Avid President/CEO Jeff Rosica has confirmed that the company will exhibit at the IBC Show at the RAI in Amsterdam, Sept. 10-13. The announcement marks a change in policy after Avid said earlier this year that it would not exhibit at any major trade shows due to concerns over Covid.
The news wasn’t exactly surprising as Avid had been listed as an exhibitor on the IBC Show website since early June. In an interview with Peter White of the IABM, Rosica characterized the change as “an evolution of our decision.”
“I think as we saw the market improve and the situation improved with Covid and countries started opening up, I think we started to realize that with the feedback from our customers that it's probably time to start getting back to some of the major trade shows,” he said.
Like many exhibitors at recent shows, Avid will be scaling back the size of its exhibit space, according to Rosica,
“We will have a smaller space—probably about half the size we've had before,” he said. “We've tested a bit on that and we're really using the floor show itself for only showing new software products and new releases and not bringing the entire catalog to the show floor so that requires a smaller footprint booth.
“But really what customers have told us is that they just want to be able to get to the show and see us on the show floor,” Rosica added.
Several months prior to the industry’s first major trade show of the year, NAB, Rosica had announced that the company would be skipping in-person trade shows and focusing more on virtual and road shows. That philosophy hasn’t changed, he said and the company has reevaluated its marketing approach to deal with the issues posed by the pandemic of the past two and a half years, and now sees its customer outreach as a mix of virtual and in-person events.
“[The pandemic] forever changed our marketing mix,” he said. “I think trade shows are an important part of what we're doing but we really learned the value of digital marketing content with many more virtual events because you can get to many more people around the world. So we've learned that that's served us well. But obviously, things evolve as the market comes back to whatever that ‘new normal’ is. So I guess it's going to be a mix going forward.”
When Rosica announced Avid’s trade show plans earlier he cautioned that trade events would have to change and evolve with the “new normal.” “I think NAB and IBC are wonderful organizations but I think they are going to have to change their mix, just as we have,” he said at the time.
That advice hasn’t changed, he said.
“The show in Amsterdam is very important—we need to reach customers all over the globe,” Rosica said. “But not all of them do come to Amsterdam and so one of the things we learned during the pandemic is that use of virtual events and digital marketing and content marketing to reach people all over the globe in all corners of the globe—no matter what country they're in—is pretty important to us."
Avid will be in Stand R101 in Hall 7.
