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CONTENT IS KING
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Understanding what your customers want is of paramount importance. News Live’s Natasha Banjo and David McLean discuss the power of content and the future of News UK’s new events division
When you’re in charge of organising more than 200 events for a major media player, and you have great content at your disposal, is your job easier or harder? Is the pressure to create a successful event more intense? And is there such a thing as having too much great content? What do you choose to use, and which ideas do you park?
This very scenario is one faced by Natasha Banjo and David McLean, who have been instrumental in the launch of News Live, News UK’s new events division. Banjo, director of operations at News Live, oversees a significant events portfolio and is responsible for bringing events to life for several digital, print and broadcast brands that are owned by News UK, including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, talkSport, and Virgin Radio.
Alongside her colleague, David McLean, News Live’s managing director, Banjo oversees the operational output and strategy of the new events business, generating commercial revenues and supporting key brand objectives.
WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT
News Live launched during the pandemic, in September 2021. It inherited events such as RunFestRun and Life Lessons, which it has brought in-house, relinquishing News UK’s relationship with Brand Events. It also has plans to launch events in the coming months.
McLean explained: “We like to look and see what things we can do that make a difference to our readers and our visitors. Putting a new lens on and looking at our events closely opens new content opportunities.
“Take RunFestRun, for example. We have to look at it and think what that event looks like for The Times audience and what does it look like for The Sun audience,” McLean said. “It’s important to understand what customers want.”
Banjo concurred. News UK has “amazing brands, content and journalists” that can be leveraged. Loyal readers and listeners are crying out for new events, so it’s News Live’s aim to deliver.
FUN AND THE SUN
In fact, both Banjo and McLean are working on new events now, including an event that “embodies talkSport” and a concert series for Sun readers.
“We’re launching an event for talkSport listeners,” McLean explained. “It embodies talkSport and will take place next year. We have the concept and we’re not releasing any details yet, but people will go ‘wow’.”
Banjo continued: “We’re also launching an event for Sun readers. People struggle to think of what a Sun event is. The Sun readers want fun.
“We conducted some reader research around music concerts and so we’re going to put on an 80s music concert. We can offer our readers something slightly different as we have access to celeb talent and if the concert goes well then we will look to launch them across the country.”
PRIVILEGED POSITION
According to Banjo, metrics help the company to build content and commercial opportunities. She said it’s important to conduct research to safeguard new opportunities and it’s important that she picks the right things to do at the right time.
RUNFESTRUN
Banjo has worked in the events industry for more than a decade and has been instrumental in the creation of events such as The Times CEO Summit and RunFestRun. The Times CEO Summit, for example, has strong threads that support editorial content. Therefore, it’s paramount that an event’s format is right for the brand, and it is crucial that event concepts are “joined up” and feel connected, driving efficiencies in time and costs.
McLean continued: “We’re in a privileged position because our business does not solely rely on revenue from events, but we do understand the pressures that other businesses face and we understand that consumers and customers are thinking about which events they should go to and which events they should spend their money on.”
PERFECT PARTNERS
The News Live team delivers more than 200 events a year across its portfolio in various formats, including conferences, award ceremonies, festivals, subscriber events and experiential activity.
RunFestRun, which takes place from May 20-22, is just one event in Banjo’s direct line of vision, as the running and music festival fast approaches. Furthermore, the festival will take place at a new location – Englefield House, Berkshire.
“We have a new site for RunFestRun, which is really exciting,” commented Banjo. “Last year, we ran the event alongside CarFest with Brand Events, but I think that confused the RunFestRun audience as to what we are. The running is first, and the music is secondary, and I think we’ll feel at home at Englefield.”
Banjo is working with Event Site Design and Rupert Bassadone’s Ops People to deliver the event and works with several suppliers who she considers to be “partners”.
GROWTH
2023 will be a key focus for News Live and a year of growth. According to McLean, 2024 will be an even bigger year for the brand. But what stands out about News Live?
“Our brands, our broadcasters, our uniqueness,” McLean concluded. “We have massive loyal audiences, and we have the ability to make those brands bigger. We can make an event longer than its dates, keeping audiences engaged and by working with our partners, we can bring new experiences to our audiences. That’s our USP.”
Bridging the Gap
If there’s a major incident, is the casualty your first priority, or is preventing others from being hurt more important? Eric Stuart, director of Gentian Events, chair of the United Kingdom Crowd Management Association, and chair of the Global Crowd Management Alliance, talks
Sir John Saunders has cast a broad net for the Arianna Grande bombing inquiry. He had to. Anything less would have been remiss and unacceptable to the families.
