Meeting brochures: When is less more?
After watching this short video about what the iPod package would look like if Microsoft had designed it, and after a discussion at yesterday’s editorial meeting about the brochure for our upcoming Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, I’m trying to understand when less is more, and when more is actually better.
Our brochure is busy, very, very busy. Text-heavy, long, and detailed. The speaker bios go on and on. And yet, as one of my colleagues noted, it works. Compared to other brochures for meeting planner events, it’s meaty. It’s serious. It shows the depth and breadth of what we’re doing and, even though we don’t particularly like the aesthetics of it, a slimmed down, attractive, graphics-oriented brochure wouldn’t do the trick. (I had nothing to do with its creation, so I’m fairly objective about this.)
I’ve seen all kinds of meeting brochures and programs: We used to actually run contests to find ones that work best. Like everything else, it comes down to the type of attendee (or customer) you’re trying to attract. The whole concept of iPod is that less is more, and it delivers on that, even in the packaging. But for something as nuanced, detailed, and intense as being a pharma meeting planner these days, I have to conclude that more is better. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Related Topics: Marketing
March 15th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Sue, I think you always have to balance the ‘more’ in terms of whether it’s essential or fluff or just tacked on because it’s cool. It sounds like in this case, more is what is needed. During our last conference, we tried to scale back the brochure in order to save money and it bombed on us. Turns out, even for professionals in mediation and conflict resolution, those speaker bios were considered invaluable and we learned a hard lesson. We’re going to beef up the brochure again this year since it is a prized resource.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Thanks for sharing that, Chris. It’s interesting when the general marketing trends don’t work when it comes to meetings, as appears to be the case for your meeting and ours. It’s hard sometimes to find the right balance between enough, too much, and too little when it comes to what will entice attendees to come to a meeting. It’s a fine art.
It comes down to that old meeting mantra: Know your audience.
May 31st, 2006 at 12:18 pm
After running a test last year on brochure length, we decided to cut our 32 page conference brochure down to 12 pages (relying much more heavily on our website). The results have been great! Attendance will most likely set a record this year. Don’t always believe conventional wisdom of long copy sells, even for more technical conferences. Keeping testing.
Leave a Comment
Advertisement
Subscribe to Face2Face
To receive a daily e-mail digest of face2face posts:
Contact Sue
Recent Posts
Calendar
Categories
Archives
Your Account