2024年6月18日

The two-day "2024 Global Exhibition CEO Shanghai Summit " was grandly held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai from June 6th to 7th! With the theme of "Boosting and Advancing - Strategic New Opportunities in the Global Upheaval", this conference gathered 320 elite leaders from exhibition groups and institutions in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, as well as heads of China's exhibition industry authorities, associations, and exhibition companies. They jointly discussed current hot topics such as "Challenges and Opportunities Brought by the Iteration of China's Consumer Market," "China's Industrial Global Expansion and New Opportunities," and "Innovation in the Exhibition Industry Driven by Digital Technology."

Mr. Brian Brittain, the Chief Operating Officer of RX, was invited to attend the conference and served as a panellist for the first discussion session, " Dialogue between CEOs of Top Exhibition Enterprises from China and Abroad ". Brian and other industry leaders conducted in-depth discussions on topics such as the development trends of the exhibition industry, the wave of digital transformation, the importance of sustainable development, and international cooperation and competition. They frankly expressed their unique and distinctive views, injecting cutting-edge insights and wisdom into the development of China's exhibition industry. Let's review Brian's exceptional sharing through the following keywords.

Data & AI

Brian Brittain: Given that we work with a series of companies that are analytics-based companies, we're able to turn our data into actual action.

We are currently handling billions of transactions after every event. Why is that important? That is important, because now you can create personalized experiences. You can help exhibitors at the event, see how their performance is happening. So they can make changes in real time. They don't wait until they get home and realize that they missed a series of connections that they could have had.

It's about a personal experience for the visitors as well. We can see what a visitor is doing, whether interest is at that moment and provide insights of how they can better their day.

These are things that are incredibly difficult to do unless you get a hold of your data. So my background happens to be technology and technology, almost my entire career. My insights and ask to everyone is make sure that you do not chase AI, make sure you don't chase the latest and greatest thing. Go back and answer the question. Any solution that you want to provide to your customer? Do they want it? Do you have the data to prove it? That alone causes a lot of confusion. It causes a lot of missed opportunities. And it's something that I would suggest. 

 Digital and New Technologies

Brian Brittain: Your question on digital, where do we see digital actually going?  For us, we actually reversed the process. We don't actually talk about digital. We actually talk about the customer problem. What's the customer insight? What's the customer need?
Then we start working with our customers about how do you solve that.

One of the advantages that we have is because we're on common platforms throughout the countries, we can experiment incredibly quickly. Because an interesting thing happens, and you interview a number of customers. They tell you exactly what it is that they want. They want it on their iPad, they want it on their phones, they want it where they are. Then you get it in their hands and you find out it's not quite what they want. But rather than wait, you can actually do it at the next event. Do it the next event, do it different. You can change it as you go.

So as example, just on a very simple mobile experience, we went through 13 different iterations on 13 different events. We did it in no exaggeration, 6 weeks. So think about the speed you can get. That's the way you can gain. If you actually wrangle your data and you bring it all together. Innovation will always happen, whether it be AI whether it be large language models, whether it be PICKit, whatever the next thing the scientists come up with. The question always comes back down to what does the customer need? And then you fit your solutions to those.

 Sustainability

 Brian Brittain: I would suggest that everyone, if you're not paying attention to it, you really need to pay attention to, is sustainability. If you're not part of the Net Zero Carbon Events Pledge, please join us. All of our research, both for governments as well as our visitors and our exhibitors. All of our research globally tells us the sustainability continues to be in the top three major concerns. That's very different than where it was just 5 years ago. 

Trends and Confidence

Brian Brittan:  For trends. First, one of the nice things that we can do since we are in so many countries, is we can actually ask the same questions over and over again, insights from all of our customers, whether they be exhibitors, whether they be visitors or potentials, some insights that we've received.

Or just recently, this is absolutely true across the board. It's in every country. First of all, business confidence is actually increasing. We're seeing that in every country, even with the geopolitical issues that are going on, we are still seeing business confidence going up.

There are some very specific challenges that our exhibitors have that we are uniquely placed to solve in a face to face experience, things like I need to find new markets. That's always in the Top five list of what exhibitors need to do. I need to find new products, always number one or number two from a visitor standpoint. I need to find new stuff, again, things that you can do at a face to face event that you can't necessarily do at a virtual event.

Those are the trends that we're seeing there. They definitely dipped during the pandemic, but they have come back in a big way.

 Event Internationalization

Brian Brittain: In terms of internationalization at RX, this is truly the power of our local teams around the world. So our event team has the relationship that they have with our customers. They understand where they're moving, they understand what buyers they're looking for. That relationship is actually what drives our internationalization.

So if you really talk about going across borders, it's almost always done with the event teams themselves and the customers directly. There's technology you can do to make things easier once you're there and you can support once they show up, but really it comes down to the relationships. Do we understand what our customers need? Do we understand where our customers are going? That's how we drive internationalization. 

 Event Industry Development and Talent

Brian Brittain: For RX, we believe in constant improvement every year. We want to be a little bit better than we were the year before. That's something that takes time. You have to have the right talent, you have to have the right abilities. You have to have the right markets. But every year you try to improve. Technology will change. It evolves every 6 to 7 years. That's kind of what it does. And if you have the right people in place, you can actually continue the improvement and adopt new capabilities that will enhance our face-to-face events. That's how we see breakthrough happening. 

RX and RELX Business

Brittain: RX is a company organizing some 350 events globally in 42 sectors in 25 countries. But RX is actually part of a larger company called RELX, and its entire mission is to better the patient outcomes, better scientific outcomes, helping our legal communities get better verdicts, helping customers access financial services and get fair insurance prices, and in our world actually creating connections. You would know those companies as Elsevier, LexisNexis, Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions,  and RX. 

RX（励展博览集团）是全球性的展会主办机构，利用行业专知、数据和技术为个人、行业社群和企业建立业务。我们每年跨越42个行业在25个国家举办约350场展会。励展博览集团致力于为所有员工创造一个包容的工作环境。励展博览集团是励讯集团（RELX）的成员之一，RELX是一家为专业和商业客户提供基于信息的分析和决策工具的全球供应商。

www.rxglobal.com

励展博览集团大中华区（RXGC）历经40 年的快速发展，是享誉中外的专业展览会主办机构，在国内拥有多家成员公司、合资企业和约500 名员工，每年举办约70 场贸易展会，服务12 个专业领域并聚焦7 个行业集群，包括汽车制造、电子制造、材料制造、礼品与零售、医疗与健康、印刷包装、餐饮与食品。与此同时，RXGC 全年举办超过100 场在线活动和运营数字工具，突破时空疆界，为行业社群提供365 全天候产品曝光、商机建立、交易促成、洞见分享及知识学习的服务。

www.rxglobal.com.cn

励讯集团（RELX）是一家为专业和商业客户提供基于信息的分析和决策工具的全球供应商。RELX的客户遍布全球180多个国家，在全球约40个国家设有办事处，拥有超过36,000名员工，其中超过40%在北美。RELX母公司RELX PLC 的股票在伦敦、阿姆斯特丹和纽约证券交易所交易，使用以下交易代码：伦敦: REL; 阿姆斯特丹: REN; 纽约: RELX。  www.relx.cn

注：目前的市值可在官网查看http://www.relx.com/investors