44 Connect Events

While the big headlines in media and marketing over the past few years have been hogged by digital trends, event marketing has slowly made a comeback and is now seen as a very useful tool in the marketer’s armour.

The founder of marketing and events company Connect Events, Dominic Patterson, had been working in events for many years when he decided to start up his own company in a bid to rejuvenate what he saw as a tired sector of marketing.

“Having worked in media and events for many years I was very familiar with the existing business models and could see an opportunity to improve on what was then the industry standard,” Patterson says.

“I identified that events were failing to deliver their potential quality in comparison to other newer and maybe more exciting media formats.”

Patterson had confidence in the “eternal value of live experiences to business interaction” and set about finding ways of making events more relevant in an age when digital marketing has changed the way people interact.

“Digital media was once seen as a threat, but has successfully complemented the live media format. The world’s largest publishing companies are trying to diversify their value propositions with live events as print media is in decline – Google, Facebook and LinkedIn host regular events,” he says.

Pushing the value proposition of the live event in the digital age has meant investing in his team. As Patterson puts it, “culture always champions process”.

“In our business provisioning growth, is more about people than capital. Finding the very best people, and then creating the right environment for them to become the very best they can be takes time and patience,” he says.

Patterson says while there have been testing times for the business, his faith in his team and his company’s ability to create a fresh product have kept him in good stead.

“Nothing will replace live experiences as being the optimal tool for learning, networking and connecting industries,” he says.

“Business will always be best done face-to-face.”