How Data and AI Can Help You Choose the Right Conferences - with Melanie Samba

0:00 Daniel Nestle: welcome, or welcome back to the trending communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. Don't you just love conferences? I mean, to me, there's no better way to learn about like what's important or what you should be paying attention to in your field or industry. And if you're a communicator or marketer, conferences can be powerful platform for reputation and influence and business development or straight up awareness. And yet, like me, does just thinking about the costs drive up your anxiety straight through the roof, because it does for me, well, you've got to decide where to spend your budget, and where you get the most media coverage and where you'll exert the most influence, you know, and where will your executives and subject matter experts get the most out of their time and then stand out among their peers. It's tough to tough order.

0:58 There's so much to think about. Got to think about attendees, wider audiences content, relevance, the opportunity, cost of time, networking, value ROI. You know, it just crushes the mind sometimes to think about where you're going to put your money for conferences. So why do many of us choose these events based on things like past experience, or feelings FOMO, vanity, optics, peer pressure, whatever it is, there's got to be a better way. Fortunately, my guest today is here to help a leader in the field of communications technology, aka comtec, a member of the Fast Company, executive board and Forbes communication Council. She's at the cutting edge of applying a data driven AI powered approach to choosing conferences, and measuring their impact for your organization. A lifelong communications pro with a background in comms and branding and pharma and healthcare. A few years ago, she left her career behind to start her own tech company that delivers intelligence and ROI for every conference. She also happens to be one of my classmates, in the PR week, dashboard 25, class of 2023. Please welcome to the show, a truly trending communicator, the CEO of Sproxxy, Melanie, samba, Melanie Samba: thank you so much there, that was incredible.

2:17 Daniel Nestle: You know, you deserve it. You've had a heck of a career. And now sproc. See, and that's SPR o double x y for those listeners Sproxxy is live launched, and killing it, as far as I've heard, I know, and what a great platform. But really, what a great solution to a problem that I think so many have, but don't really realize it. You know? We'll get into that I think a little bit a lot maybe during this during our program here today. But, you know, I haven't really done much in the way of talking about events and conferences. It's not something I think that comes up in in your typical everyday conversation when you're talking comms, you know, you're talking about you talking about media, you're talking about, you know, social media, you're talking about, you know, coverage and reputation, things like this. And events sometimes falls under marketing, sometimes it falls under communications. But it is such an important channel for us in our profession. So I wanted to, you know, to talk to you a little bit more about, you know, conferences about why you chose conferences, you know, why this is the area of your, of your purpose and mission for proxy. And, you know, get into the cool stuff that you're doing with tech and with AI and, and how it's going to make everybody's life who's who deals with the problems I mentioned before, a lot easier. And, you know, that's kind of what I want to draw from our conversation today. Of course, send people over to check Sproxxy out. But first, you know,

3:51 Mel, how did you get how did you get to where you I mean, you start off in comps, and you took a jump that so many of us dream of admire or fear, which is to go out on your own start a company. So tell us the Melanie sama story. Thank you. So Melanie Samba: I started off, you know, I still am a corporate comms executive. I've been doing corporate comms and marketing for over 20 years. I remember one of my very first I guess, opportunities I was graduating and an author pretty much pulled me aside he was releasing his first book. He wanted to be positioned as a thought leader. The focus was like money for retirement. So he's targeting the baby boomer generation. And so I pretty much booked him at every single conference that Suze Orman was speaking at. That was my strategy Daniel Nestle: to act in front of Suze Orman. Yes.

4:56 Melanie Samba: So when I marketed him I pretty much was like He spoke with at our next tool, that was the way that I marketed Helm. That was 20 years ago. So I did not really run or decide conferences was the the alley I actually wanted to go to, it was just one of the additional things that I needed to do as a marketing and comms professional on behalf of every single organization or leader that I worked with. It was a strategy, it was a medium to me just to get whatever message I wanted to get out to whatever targeted audience dive, I put in my plan, for the end of the year, it was just at that point of time, a medium that I was using, as well along with media, along with advertising and everything else that we do as comm professionals. So throughout my career, as a part of my accom strategy, I used to have to always put together the annual plan depending on what I worked in house, and also an agency throughout the years. And I also worked as a consultant for individuals. And putting together that plan, it consisted of everything that we do as con professionals, including conferences, I began having issues managing conferences, because I did more than just set up the speaking opportunity. As you know, as the cost professional, you're also writing the speeches, or putting together the key messages, or setting up the media conference, or setting up any type of meeting with whomever that's at the conference with your leader or even working on the potential partnership opportunities. You

6:38 know, like you're doing all things, and I was using Excel spreadsheets, you know, so at first, it was just something that I had to do with everyone. And I still believe everyone knows conferences is something that you just have to do, like you just got to win. Daniel Nestle: Yeah, you know, certainly in our profession. And, again, I use the term love broadly, because it's it's comms, it's marketing, more calm, whatever. Yeah. You know, it's always part of the kind of, you'd call it a medium writes, it's one of the channels that you're going to choose. It's, it's, it's there for, like, Oh, what are we going to do about conferences. And, you know, I think a lot of people don't understand that, when you choose to do a conference, or participate in a conference, the amount of work that goes behind that, you know, is, is just like it is for any other initiative or project. But like, compressed into a two or three day period, you know, where everybody and their cousin is in one place. And you have this kind of remarkable, unique opportunity to do something. So the pressure is on to do something, you know, and and it's such a, like, it's always a, it's always an also ran like an afterthought for a lot of companies like, oh, yeah, we got to do conferences. So, you know, why do you think that is the case that a lot of

