How we went 'word of mouth viral' at DMEXCO

The question missing in 2021

DMEXCO 2021 takes place today (8 Sept) and tomorrow. As a Brit, I won't be travelling to Cologne as the event is ‘Online Only.

Likewise, the question that opens many meetings in and around the conference floor ‘How was your journey here?’ will also be missing this year. This is the story of how I instigated that a former employer took our marketing budget to jump into thousands of conversations every time that question was asked at DMEXCO. The ‘BidSwitch Express’, a one-way train journey to Cologne for over 100 invited clients and conference delegates starting their journey in London, first ran in 2017.,

The Seed is planted

In 2011, my Rubicon Project colleagues left me to ‘head our attendance at adtech London’ but returned with amazing stories of DMEXCO, especially the few invited on AppNexusAir, a chartered plane trip. In 2012, I experienced what was the most epic week of content, conversation in learning in the calendar. US-based business leaders would arrive the week before or on the weekend to attend the Exchange Wire hosted ATS London on Monday, before traveling to Germany on Tuesday in preparation to attend DMEXCO on Wednesday and for at least half of Thursday.

I tuned in to how the pe-meeting chit-chat would throw up the same two questions. These are ‘How are you?’ and ‘How was your journey to the show?’ For some reason, it sat with me.  Years later, I pitched that instead of a party or happy hour there would be better return on investment on taking people to the show. This is because I recognised the ability to enter each conversation without being invited to the meeting. If someone attending had 10 meetings over two days and answered the questions above 50% of the time. Taking 100 delegates meant our brand was mentioned 500 times, which assuming meetings have an average of three participants is a reach of 1,500.

As an example:

•  ‘How was your journey to the show?’ 
• ‘Great, thank you. I was in London visiting our team there so I took the BidSwitch Express.’

Happy Hour

As an Infrastructure business, the marketing strategy at BidSwitch was to create awareness by bringing decision-makers from partners and potential partners together so that they can form, build, extend and accelerate their trading with our support. In 2015 and 2016  ‘Happy Hour’ events were hosted in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, and Singapore. With the help of our Berlin office manager, our Marketing team and I investigated how we could revisit this format in Cologne around the dates of DMEXCO. 

We quickly learned that every Cologne venue approached asked if this was for a business event and recognised the conference dates in their diary. At which point the venue would offer to host, based upon a limited menu of available food and drink at a preselected price per person which is multiplied by the number of hours your event is taking place.

I.e. To host 100 people for beers, soft drinks and canapes would be 35 Euro per person, for four hours. Therefore 100*35*3 = 10,500 Euros. The price is fixed unless you add extras and even if 20 of your guests pop their head in to say hello and leave within 30 minutes whilst another 10 just failed to make it at all. The DMEXCO event sign-up to attendance ratio is not documented, but let’s say it is somewhere between 40-70% from experience.

The budget for our event quickly scaled to upwards of 20,000 Euros. We held off hosting a client event in 2015 and 2016 as our diaries were already full with invites two months before DMEXCO. With an idea in mind, I did the train journey alone as a test and quickly found a handful of like-minded DMEXCO delegates en-route in 2016. In 2017, with my personal experience and a budget confirmed I started to research the block blocking train tickets or privately hiring a carriage or three between London to Cologne to make a business case.

Whilst we failed to accurately document exactly how many partnerships were instigated, we did note how many new connections were made on the journey. Many clients loved how it could enable them to take a meeting on board which would free time from their diary at the conference. The events picked up Industry press coverage in The Drum, DigiDay, and somehow, from somewhere a meme shared on social media. It certainly gave our team and its leadership some quality time to spend with clients too.

It wasn’t always an easy ride though. The gaps between the change of trains in Brussels were often too short (15-20 mins) to support 100 people with luggage or a bit too long (90-150 mins). In 2018, the rail operator swapped rolling stock that did not match with the seats allocated. I found myself, with a few others in a small seated area beside the queue for the onboard cafe where we talked about auction logic. The train cafe manager had never seen anything like it at lunchtime and ran out of beer and snacks before we left Belgium! 

Environmental Credentials

In my opinion, train travel, with the ability to get up and take a stroll and city centre to city centre arrival and departure, is preferable to airports and airlines. The carbon footprint of a one-way train journey of 380 miles, approx the distance from London to Cologne is 27KG CO2 vs 184KG of CO2 for flying London to Cologne.  In 2011, AppNexus had chartered a plane, as you can imagine, the cost per person is significantly higher, you are limited to hosting less people and guests still have to wake very early to get to the airport.

Dmexco worked with Lufthansa to run a flight from New York, The Flying Lab event in 2018 was a vindication of the concept even if key execs in Adtech would have already traveled to London a week earlier. The Flying Lab succeeded in adding content were logistical issues and attendee feedback suggested that this would not work on the train or in the mid-point lunch break in Brussels. A video of the inflight experience is available here:

I have never heard the opinion of the Dmexco team on the ‘BidSwitch Express’. I expected them to create a London-Cologne event in 2019 because a partnership with Deutsche Bahn for all visitors coming from London, Netherlands, Paris, and Brussels would truly help the conference cut its carbon footprint. Ratecard, official and exclusive French partner of Dmexco, the world's largest digital advertising trade fair, provides train journey for the French Adtech stand delegates from Paris and Brussels.

All aboard the BidSwitch Express

On 1st September 2021 at London’s Excel, I attended my first post-pandemic, in-person event. Within a minute of entering, I caught eye contact with someone I recognised. His hand was outstretched, my name was called and we shook hands like it was 2019. Two minutes later, a third person joined the conversation, and to introduce me the ‘BidSwitch Express’ was mentioned. 

It is strange when something you conceptualize becomes part of your identity even when you move on, but the BidSwitch Express is exactly that. For the second year in a row, international travel is out of favour due to the pandemic and the conference has moved online only. However, I am immensely proud to have had the foresight to instigate a marketing opportunity with such fabulous ROI and environmental credentials.

On reflection, to have used my degree in Event Management within my second career; Ad technology for my employer is something special. To have added value that is remembered several years later, introduced over 200 people to the train instead of short-haul flying and prevented 15,700 of CO2 per one-way trip in the process is fantastic. It was a team effort, massive kudos needs to go to Scott Neville and Michele Shen for recognising the opportunity, setting the ground rules, and enabling the Client Services team and the office management team led by Gelicia Walpole to activate. 

In the future, the hybrid method of conference attendance and permanence of the change of dates by Dmexco from Wednesday/Thursday to Tuesday/Wednesday pushing travel to Monday, the day that ATS London - back in November this year- would take place. Even though the marketing opportunity may be reduced, if I attend DMEXCO you will find me starting my journey at the Eurostar terminal in London’s St. Pancras International.

If you enjoyed this article, please see my thoughts on how the UK Government's reform of UK GDPR could end in disaster.