In this age of fast turnarounds and lightning-speed career moves in the events industry, longevity at an agency is a rarity. Chris Doggart is the vice president of client success EMA, and has been working at George P. Johnson for nearly 12 years.
“As an organisation, we’ve been going for a hundred years, so I wouldn’t say I was a new boy, but within the organisation, we’ve been through many difficult challenges.”
Chris DoggartHe is, of course, speaking about the impact coronavirus has had on the events industry. With longevity comes experience and GPJ have worked with some of the biggest clients around including Cisco, IBM, Facebook, Nike and Google.
One of their most spectacular challenges was marking the 30th year of IBM being the official supplier of information technology to the All England Club and Wimbledon.
The theme was ‘Tennis in an English Garden’, creating data visualisations of digital flowers which translated complex real-time data.
People engaging remotely may be more tempted to enter into discussions
Working with top technology clients has kept GPJ abreast of the latest IT developments. We’ve been delivering events and engaging audiences remotely for many years,” Doggart says. “We’ve got a lot of experience in understanding what it means to engage an audience virtually. The fundamentals of marketing to an audience still apply.”
Working out of the office hasn’t been a problem, Doggart contends. “From a day to day perspective, we are used to working remotely – we spend a lot of time out of the office anyway. We’ve got a lot of the infrastructure in place using Cloud technology.”
As part of the senior management team, Doggart is responsible for driving growth at the agency. “Our job is to help our clients solve their business problems and that is still the case today. It just so happens that their business problems have shifted and changed quite significantly in the recent months. We are still working with them to see how we can help them communicate with their audiences, engage with their clients.”
Doggart was in a prime position to see what was happening at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. GPJ was involved in one of the first events to be called off, signalling a slew of other major meetings to fall like a stack of dominoes. “We worked on Mobile World Congress and that was one the largest events to be cancelled. It’s been very challenging for everybody.”
At the time of publication, Doggart had no further information regarding MWC. “I haven’t heard anything in terms of a specific plan or future dates. But there’s a lot of learning in what happens next and how everybody can work together.”
What’s problematic, says Doggart is “the uncertainty and the constantly changing landscape which makes it very difficult to make any concrete plans that you don’t need to review and adapt again in a fairly short turnaround.”
Looking on the bright side, GPJ’s vice president believes it may bring out a more collaborative and community spirit. “I’ve seen a lot of people working together and being candid and transparent in trying to address issues. It’s brought people together which is re-affirming on a human level.”
He adds: “There are some benefits of the online experience. I don’t think we are at the point where technology can deliver the same impact but I think when people are engaging remotely we see that people may be more tempted to enter into discussions, Q&As and chats. They might be a little bolder to ask questions when they are online than when they are in an auditorium with 3,000 people.”
George P Johnson UK
2018 2017
Turnover £57.5m £52.8m
Pre-tax profit £990K £69K
A desire to travel led Holly Patrick to the business meetings and events world and she’s never looked back. Holly takes a particular interest in event sustainability and creating a diverse and inclusive industry. When she’s not working, she can be found rolling skating along Brighton seafront listening to an eclectic playlist, featuring the likes of Patti Smith, Sean Paul, and Arooj Aftab.