8:11 people in our in our world and a lot of, I guess, you know, the commercial sides of our businesses that we work with, think of conferences as, as this kind of nice to have that can be crossed off. If we start to run short of budgets, Melanie Samba: I think from a corporate cause, point of view, is the case because as you know, as a corporate cost leader, you're always proving the value of your row, to the commercial team or the marketing team, you're always proving why PR is important, or why communication strategy is important, is so with conferences as well with Thought Leadership. That is another it unfortunately, because as a cost professional, you always have to prove the value of comps. It unfortunately, is just under that same umbrella, the market a team and the sales development team or business development team, they get the budget right away, because they're going into a conference for ourselves specifically to for deal flow that's happening at a conference they're exhibiting they do get the budget right away. However, what what I found is most organizations and non corporate communication site they don't even know what the budget should be. They have no idea what the budget is. The CEO is always asking why they're going somewhere but they will put they will go you know, depending on who's at the event. And they're also doing it for other purposes. They're doing good for brand awareness for eagle to rub

9:53 elbows with other leaders in the industry to make sure they are seen as the thought leader in the industry are a leader specifically in their industry. So they're going there. I think with conferences, where the misses every single department, when you're thinking about a larger organization, every single department is participating in conference isn't whether they're aligned or a spokesperson for the organization or not, they're still representing their company, when they go to an event and are putting your corporate, you know, whatever your brand name is next to their name at the event. And what I, when I was working with one organization, it was a pharmaceutical company, and I had to work directly with our chief legal officer. This is really where the idea of spies that came about is because they tasked me with trying to be like the person and pretty much approve every single individual that was going to conferences, you know, throughout the organization, approve those DAGs put together with the protocols where because we we as pharmaceutical, so there's highly regulated, if you say the wrong thing, you may, you know, there may be a charge or a fee or something that you have to, to pay. And so I had to beyond just the leadership team, manage and try to strategize on who was representing us at whatever conference making sure everyone knew we're all one voice, we all have to say the same messages, we cannot say one thing, we cannot reveal what's about to

11:38 happen next, before the FDA approves. You know, like, there's so much that I had to do with over 400 employees for this pharmaceutical company, you know, in the headquarters space, it was overwhelming is still doing it with Excel spreadsheets. Yeah, you know, that was the point where I felt like, there needed to be a software. And to be honest, I made a joke about it, I was with my corporate comms team, I set a software to handle this. And we all laughed, and it wasn't like, I was like, oh, I want to be a software maker, I want to create this company. It was just like, This is too much. Like, there has to be a software that can handle this, you know? And so, after I said it was like, oh, you know, what a software can he'll do with it was like, you know, the, the light bulb? Yeah, Daniel Nestle: you know, it's, um, you identified what my, my friend Mark Schaefer would call a seam, right, like a, an opening, or kind of a, a leading edge to something, you know, that that is going to be very, you know, important in the future that leads to the whitespace. That, that you should, like, take be able to take advantage of if you have the right strategy and tools. And, you know, I can, I can tell you that everything you're talking about, or especially, all the drudgery around conferences, again, people don't see this and understand it, you know, now, you brought up an

13:13 important, I think, an important distinction, which is that, you know, in pharma in finance, in highly regulated industries, you know, it's a little bit of a different ballgame, when you're sending people to a conference because you know, a lot of media people or a lot of comms people, you, you have an interview or set up or you have a an event or an activity, have one spokesperson write one or two, right. But at a conference, every attendee is essentially a spokesperson, everyone, all the salespeople who typically don't really know or care about what we do, you know, they have to suddenly have these talking points. And it takes a little bit of a internal cultural mindset shift to make that happen sometimes, but in not, like, not every conferences is equal, right? So when you're dealing with those highly regulated industries, there's a lot a lot more that has to go into prepping people to go versus like a trade show where, you know, you're, you're out there doing business development. But it's, it's fascinating, because you saw that need, you know, and how, how many people actually ever act on those things? Right. So you took that jump, so how big between the time that you had that aha moment you found that seam? How long was it before you just before you're like, you know what, there's, there's a there there, I'm gonna go in that direction.

14:39 Melanie Samba: To be honest, when I first had the idea, I obviously I was doing well in my career. There. There was not a part of me that said, I want to be a tech founder, one. That wasn't really the future that I had for myself. So originally, to be honest, I was being selfish with the guy Did I just needed something to prove to the people that I was working with, you know why they were going to conferences, and why I was doing a good job. So the first version of sproxil was just for myself, there was no name. It was just let me provide the rationale to my client to my leader on why I'm selecting a certain conference to them. That is all I needed. And so that was the very first version as proxy. However, while developing that version of SP proxy, again, I was not even planning on productizing it the pandemic ended up happening. Oh, yeah. So remember that, once the pandemic happened was interesting is one of my main clients laid me off. They said, well, our leader is not going to be going to conferences, you know, because the pandemic. And I'm like, What do you mean, there's actually going to be more events now because of the pandemic. And the only reason I knew that is because back in 2008, this also