Just as we were winding down before Christmas, a request came through to the United Kingdom Crowd Management Association (UKCMA) from the Manchester Arena Inquiry (MAI) for a further statement. This time, they wanted us to discuss the “Care Gap”, which is the period between the incident (be it a bomb, firearms, a stage collapse, or a crowd crush) and emergency responders arriving on the scene. In terms of terrorism or feared terrorism, that gap may be far longer, as it takes time to establish if a zone is “hot” and unsafe to enter. In France “RAID” teams, their national Counter Terror (CT) armed response units, have doctors embedded in them. In the UK, this is not the case. In fact, during the inquiry it was reported that UK CT teams do not support the idea.
Instead, and increasingly, there seems to be an expectation that medical care will be provided by those already present, specifically the security and stewarding teams. Let me be clear: I believe in basic life support training for all. I think it should be part of the national curriculum. I take every opportunity to refresh my own training and having used it on a family member, I can’t imagine not having the confidence to try to save a life.
Why then, on the face of it, does my statement to the MAI seem to oppose such a position? (As has recently been pointed out to me). Well, I don’t think it does. I’m just looking at the problem from a more holistic view.
Imagine a bomb has just gone off, or shots have just been heard and you are standing nearby wearing a hi-vis in the role of security, a steward, or as a volunteer. Well, the first argument could be that as a civilian your priority is to Run, Hide and Tell. However, you decide to “do your duty” and stay to help. What is your priority? In every first aid course I have undertaken the pneumonic Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, Circulation (DRABC) has featured in some form or another. Priority one = danger! You do not give CPR to a man in a burning car, or a woman lying prone on the fast lane of an active motorway.
Is the casualty your first priority, or is preventing others from being hurt more important? Before this all went south you had a job. You had been briefed. Now it has all gone wrong, perhaps your next priority should be to prevent further casualties by supporting a safe evacuation. A safe evacuation that does not lead to crowd crushing, along routes that have been checked (perhaps by you) to ensure that the attack was not the first of several: a Bataclan attack or similar. Should you be checking for secondary devices, or secondary suspects before sending people along routes to a “place of relative safety”?
Yes, my initial submission to the inquiry also raised questions of insurance cover and training but fundamentally the question is one of priorities. Surely preventing further casualties should be a higher priority than caring for those already injured, or even dying? Yes, in an ideal world we should be able to do both but with only one pair of eyes, ears, arms, and legs, we need to accept our limitations. What can we as companies and individuals realistically expect from our teams?
I recall again the words of the late Sir Anthony Hidden QC from 1988, when talking of his findings at the independent inquiry into the Clapham Rail crash: “There is almost no human action or decision that cannot be made to look more flawed and less sensible in the misleading light of hindsight. It is essential that the critic should keep himself constantly aware of that fact.”
Wise words indeed. It is so easy to blame with hindsight.
What price security?
Are you assessing your security provision to align with Protect Duty legislation and who will bear any additional costs? Lee Sharp, managing director of East of England Arena and Events Centre, talks
Like many venues around the country, we are aligning our security arrangements and protocols with the anticipated responsibilities that will be laid out in the Protect Duty legislation we are expecting later this year or early in 2023.
The Manchester Arena bombing compelled venues to re-evaluate their security from the ground up, and question certain assumptions about what constituted effective safety and security measures, and how they were carried out on the ground.
Venues need to look at these developments strategically in addition to ensuring alignment with the legislation when it is passed into law, as it’s unlikely that threats will decrease in number and severity – although the actual threat level may rise and fall.
The obvious reaction is to increase security, but as the Manchester Arena bombing illustrated with deadly precision, even with security and emergency services in place and on-site, things can still go terribly wrong.
As venues, we need to ensure our staff are trained and motivated in how to react if they see something that doesn’t look right, clear protocols to help interdict and deter attacks, and detailed planning to ensure a rapid and effective response to any security incident. Chains of responsibility and communication need to be predefined and well-rehearsed so that every staff member knows when and who to contact about any security breach or concern.
We took the decision last year to appoint a head of security with counter terrorism and venue security experience, and recruited Mark Smallwood to the post in November, ahead of the consultation report and inquiry findings. Mark has made several immediate changes to access control, traffic management and on-site security guarding, and has instituted an in-house training programme – called “be alert, not alarmed” – for all staff with no security training, to bring our whole workforce up to the same level of alertness and vigilance.
There is an equation to consider here. Historically, the unspoken assumption for almost every event was that it was safe. Atrocities like the Manchester Arena bombing can shake that assumption, and attendance figures for all events will suffer, even internationally.
Preventing and mitigating future attacks may be an expensive proposition, requiring an investment in people, training, and equipment. But how does that cost compare to the cost of a total collapse in customer confidence attending large events? It’s clear, even from this crude analysis, that every pound spent effectively on improving security, deterring attacks, minimising threats and mitigation planning will be repaid, in full, many times over. The question is who will bear that cost today?
Whilst the finer details of the new legislation will have to wait until the publication of the Manchester Arena Inquiry and debates in Parliament, we’re confident of the broader shape it will take. Venues need to act now, if they have not already, to ensure their security provision is fully aligned with Protect Duty when it is passed into law.
