5 Questions With Thought Leadership Expert Terry Catchpole

Terry Catchpole is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of The Catchpole Corporation, which has more than 25 years experience managing executive and corporate visibility speaking strategies for companies in all markets.

You started Catchpole over two decades ago. How have you seen the event industry evolve since then?

Interestingly, the event industry has changed very little in the past two decades. We are frequently asked whether the event business is dying out with the rise of webinars and advances in online meeting technology. And the reality is, it is actually more robust than ever. All along we have said that when it comes to IT industry events, every time there is a new wrinkle of technology, at least a half dozen events spring up around it. Just look at the events landscape today and you will see conferences focused on the Internet of Things, Big Data, 3D printing and other new IT wrinkles that did not exist a few years ago. The most significant changes have been those regarding conference agenda structure, especially with the gradual disappearance of the standalone, PowerPoint-driven presentation. It’s now more common to see featured panels or “fireside chat”-style conversations among two or more speakers than ever before.

What’s the number one misconception companies have about executive speaking programs?

The biggest misconception is probably that the company gets to decide what their speakers are going to talk about, without giving any regard to what the conference organizers have determined that their attendees what to hear. At Catchpole, we like to say that every conference manager in the world shares a single overriding objective: to create a group of happy attendees. Companies rarely stop and ask, “What do we have to offer that attendees at Conference X are going to want to hear.” Instead, they just pitch their boilerplate.

If attendees wanted to hear a sales pitch, they would pick up the phone and ask for a meeting. They wouldn’t pay to attend a conference to hear it. When attendees register for an event looking to hear inspiring, helpful material and instead receive an earful of boilerplate, there’s no doubt that the organizers receive feedback that their attendees are very unhappy — and might not come back next year. So companies, first and foremost, must pay attention to what conference organizers have determined to be important and relevant to their audience, and map their speaker proposals to that focus.

Who do you consider to be the most well-spoken thought leader in the tech industry?

The embarrassing truth is that I do not attend enough conferences to be able to address that question with any authority. I know that you see traditional IT leaders like John Chambers appearing often as conference speakers, as well as newer arrivals such as Reed Hastings of Netflix. Personally, the single most well-spoken IT industry thought leader whom I ever heard was Steve Jobs, at the first public presentation of the Macintosh computer. It in the early 1980s at a public meeting of the Boston Computer Society, on whose board I was honored to sit. Jobs was amazingly charismatic, as many others have attested to; but he was also amazingly generous in sharing the stage and credit for the Mac with his Apple colleagues.

What advice do you have for PR and marketing professionals who struggle to implement effective event programs?

Embrace the reality that every event is unique, and take the time to research how it is unique and how the organizers position their event against the competition. Talking to as many conference organizers as possible — not to pitch; to learn — is the single best way to “win” this struggle. Then, once you have learned the unique features about a given conference, the next challenge is to educate clients as to how they can position themselves to accommodate the special nature of a specific conference they may be targeting.

What’s one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?

Maybe that I was raised in an upstate New York farming community, population 400. There were 23 students in my high school graduating class, and I was the only one who went on to a four-year college. For most of the others, it was back to the farm! It was a terrific growing and learning experience, working with chickens and cows and processing apple and cherry crops. Would never, ever go back; am too happy with big city life. But it is still there, always.