16:10 because I've been doing it so long. Back in 2008, when the housing crisis happened, the amount of conferences exploded, at the same time, as the housing crisis, like every single publication started to host events. You know, remember when all the publications started shutting down, and they started to switch from print to going to? Yeah, that is what happened, they started creating portfolios or in programs around events. And so I already knew that when the pandemic happened, that there was going to be an explosion of events. And you Daniel Nestle: realize, I mean, did you realize that, that at the time that it would be this whole new virtual angle to events? Yeah, I Melanie Samba: knew that there was going to be a virtual angle, there was already remember, there were already virtual events happening, but no one really was taking any virtual events seriously, until the pandemic happened. And then it was like the need to just be in the community with your peers and find out what's going on because you're no longer in the office. And also, the amount of this actually doubled during the pandemic, there's 1.8 million industry events being hosted. I also, you know, because I've been in this role for a long time and working with a lot of different organizations on conference strategy, comm strategy, I already knew what the landscape was going to look like, I already knew what conference organizers they also, because I've been in this bill, contact me to find out what the other conference is doing. You know, and so I was able to find out, like, you know, where it

17:51 was originally one large event that was happening, they would now have it smaller and have regional events, you know, so I ended up finding out the playbook on how every conference organizer, big event was going to manage the pandemic, they broke up their events to virtual now they have virtual hybrid in person, like, in different regions, there are so many different things happening. Yeah. That did you point? Yeah. Daniel Nestle: Did you? Um, it just, I'm just curious, like, you, you seem to have, okay, for those listeners out there. Oftentimes, PR pros and communicators are kind of like, judged a little bit based on how many contacts they have among the media. How many contacts Do you have? Who do you know if you ever go look at job descriptions for like Corp comms people, it's like, you know, we want somebody who comes with contacts in xx industry, in the media. And while I have my own argument with that, I, you know, because the changing nature of digital communications and certainly of the media landscape, I shouldn't be given as much weight as it used to. But we can put that aside. It sounds like you had a very similar analogous kind of network among conference organizers. Yeah. And I mean, I, I can count on one hand and one finger the number of people now that I know who've done that. So how long did it take you to build that? And was it just was it sheer force of will? Were you were you reaching out? Were you just going to conferences.

19:33 Melanie Samba: I think it was like Yannick Lee based off of my role of pitching executives to be on the stage or trying to figure out what type of program they were planning for the next year. As far as my strategy on a map, you know, manually when I work with a brand, I will know a whole year ahead of what the full next year is going to look like for, you know, a conference organizer like a Forbes or I'll know every single thing before they make it even public knowledge because I was able to build those relationships, and even contribute to what the program or what those events could look like. Those relations just it's just like media is developing the relationship just like you in this actually, to be honest with you is hand to hand media and conference strategy is hand in hand, you know, so what I would do is build those relationships out just as I would with a reporter, that was a part of my job, I'm going to meet them at in East Coast's most of the publications, most event organizers are based in the New York or tri state area, going to meet them for coffee, just like you would with a reporter. Introducing your executive to that conference organizer, or whoever that's developed the content well before the conference, so that they can actually take some of the ideas from your executive and insert it into their program. So I did all of that. Throughout my full career, and that's led to the relationships that I've been able to build, tell

21:11 Daniel Nestle: you, anybody who thinks that salespeople have the monopoly on building relationships, and slowly like kind of building up persuasion so that they can achieve a particular goal in their in their case to a transaction of some sort? You know, I think they're really missing the boat. It's, there is so much relationship building that goes on, in, in our world here. Yeah, and I think you've just you've just laid out a really excellent use case study of that. And that must be one of the values. I think that's that's driving this proxy for sure. As the founder, you know, I did, I did want to dig into something that you said actually about, about conferences themselves. And, you know, I jump around what I do need these conversations, I love this. You know, you talked about the need to be in a community. And, you know, there's a lot of motivations for being for for participating in or paying for or sponsoring or just like kind of speaking at a conference, but that need to be part of a community. I'm, I'm almost ashamed. I didn't include that in my upfront, you know, introduction, because because it is it is true, that is extremely, extremely important. And, and it is personally, when I make personal decisions about going to specific conferences. That might be the very first thing that I think about, you know, I go to a conference every year or well, not every year. But the last couple years, I've been going to this very unique. And it's kind of like an unconference in some ways. It's

22:56 only only 30 People go. But the reason I go is not only to learn, and understand what the future of marketing and communications is about, because I think the room of people there, they have incredible insight. It's really because that group of people of the 30, maybe seven or eight are always repeaters. And it's just, it's just a great community. Yes. So, you know, I think that can't be underestimated. So do you think, you know, there are other like, well, not do you think, what do you think are the other real motivators for, for choosing a conference or for, you know, for participated for participating in conferences, and why are they so important?

23:41 Melanie Samba: Well, I do want to touch on the community part a bit more, especially because of the pandemic. And you know, I, I am like the number one person to say, I'm so tired of talking about the epidemic. With, say, post pandemic, if we're actually there, I'm not sure if that's the case. However, conferences are now the meeting spot, I literally met my head of corporate comms at a conference in Portugal, I met her for the first time. And we live maybe 30 minutes tops away from each other. That's amazing. Yes. So conferences, at this point of time, coming out of the pandemic is where you're meeting your peers. That's where you're meeting everyone in your industry that's, that knows, like, what is going to happen within the industry. That's where you're meeting like, I guess the thought leaders or people that's pushing the industry forward. If you're just going for inspiration alone, you know, there are certain conferences that you will select to go to, then you will be selecting conferences as a corporate comms person on behalf of your executives, based off of the yacht So I guess still the audience, the number one thing that we need to reach is a specific demographic or a specific audience base based off of the corporate goals of the brands that were working with. And so that's dependent on like, what they have planned for the year, if they're releasing a product in a certain market, or they're just trying to target a specific audience, the best place to go is to conference to

25:28 meet face to face with that. Leader, or a customer or potential partner, if we're me, you know, I am very media, you know, I really do focus on media, the best place for me to go to meet media is actually at a conference, you know, they're actually a little a little more open and nicer, want to speak to me. When I'm at the conference, they're looking for topics and content, you know, they're there for two or three days. So they've blocked up this time to speak with people at the conference that they think have a unique story. So that's the best time to meet though.

