, connecting after panels during a happy hour where “people lined up to talk to you afterwards, those days are gone. It’s not to say they’ll never be back but they’ll never be back the way that they were. They were very inefficient. You spent two days traveling to track one person down.”

Wand believes the future of networking will be omnichannel rather than primarily in-person as people have realized they can continue to make new connections — sometimes getting the attention of previously unreachable CMOs who are now more available at home — without shelling out for flights and lodging. That’s not to say that the virtual events, bespoke Zoom meet-ups or rounds of “speed dating” that have cropped up as alternative ways to network during the pandemic have been perfected.

Regular attendees of virtual networking events bemoan its inability to replace networking in person. Even as people work to find new ways to connect it can be difficult to feel like you’re building a true relationship over Zoom, …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron