Are we too scared to learn? 3rd October, 2016

I recently spoke at the Social Travel Summit in Inverness, which was a completely new experience – I’m used to speaking at sponsorship conferences.  I arrived in the middle of a session where they had split industry (Trivago, VisitBritain, etc) and travel bloggers into breakout rooms before lunch.  So as not to disturb, I peeked my head into the bloggers session to find a packed room.  As I crept down the hall to peek into the industry room, expecting to see only a handful of people, I was surprised to see that industry actually filled up a bigger room than the bloggers!

I was shocked.  In all of my experience and with all discussions about sponsorship events, brands avoid conferences like the plague and rights holders only attend to hit up the brands that are speaking.  I assumed this would be the same.  It turns out that it is (bloggers definitely are hitting up the industry for work), but after querying a couple of people in industry, it turns out that they don’t mind and “really understand the need for bloggers to help them build authenticity and create a genuine conversation with their customers”.

I have always been a big fan of events – not least for the after parties, but it makes me question whether the sponsorship industry’s gut reaction to avoid being bombarded is hindering our potential.  Rather than creating special events that brands feel comfortable in, we should be creating compelling content in an environment that encourages and nurtures partnerships.

And don’t we all believe in a partnership at the end of the day?