26:15 Daniel Nestle: Do you find that do you find that is like just on that media point for a second? Do you find that, you know, well, we all know, trusted media has plummeted. It's probably at the worst point it's ever been in, in my memory for sure. And, you know, as a result, it's one of the causative factors for the decline in media readership and in media interaction. So you know, the media businesses are closing more and more. And there's fewer reporters, there's fewer journalists. Is that affecting the conference circuit? Like, is there? Are there fewer journalists at the conferences? So it's harder to reach them? Or how does that how How's that looking?

26:57 Melanie Samba: No, journalists are definitely going to conferences. That is they're going there. They want to know what's going on in certain industries. Use using the Portugal event that we went to it was actually Web Summit, there were over 2000 journalists there, you know, so from all over the world, that is basically like the place to go to if you want to have 10 into literally a strategy that I used to do. Before launching Sprog See, I worked with a CEO, and we would go to a conference and set up a room, contact every single journalist there and do a round table like discussion. So we could get like 20 different articles post conference, like those are the types of strategies that I used to do when I went to an event that is where they are.

27:56 Daniel Nestle: You know, we we, many of us work in, let me just say less sexy industries that that are that are harder to to attract attention. You know, and you have internal stakeholders who are you know, all about product announcements and product development, and no, maybe tradeshow be great for that. But to get the attention of journalists on a good day is hard to get the attention of journalists in a field in a at a conference is certainly I think, you know, of course more focused. But even within that conference, you're competing with, you know, larger companies, or more famous CEOs or, you know, people who are the speakers on the on the, on the stage versus, you know, just being an attendee it's still a heavy lift. Right?

28:52 Melanie Samba: I was, I would say, look at the conference as a campaign, just like you said, at the top of this call, it is really more of a campaign. So it doesn't really matter to the industry, how niche it is, if you target a specific cop conference, based off of the audience that is there based off of what your corporate goals are first, you know, get your executive a speaking opportunity there. At the same time, get the full list of all media that's going to be present. So to set up the interview, as soon as he gets off the stage. At the same time, find out what competitors or potential partners are in the room. So you can just literally you're leveraging that opportunity to do so much. And so by the time you come back from the conference, there is a return. It's beyond just the marketing person and the salesperson best selling product. It really is. I really believe and it's probably because I'm biased. I am a corporate comms person first. Yeah, we are the ones that push the brand. We position our brand. Our CEO is trusted now because He's on the stage by his peers or whatever his messaging is. We are pushing potential partnerships, we are securing media. We are even indirectly impacting sales there. You know, conferences, it does materialize into actual sales. And so when you look at it from that point of view from a marketing comms professional point of view on a brand level, there is a high return back to your organization based off of your conference strategy. I

30:35 Daniel Nestle: am I can't, I couldn't agree more and in my current role, but also in previous lives, I suppose, you know, I've seen, I've seen us do it right. I've seen us do it wrong. I've seen everything in between. And, you know, there are some conferences that are just astoundingly good. Right, that you just go to and you know, you know, but I would, I would imagine that there are hundreds, if not more, you know, maybe 1000s of smaller conferences out there, that could have as great an impact, right on your organization. And especially if you look at from a cost benefit point of view, right. I mean, we used to go and when I was at, at at Mitsubishi Heavy years ago, we used to go to ceraweek. And in Houston every year, World's Biggest Energy Conference.

31:32 Very expensive. And first year, we just sent a small delegation, but it was so but every year the delegation grows and grew. And you know, the value of those conferences, just you build a relationship with the organizers. And eventually now you're keynoting. And now you're having people in the sessions. And eventually, of course, you know, you have a whole media strategy that goes along with it. So massive conference, big name, it was totally, you know, visibly worth it from, from the CEOs perspective. And from the business sides perspective, I think that they have a little bit more difficulty seeing that same value at smaller scale, or less famous conferences, and events. And look, I mean, that's, I think, where we have to go now with talking about, you know, the state of conferences and with with NS proxy, you know, what, you've, you've also position yourself or you've been, you are not positioned yourself, you are a legitimate thought leader in this space. I mean, anybody's been listening for the last 10 to 25 minutes or half hour. Now, like, has learned more about conferences in one setting, than probably they have their entire career. And thank you very much for that. Now.

32:47 You're clearly a thought leader in this space. Your state of conferences report just came out? Can you talk us through that a little bit and tell us a little bit about what the state of conferences is? And why, you know, first of all, why people should read this, but also, you know, why people should be considering a broader conference strategy. Melanie Samba: Yes. So last year, we launched the state of conferences report for the first time. So this year is our second year. The goal of the report is to look at conferences from a brand's point of view from the point of view of someone that's working in Markham, in house or through an agency. So from, you know, basically, again, self serving, you know, from our point of view, and their real goal is to find out what our peers are currently doing. When it comes to conferences, what do they see as value right now, when it comes to determining the success of conferences? And do they see no, do they see materializing for their brand? Do they see an increase of sending spokespeople? There's all those type of questions we ask. But it's really peer to peer insights, if you want to just get bottom line, peer to peer insights on conferences. So from a branding or marketing or communications point of view from so it's not the normal report that you will get on like the audience specifically, it's like what are your peers doing in the space? Right? What we found in the report is one of the things that actually had me focus in on Sproxton you're really build it beyond for my own me only my use case is I was

