According to a Meetings Monitor survey published on BTNonline, outsourcing is in.

A growing number of corporate travel buyers who outsource some of their meetings management functions are choosing independent meeting management companies and planners, while the popularity of using convention and visitors bureaus or destination management companies decline, according to an exclusive Meetings Monitor survey. However, some meeting management consultants see commission-based third parties as temporary fixes, rather than long-term solutions, as companies try to focus on what blend of outside assistance they need to bring value to their meetings and events.

The survey of 204 corporate meeting buyers found that travel management companies continued to be the most popular recipients of outsourced meeting functions, but that independent meeting management companies and planners made the largest gains from 2003 levels.

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Only Rich Westerfield could see a meeting marketing opportunity in this silly-but-addictive game on boston.com, where you score points by driving a snowplow around Boston’s famously tricky streets. It’s harder than it looks! And if you manage live meetings, you can mentally replace the snowplow with an AV cart, and the buildings with meeting rooms…oh what fun.

But I digress. Rich thinks that games like this could be used as a sort of viral marketing for meetings and events. What a great idea to use an online game, or some other form of off-the-beaten-track tool that is so cool that it would spread from attendee to attendee without you having to send a single mailer. Rich suggests that CVBs and convention centers could retool the game from “Boston” to “your city” and “snowplow” to “Segway.”

For show managers, change “Boston” to “your exhibit floor” and “snowplow” to “crazed overweight free sample and literature collector in motorized chair”…you get the idea.

But it wouldn’t even have to be a game. It could be anything you could attach to your meeting that would get some buzz going. Say, for an accounting conference, how about licensing Perspicuity’s Crosby, Stills, Ernst & Young, or this one for librarians? For neuro docs, would they not e-mail links to The Trepanator and, coincidentally, info about your meeting? The possibilities are endless.

But is anyone doing it? (P.S., can you tell I love Perspicuity’s designs?)

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