End of cash?
COVID has had a dramatic impact on consumer payment behaviours. What impact will this have on events and festivals? Cashless experts chat
Contactless payments now account for 27 per cent of all payments and 83 per cent of people (regardless of age) now use contactless payment methods to pay for goods. These figures indicate a notable change in how people pay for items and services and highlight the growing impact that COVID-19 and the pandemic has had on payment behaviours. The figures, released by UK Finance, detail the rise of contactless payments (27 per cent compared to seven per cent in 2017) and a reduction in cash usage. In fact, 2020 saw the number of cash payments made in the UK fall by 35 per cent; however, cash remains the second most frequently used payment method behind debit cards.
CONSIDERATIONS
This season, several organisers have opted to change payment methods on their event and festival sites. Victorious Festival is trialling “card only” payments within a new area of the festival site, Splendour is working with traders to make card payments easier, increasing the number of PDQ machines on site and tweaking connectivity, and Boomtown is going fully cashless. But what’s the difference between contactless and cashless?
They are terms that are used interchangeably but they are not the same thing. A contactless payment uses RFID technology or near-field communication (NFC). For example, RFID tech can be found in a wristband, and if you use Apple Pay that is also an example of a contactless payment. Essentially, you tap and go.
Cashless payments are a little different but basically, they mean any kind of payment made without using cash. For instance, a bank transfer or a payment using a digital wallet.
According to Tappit, which has produced a cashless payments guide, there are important considerations that organisers need to mull over. For example, contactless payments are technically cashless payments, but not all cashless payments are contactless. Does this matter?
WEEZEVENT
GONE WILD
TOTAL CONTROL
It is important to remember that contactless payments are processed through an open loop system because they are typically processed by a bank, a third party. Cashless payments differ; they are referred to as a “closed loop system”. Closed loop payments allow festivalgoers to pre-load funds into an account that is then linked to a payment device such as an RFID wristband or card. But what’s more, if you chose to go down the contactless route, it is the banks and credit card companies that will receive all the valuable data. By going cashless, your cashless provider will be able to provide you with spending analysis, including spending habits, preferences, and patterns, says Tappit. That’s because a closed loop system enables an organiser to have to total control of their payment system.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
Weezevent, the online ticketing, registration, and cashless payment provider, operates a closed loop system. It is working with Boomtown, Standon Calling, and Snowbombing this year, but argues that a cashless payment system is nothing more than another “digital experience” to be experienced by festivalgoers.
“During COVID, we observed the dramatic rise of digital experiences,” says Grégor Einis, head of sales at Weezevent. “People used click and collect services a lot more and learned to schedule meetings with an app. Our cashless system is nothing more than a digital experience and that makes the festival experience better.”
For instance, going cashless can physically reduce the size of a bar. Einis explains: “Having to queue at a bar is inconvenient, but cashless can get rid of queues. By going cashless you can physically reduce the size of a bar and the number of staff you employ, or you can keep it the same size and increase turnover.
“For example, we were working on a festival in Paris, and we monitored spend. On the Saturday, 12,000 people attended the event and spent on average 12 euro per head. On the Sunday, 6,000 people attended the same event and spent 24 euro per head. The impact is not small.”
Einis argues that PDQs can kill an event. For example, if you run a two-day show and the PDQ machines you have hired go down for half a day – because connectivity is lost – then you have effectively shut “your shop window for a quarter of the year”. PDQs must also be powered and connected, and lack of Wi-Fi can “kill your event”.
“A cashless system is speedier than a contactless system,” Einis continues. “A transaction is 30 per cent quicker when you don’t use your PIN and you can save up to 20 seconds on each transaction.”
CONFIDENCE
Organisers should roughly calculate the time that could be saved if a cashless system were to be deployed and then calculate the extra revenues that could be achieved at bars/concessions.
Olly Goddard, UK country manager at Weezevent, says: “.We have been working with Bear Grylls’ Gone Wild Festival in Devon. As a result of the data that we have compiled, the organiser has now completely changed their trader policies because they can see what’s going on onsite and where.”
According to Weezevent, 50 per cent of festivalgoers download a festival app so that they can access cashless top up services. But if you are unsure of how to encourage your attendees or communicate with them on the benefits of cashless systems and how to use them, there are several things you can do. Weezevent outlines the benefits on its website, which contains a large collection of useful blogs that help you with communication strategies to encourage festivalgoers to use the cashless payment system, and not fear it.
Goddard adds: “When people need to top up their wristband at a festival, 90 per cent of festivalgoers top up through the festival website, so there’s no need to go to a top up bank. Festivalgoers have more trust in the system and are now more confident to put larger sums of money on to their wristband, rather than £20 at a time. Secure networks enable people to top up with confidence and QR codes allow people to top up in one click. This reduces the infrastructure needed on site.
He concludes: “I love being able to make a change, solving an organiser’s problems and being clever in a practical way.”