34:38 asked to join an accelerator where I pretty much figured out whether or not I want to move forward or if this was a real business. That was my decision by the end of the accelerator during that pandemic. And during that time, one of the tasks was doing customer development. So talking to a lot of corporate comm executives, obviously already had A lot of relationships because I've been in corporate comms for a long time. And then also with conference organizers, if finding out from them, like, what are their issues, their pain points? Like, how are they currently managing conferences, and I ended up finding out that everyone has the same exact issue, everyone is complaining across our full form industry, using Excel spreadsheets, or what I like to say is MacGyvering different solutions Daniel Nestle: MacGyvering solutions to I'm gonna, I'm taking that Mel, thank you. Or, Melanie Samba: I mean, even less just straight using email to manage conference, it's always lost in email, you know, no one knows what the actual return is. They know they're spending a lot of money in the space. No one knows how much they even need to, you know, have budgeted, they don't know what audience to reach. Like, there's a lot of unknowns. And I've always been the person like, which you hear this term all the time, which you cannot measure, you cannot manage, you know, you hear the term all the time. You can you can measure everything else from as to marketing, but for some reason, even media, but for some

36:17 reason, with conferences, there was no real source of measurement. So for me staying at conferences was first to find out what my peers what their focus, you know, what are they focused in on for the next year. And Daniel Nestle: before you go further, I just want to, for our listeners, I want to draw a line here between conferences and trade shows, because, you know, trade shows you have a booth, you know, you people come up to the booth, you scan QR codes now. And so it goes and says, you can measure the number of leads, and you follow, it's much more attributable you could do, you could do attribution to sales very, very easily. Conferences are different, what we're talking about here is a little different, or considerably different. Talking about, you know, platforms thought leadership. Yeah. Those kinds of things, branding, so pardon me, they pardon me for interrupting, please, please continue? No, completely.

37:09 Melanie Samba: Okay. So we are talking industry events that you're using for brand awareness, for positioning your thought leader, for building your brand, basically, seeing what your peers are doing, and really building your brand externally to all your key audiences. And so with data conferences, some of the questions we focused in on was, what are you doing this upcoming year? Are you sending more spokespeople? Do you do you see this impacting your bottom line are what are your pain points? How are you measuring success, we gave 18 different metrics, measuring success at conferences, and two years in a row audience reach was number one, in regards to measuring success at conferences. So everyone basically is saying that the very first thing that they need to look at is the audience and whether or not we're speaking directly to the audiences that we already have as part of our corporate communications or marketing strategy. And they need all details about that audience. That is what I'm getting back from that report. People are also looking at website traffic. media mentions social media engagement from a corporate comms point of view. However, some of the differences that I've noticed, is an in house team, what they see as valuable is different than an agency. We didn't see that over 90% of agencies touch conference strategy, in their day to day work over 90% of PR agencies that is a part of their so W or their scope. However, when they

38:57 look at success, or what they see as valuable or more vanity metrics, so it is the social media impressions, whether or not your thought leaders messages are resonating with the audience's media. However, with the in house team, they're looking at strategic partnerships that happen from the conference, any sales that happen from the conference, all audiences basically audience reaches number one. So just getting to the right audience is the number one metric that every single doesn't matter who you are, every single corporate comm or marketing executive is looking for. So it was a very interesting report, that you can get some insights on your peers and see what they're doing when it comes to conferences your year to year.

39:52 Daniel Nestle: You know, one of the cool takeaways from the report is the impact on of speaking engagements, you know, like specifically because you I know as somebody who deals with the executive team all the time, you know, very fortunate. And sometimes you feel like, you know, the heavens have have opened up and rays of sunlight are shining upon your head when you have an executive who's like, yeah, sure, I'll go speak. That sounds great. It's not a not a phrase, We hear it all that often. You know, it's often, you know, seen as an important thing for them to do, and they understand this, but it's work right, but I love it when they're very enthusiastic. But that's not always the case. So to prepare for that speaking engagement, you know, and, you know, what, what is the business impact that the report uncovered?

40:45 Melanie Samba: So to prepare for the speaking engagement, as far as business impact, we do see that people, it wasn't what I will know, I feel like the numbers has changed year to year. And so year one, it did seem that over 60% of the respondents saw a speaking engagement materialize, it is increasing, it depends on the agency or in house team, the amount of speaking engagements and whether or not they see speaking engagements materializing on behalf of the business. As far as speaking engagement, everyone's increasing the amount of speaking engagements, every executive or they know the value of speaking engagements, we did get that intel from the report. Most agencies are focused in on getting speaking engagements for the executives, the biggest issue is, you know, how, what is the rationale, like you just said, Why are you going to this conference? What is the return?

42:03 Also doing with proxy, I just, you know, you can do a lot of peer to peer analysis and proxy, find out what your competitors are doing. If you're working with the CEO, and there is, what is the competitors CEO doing on the conference circuit, you can find that out through SP proxy. So you can find out all details about a conference from on a brand level, let me be specific, what companies are participating at what level they're participating? Are they exhibiting are they speaking, are they just attending on a brand level, and you can literally pull a report on on a specific brand and find out their activity, you can also find out what their topic focus is at conferences through some proxy. And the reason we provide those insights is to is to share with our users how to refine their strategy. So right now manually, or if you're using different software's to try to do social listening, and then different software, you know, you or you probably, I'm sure, you're still just trying to figure it out manually by just googling what everyone is doing in the build. What are your peers or your CEOs peers doing? Through the software, you can literally pull a report and share that with your executives.

