Meeting News - September 21, 2009 - (Page 10)

Meetings Spotlight By Seth Harris sharris@meetingnews.com Wyeth Adjusts To Changes From Pharmaceutical Codes Of Conduct Wyeth Pharmaceuticals this year, like many pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing companies, has had to alter the way it operates its exhibition and convention programs to comply with new healthcare codes of conduct and consequent drops in show attendance. On the show floor, those rules, which govern interaction with healthcare professionals and were instituted by several states, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Advanced Medical Technology Association, have limited the promotional items and materials exhibitors can give to attendees and require more stringent reporting of who visits booths. It also has driven planners, such as Wyeth associate director of global congress and convention management Nancy Hoppe, to work more closely with compliance teams, use new data reporting tools and tailor materials to be more medically relevant and educational. “We have to be more astute in the way we plan our conventions and the activities on the convention floor, so that it gives the doctors a purpose and a reason why they need to stop by the exhibit,” said Hoppe, who also is president of the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Association. With the changes instituted in the way that pharmaceutical company exhibitors do business at such large events, there has been less traffic in and out of the exhibits. “What we’ve noticed is that many of the attendees are not coming into the exhibit as much as we had hoped,” Hoppe said. 10 MeetingNews “While they are there as registrants, they do attend the sessions, but what we’ve seen is a dramatic drop-off in the amount of people who are coming into our exhibits.” As a result of the lower attendance and new codes, Wyeth has tailored its show-floor presentations so that it spends its time differently with clients and prospects. The company purchases preregistration lists to match physicians and institutions. “While we are at the dramatic “We’ve seen a of people drop-off in the amount who are coming into our exhibits. ” —Nancy Hoppe, Wyeth associate director of global congress and convention management show, we have a computerized module, that once we scan the badge, we can see effectively if it is somebody we have called on. They see presentation A,” Hoppe said. “If it’s somebody we are not calling on, then we give them presentation B. Once we get back from the show, we run that list again, and we make sure, for compliance reasons, to see if they received something like an anatomical chart. That gives us the foundation so that we can Adding Virtual Events To Face-to-Face Meetings ASI Corp. this year added virtual events to its tomers by traveling to those cities,” said ASI vice meetings program as a complement to the six com- president of marketing Kent Tibbils, who added that puter-product presentation ASI has about 6,000 customers and educational road shows it in the United States. “We needholds in North America annued to figure out how to bring ally. The Web-based meetings the value of the vendors’ prodenabled the company to reach ucts and services to our entire more customers and new customer base.” audiences, garner new One of the biggest additionexhibitors and have greater al areas of customer reach was access to return on investment Canada, where the live shows data for exhibitors and attenare held about once every dees, while keeping marketing three years. Many of ASI’s costs at bay. Canadian customers were The Fremont, Calif.-based unable to attend past live computer component distribevents because of their disutor held its first virtual event tance from the company’s in May with 730 attendees, 330 branch offices in Montreal, more than the average of one Toronto and Vancouver. of its physical events. With the ASI’s virtual event, which ASI’s Kent Tibbils success of the first virtual uses a platform from San show, ASI plans to put on Francisco-based Webcasting another one in October. “Even if you figure that we supplier ON24, is half the cost of one of the compaare doing six shows a year, which is typically the max ny’s physical shows, which are held in hotel or conthat we can do, we are hitting six cities, and the max- vention center space. imum that we might reach is 1,800 to 2,000 cusThe use of new technology is not an effort to diswww.meetingnews.com September 21, 2009 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Contents
Pricing Forecast
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Event Profile

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Meeting News - September 21, 2009 -

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

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Meeting News - September 21, 2009 -

Meeting News - September 21, 2009