It is always an adventure to conceptualise, plan, and finally – with nervous anticipation – open a new trade fair or other event, especially when straying from the trodden path and leaving tradition behind to embark on the unknown. This is exactly what HMC has done repeatedly in recent times. Three of its four premiere events in 2021 and 2022 ventured into unknown territory in one way or another.
Fascinating formats with partners from very different industries were created. For the POLARIS Convention, which is dedicated to gaming, e-sports and cosplay, HMC cooperates with Super Crowd Entertainment GmbH, a company specialising in digital events. The imaging event PHOTOPIA is closely connected to the Reeperbahn Festival. And at the New Mobility Summit FUTURE MOVES, HMC’s partner was Ramp106 – the makers of the Online Marketing Rockstar Festivals, abbreviated OMR.
The reason behind all these collaborations is that the exhibition and congress business has been changing rapidly, and not just since Covid. Increasingly, exhibitors and visitors want an enhanced experience with more personal involvement – the new buzzword is “eventisation”. Events are increasingly competing not only with other exhibitions but also with festivals, amusement parks and, in the digital world, streaming services. Therefore well-designed events with a festival character are very popular. This means we need partners who know exactly what makes the target audience tick, who speak its language and have extensive networks.
This is also important because Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH no longer views its brands – especially the new ones – as mere “events” but rather as platforms offering added value through associated offerings and services. Specifically, in the case of FUTURE MOVES, the content portal played a key role. For the POLARIS Convention, a “playable trade fair” was created by linking the event to an app. Similarly, the concept for PHOTOPIA sees visitors becoming part of the event through interaction and involvement.
“Again and again, we can see compelling evidence of how much we ourselves, our guests and our exhibitors benefit from these cooperation partnerships,” says CEO Bernd Aufderheide. “For example, take the POLARIS Convention: Without the team from Super Crowd, we would hardly have come up with the idea to turn an entire event into a game using an app.”
But it is not only new content and new contributors that make a difference; in many cases, there is also a different approach to designing an event. While in the past every detail of an exhibition concept was planned before the launch, a new paradigm is emerging where new ideas are often conceived while an event is running. The New Work concept includes pausing, subjecting the process to critical reviews on a continuous basis, and changing direction if deemed appropriate.
A good example is FUTURE MOVES, first launched in 2022 in partnership with OMR at their festival as a pure conference, prompted by the fact that the topic of mobility was doubtlessly appropriate for Hamburg. But the desired effects could not be achieved with the envisioned concept. FUTURE MOVES therefore took a break in 2023 to review and adjust the concept – an approach that is quite common in many young industries but has not met with significant acceptance in the exhibition world so far.
“To us, this approach is a logical developmental step in our business model that is centuries old,” says CFO Uwe Fischer. “We are fully aware that as a trade fair company, we cannot limit ourselves to solely selling square metres. While that is certainly part of what we do, it does not meet the expectations and requirements of today’s exhibitors and visitors in terms of a modern networking platform.”