43:35 So you will have a data informed report or data informed answer back to why you're sending an executive to speak at a conference. Outside of the vanity park like this is just the top conference in the build, you have actual metrics that you can share. So that is some of the intel we did get from the state of conferences. We use to be honest with you the state of conferences, we use that report to really refine our product. So the first version of our product based off of the respondents telling us the five different ways in which to measure success, that is undermine analytics. That's how we're measuring success and ROI at conferences is from those five metrics to start. We're literally delivering exactly what the marketing costs professionals are telling us you're missing out on.

44:32 Daniel Nestle: Wow. There is a big voice of customer survey, I mean, essentially and that's a I mean, people should take note that, you know, when we as communicators, marketers do research. It's not just to have some numbers on a page or just to convince somebody of something. There are 1000 different ways you can you can interpret or find insights from research and sometimes it's it can be self serving to just figure out how to improve your business and That's maybe the best kind of intel that we can get. You started talking about proxy, you know, insight in, in the context of, of the report, but also some of the great things that that the platform does and that you've developed.

45:17 Can you go back a little bit? Because, you know, look, everybody, I think a lot of my listeners know, comtec, communications, technology, big areas of focus for me, and for a lot of folks who who come on the show. And, again, I'll just give a very high level definition for those who, who may be hearing that term for the first time contact. But if you just think about how communications is enabling communicators, to do their job better, and measure the results in a more, in a way that matters to the business, that's probably the easiest way to think about it. Or if you're a marketer, just think about your martech stack, and just kind of just kind of poured it over to the top of the funnel, you know, awareness and kind of PR type stuff. similar, very similar type of, of a of a setup.

46:12 But you know, it's like, it's, it's employing technology to do a job better now. We're both dashboard 25 People were supposed to be movers and shakers in the context space. I'm uneasy with that title. But But you, I think, I would gladly bestow it upon you many, many times over the journey from, you know, from court comes into contact to proxy. I'm assuming that you didn't just say, okay, you know, what, I think we need software, and then you were an up to that point, you are non technical. Right, there has to be something about your background and the way that you worked with technology, and saw, you know, contact in your work. So what's the kind of flow that went from, you know, employing contact or innovating in contact, in some ways, I suppose, to into Sproxton? And then how does how does proxy fit into the context stack?

47:11 Yeah, so big question. I'm Melanie Samba: sorry, it's a big question, but I love it. So with coms tag, I guess, just to even backtrack a little bit more, you know, trying to sell CommSec to investors has been like, what is cops tech? Like, what are you saying to me? Like, what are you talking about is this even cops tech. So I do want to share that a little bit that this is such a new space. You know, as far as developing solutions, specifically for marketing and communication professionals, and looking at it as a comms tech solution. This is a new space for everyone and beyond, even within our field, so it wasn't sexy, you know, to choose like, I wanted to create this type of cost tech solution, or I even want to enter into martec contact is a subset of Mark tech. So enter into martec trying to sell this comms tech idea. It wasn't actually probably the best idea. But I've heard when you know, speaking to investors, however, because again, my experience in the field when I saw comms tech solutions, they are focused on media. And they focused on social listening or social media or traditional social, you know, there was nothing that I that answered the question on other parts of the comms or corporate comms workflow, like thought

48:47 leadership, I didn't see it. And I literally, you know, but when I am a corporate comms person first before a tech person I, you know, again, investors tell me not to say this, but I'm like, I'm just an executive that needed something. I'm an industry executive, I don't really even see myself as a tech person. I'm an industry executive. I don't believe there is a company that is not going to be tech focused. That is where we are. Every single company is going to have tech stack, they're going to have some type of tech comp technology they're building within their company, you know, so it's probably too early for me to say that to investors again, but that is my belief is that's not using technology. Well, Daniel Nestle: first of all, you know, I couldn't agree more, but it's, it's not a new statement. Right? We in comms have been saying that. Well, let's say a certain number of us, according to Dr. Week, 25 of us maybe each year, but now, a very broad number. A very broad number of people have been have been very involved in the contact area and you know, Oh, for me, I mean, contact or comms tech, you know, it's funny.

50:05 I love the difference there. Because I think it was, you know, we start calling it comtec Page society's calling it comtec. And then Edelman comes around and starts calling a comms tech. And now like, you have to do two hashtags. You know, that's, that's the world we're in now. But either way, you know, vanilla, vanilla, it's still the same thing. And you know, we've been talking about it for years, and perhaps living in a little bit of a bubble, because we think everybody's talking about it, because we do but You're 100%, right. I'm always amazed when we do an event, or when we talk about, you know, contact contact. And you have all these people CCOs, right. CMC OHS, people who are really advanced leaders in the profession, we're going, I need to get a handle on content, I need to get a handle on this still.

50:58 So your, you know, 10,000%, I think, right? When you say that all companies are, are going to have this digital, you know, communications and marketing kind of integration, if they haven't already, I think it's already too late, maybe for some of them. But I mean, for certainly for enterprise companies, but I think it's a really important point to make. So the other thing is that I think many of us in this space, have the same Corp comps, or marketers first, and we discovered the technology that just makes our jobs better, easier, or helps us advance, you know, there's little selfishness there. Yeah. But ultimately, it serves the customer and the client better. And, you know, that's the future. So you want to equip yourself with the tools to continue to be relevant, right? Yes. And I love the fact that you've seen that, you know, okay, contact addresses media. But what about those other channels that are so critically important, and I think that media is becoming less important over time, in terms of like, you know, the amount of time that we devote to it, it's still very important channel to get me wrong, but we devote so much time to media and for a decreasing rate of return. So what about those other channels?

52:28 Right and and having the technology to back it and measure it? Yes. You know, is so critically important that you were saying about, you know, how you were your comms parts comms person first, then you saw about saw the technique, the way technology fit in. And then you're leading me to Sprog saying, I apologize for interrupting No, Melanie Samba: it's okay. You do not have to apologize. So I just felt like there wasn't a huge opportunity, I looked and saw the growth in PR and comms, I again worked in corporate cops in house and agency, I know about the 80 hour work week or more, you know, like, there is a lot that the PR corporate comms person does day to day. And, again, on a selfish level I first proxy was just to prove that I was doing a good job for my clients. You know, I wanted to prove that I was doing a good job, and that I wasn't just trying to send someone somewhere. And that there was rationale. And there was data to back up why I was saying what I was saying, you know, and so that was the it also needed to cut the time that I was devoting and to manually doing the process, you know. So that was the original concept of why I was building SP proxy. It was really just to prove, have a data informed approach on why

54:05 we're selecting conferences, what's the return on it? How am I moving the needle as a marketing or communications executive on behalf of this brand? When there's more events to choose from, the budgets are being cut. Now there's AI, how do we use data and AI to get more insights that otherwise we may not have been able to get? Because we have the 80 hour work week juggling everything. You know, like sure it's just to accelerate whatever your head of corporate comms or your comms team is currently doing. That was really the only goal as proxy is to accelerate into have a data informed approach and to show the real value of our work. And that was the rationale that is why I became a tech founder? Yeah, that is really the reason. I, Daniel Nestle: I'm glad you went through all that and said that and you kind of lead directly into what is probably going to be my ultimately, you know, last or second to last question for you, which is, which is about AI, because you had you had said, the advent of AI, you know, I didn't put two and two together necessarily thinking about proxy, but you'd started thinking about in developing it, you know, during the pandemic, chat GPT, launched in November of 2022. So you weren't initially developing it with generative AI in mind, right? I mean, maybe there was some some elements of AI you're you're

55:44 employing. So what do you see as an AI? No, now, because, you know, we've been talking about this kind of stuff. But I know that, of course, AI is integrated into your platform, and in several ways. So how are you looking at AI, both first proxy, but also as, as it affects our profession. Melanie Samba: So there's actually something that I share with with people is now when you go to a conference, and you could be sitting in an audience watching a speech, and there is AI, that is watching the audience to see if the messages from the spokesperson on the stage is resonating. So they're the people in August to see, if you're responding back to what the person is saying on a stage. That is where we are currently, like that is actually something that you should be finding out from the conference organizer, as the comms person to see your messages are resonating with the audiences. So the train has left the building, or whatever that phrase is, it's like AI is here. Now. Of course, no, I'm for sproc, see, before chat, GPT. And everything. I already was looking at other PR solutions. And I know that you know, from my past working on media solutions, you could get predictive analysis on what's going on in an industry well in advance and literally tell your client or your your boss, like what you expect this going to happen in an industry based off of a media software that you're doing. So for me, I felt you can do that with conferences, why can't you do that with conferences, you could probably

57:31 find out so much about conferences, in the state of conferences. And in the future, what your industry is doing, just by gathering the data, and finding out behavior, you know, based off of what people are saying, based off of the type of programs that's being pushed out. And also based off of users on the platform, what they're doing, you can start to build Intel and insights off of like, well in advance, tell people what's going on in your industry, just by gathering and analyzing data. You know, so when I think of proxy, I don't think of it as a solution justifying the conference, you know, or a solution to just pitch your executives to be honest speaker, you know, on the stage, I look at it as a solution that gathers data, analyzes data, and provides you insights. And as we gather more and more and more data, the AI would provide more insights that will help refine your strategy, you know, as far as what you should be doing as a marketing or comms professional, or what's even happening in your industry. So a prime example of this is last year, I went to South by Southwest. So one of the main questions I always ask is like, you know, can you tell me the demographics of the audience?

58:58 And how has it changed? You know, so I went in like, Okay, what's the difference between pre pandemic and lash in this year? How has the audience changed? Where's the audience coming from what countries are coming to this conference this year? And I found out that last year, where before it was like, Japan, you know, those type of countries last year, it was like, Brazil, you know, so it was like more BRIC nations that started going to South by Southwest. So what does it tell you? As far as brands go, and as far as the industry goes, you know, like, that is a huge insight based on our audience and the change of ideas and where people are coming, what countries people are coming from, to go to a conference, a huge industry insight for a potential user, or for someone that knows how to ask the question, if you're still going to do it manually. You're not sure.

59:58 Daniel Nestle: I mean, it Melanie Samba: was As proxy, Daniel Nestle: it's almost like an economic, if you look at South by it's so massive, that could be an economic indicator all by itself. You know, I keep thinking, as you're talking about saproxylic, and thinking about, Okay, can we predict next year's topics for these big conferences, you know, well in advance so that we can start to tailor our thought leadership platform to kind of be parallel to that, so that when we go to the conference, we're more likely to get a speaker spot. And also, when we go to the conference, we're a lot more likely to have relevant content to produce and so on, and so on and so on. I mean, you know, the hamsters running hard in my head, I will tell you, or, or I, Melanie Samba: can you influence the conference based on with you now, knowing how the industry is evolving it, you're now the resource to tell the industry, how it should evolve. We so we, we have a very, like we say, accelerate innovation on a couple of our materials, and is very generic, and everyone is like that, you know, it's so broad, but I have always believed and this is probably like the geeky part of me. But my core belief is a single thought leader can completely change the trajectory of a full industry, based off of knowing what conference what audience to speak to, and how to influence that audience. And it sounds a little like key he is, but at the same time, it is our job as communicators, you know. So with that approach, like how can you influence the industry just off of the Intel and the data that you receive? Or I'm the it's,

1:01:36 Daniel Nestle: it's like, I don't know, if you're a history buff, or, you know, I studied history. Part of my university long, long time ago was was history. And there's the there's something called the great man theory of history. And I, we have to rename that the great person theory of history, but it's similar that one person can exert ridiculous amounts of influences influence, if they're at the fulcrum at the right time, right, if they put their finger on the scale at the right moment, and I guess conferences is your opportunity as a communicator, but also for your executives for your brand. To do that very same thing. I think that's a killer insight. The last thing I want to ask you and and then we'll then we'll just kind of take it home. And I think you've answered some of this, but, you know, just just in general. I mean, what's keeping you up at night? What's the future looking like? For you? First proxy, free, free, free thinking answer?

1:02:34 Go for it. Melanie Samba: What's keeping me up at night is I am a woman founder. I did start this off this journey off. I mean, I think my son was like three months when I decided I wanted to do this, which is a little crazy. You know, when I think about it today, what keeps me up at night, you know, is sprogs, I am also on this proxy tray. What I saw the vision of spicy that I had initially wasn't like, oh, you know, I'm creating this for the masses. I was like, Okay, I need this to serve my clients to serve, you know, this, what I will be able to increase my revenue, you know, just by being able to provide that was the driving force. And then I'm like, okay, we can productize this, let's, you know, my, our head of corporate comms know this. I'm like, let's make us an Instagram team. Small and mighty, you know, now I was like, Okay, this is gonna be much larger than I expected. Yeah, no. And we're getting interest from global organizations that want to use proxy globally already. Even before we launched a product. We just announced the, the launch of the product of February. So what's keeping me up at night? It's me also like being a part of this train. It's exciting. I remember, you know, ahead of Spock, see, I'm like 20 years is doing the same thing. Why am I still doing this over it all, like the safety, so it is exciting. And I call myself scary, fearless. Because I am actually an introvert. I mean, I saw like one right now, I just know my profession as a corporate comms person. And I'm

1:04:24 also fearless. I'm the prime example of scary fearless if there was a pitcher, it would be me like, I am scared to do everything. But I also jump into a river or your nose is a little crazy with me. What's keeping me up would be I'm excited about what's ahead. And I'm also terrified. You know, it's exciting because sproxil is evolving, honest. You know? I'm excited that this was A vision that I was able to just push forward even just to be a part of, I have an excellent, excellent team that decided to be a part of this journey with me. And I always think, if not you, then who like I'm not necessarily like the as I said, again, I wasn't looking to be a tech founder. But I guess if I was to leave something with your, your, your listeners is, for one, we need more solutions for people in corporate comms and marketing. And to, if not you who, you know, I did have a really good career, I was also doing the 80 hours, it wasn't a guarantee this proxy was going to happen. So proxy name literally came together because I'm like, Speaker proxies. That's the name like, you know, it wasn't like I gave it a lot of five. Even the logo was just like I saw like, okay, that's the logo, we have been just

1:06:09 riding the wave. And again, if that you who, because we all need the help, when you start speaking to your peers, you will find out they all have the same issues, and we all need the help. So Daniel Nestle: speaker proxy 's proxy Yeah, I you have now I can sleep to try to figure that out. Scary fearless. Melanie, samba, scary, fearless. I am. I'm seeing how accurate that is. You're, you know, you clearly are fearless. And I'm scared. So thank you for that. I mean, look, this is amazing stuff. I mean, I think that this is a groundbreaking platform.

1:06:56 And I believe if I were you, I'd be kept up at night with like, holy moly. What am I going to do with all the with all the clients and customers that are coming in? You know, wow, it'd be excitement I would be I'd be just jazzed up all the time. And just I think it's just a brilliant future for you. listeners out there you can find Melanie at sproxxy.com spr o double x y.com and on LinkedIn Melanie Samba I don't think there are any other ones. I think it's just you and where else what any other places that people should look for your mail. Those are the two main Melanie Samba: two main are on I do you call it x now we are on x as I like Daniel Nestle: to call it Twixtor because I'm never sure. But you're on x now. Okay.

1:07:45 Melanie Samba: Is not a sprouty yet s proxy and Instagram as well. Daniel Nestle: All the socials as sproxxy, Melanie Samba on LinkedIn, and then of course, checkout sproxxy.com, it is it's growing, it's adding more functions it is, you know, really at the cutting edge and leading edge of helping anyone out there to understand how to deal with these crazy conferences. But more than that, how to exert influence and how to make, you know, make your speakers shine. And I think that's really, that's really what we're all about at the end of the day. So, Melanie, thank you very, very much for joining me on the show on the trending communicator, because you definitely are a trending communicator.

1:08:30 Melanie Samba: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the invitation. Daniel Nestle: You got it. Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred. But it's up to you if you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show. Let me know at Dan at trending communicator.com Thanks again for listening to the trending communicator.