Interview: INTA CEO talks virtual conferences and digital transformation

In February this year, the  International Trademark Association (INTA)  called off its Singapore meeting, at a time when Singapore was the country worst-affected by COVID-19 outside China. The new plan, it said, was to hold the annual meeting in May or June in the US.

Soon after, the association identified Atlanta as a possible host city. However, one month later, and just two days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, INTA  announced that it would postpone the conference until November, to take place in Houston.

“It became very clear that the best option would be to combine the annual meeting and the leadership meeting to avoid too much travel for members,” Sanz de Acedo says.

But one week later, INTA began looking at scenario B, a totally virtual meeting.

“We didn't know whether there would be a second wave and we knew there could be travel bans imposed by the US administration,” he says. Speaking with its members, INTA realised that 70% were facing budget constraints and 80% had been told by their companies that travelling to the annual meeting would be considered non-essential travel.

Sanz de Acedo adds that, most importantly, members said they wanted to have the experience of the annual meeting, but they didn’t feel comfortable attending in-person.

The virtual option is something that the association is “absolutely convinced” about, says the CEO, and not just for this year.

“This is a technology that is here to stay, it brings a lot of great opportunities. We will go back to in-person meetings, however there are occasions where people can't travel or they don’t have budget,” he adds, suggesting that future conferences may become hybrid, consisting of in-person events with a virtual offering. Sanz de Acedo estimates 80 or 90% of events will be in-person in the future, while 10-20% will be virtual.

He’s hopeful that next year’s annual meeting, which is due to take place in San Diego, will go ahead in-person.

So why did the association take so long to announce its ultimate plan? Sanz de Acedo explains that INTA has been extremely cautious in everything it’s been doing, knowing that changes would have a serious impact on members, budgets, travel plans, and the association itself.

New opportunities, a test-run and beer

At any annual meeting, if you have 10,500 registrants, a “good 9,000 are just networking” and not taking advantage of the educational sessions, says Sanz de Acedo.

He adds: “This time, our offerings will be both live and on-demand. All our educational sessions will be available during the dates of the annual meeting, and will probably be available even before and after the meeting for a long time. Every registrant will have the opportunity—this is the first time this has ever happened.”

The educational offering will be structured into tracks to provide guidance to attendees, and includes hot topics such as anti-counterfeiting, regulation, brands around the world, and how to manage brands in a crisis. A track on soft skills, featuring “lots of psychology”, will also be available.

To attract Chinese audiences, INTA will offer a China track in Mandarin, covering issues relevant to China and outside. A patent track is also planned.

INTA knows networking is “absolutely critical” to all of its members so it’s creating a “very strong offering”, says Sanz de Acedo. In addition to integrating the concept of a hospitality suite into the platform, the association is planning to transform table topics into networking opportunities.

Speed networking will be available and, to complement the networking efforts, the association is also looking into an artificial intelligence-powered matchmaking system.

For those worried that they’ll miss out on the more social side of things, Sanz de Acedo is confident that wine and beer tastings will take place.

While gone are the days of ‘freebies’ that can be obtained from a wander through the exhibition hall, INTA is still planning to produce an online exhibit hall, where companies can present their products and services and interact with registrants.

“Over the past two months, you cannot imagine the amount of meetings we've had with potential vendors to pick the best option for INTA and its members. In some cases, we’ve had great proposals that we declined, because we felt the networking [options] were not really what we wanted,” he says.

A unique opportunity

And, while it’s difficult to predict the number of registrants, given the “permanently evolving” situation, Sanz de Acedo remains positive.

“Almost all [corporate] participants have confirmed they will be attending. Beyond that, many have informed us that precisely because of its format and reduced pricing, they'll be able to bring more people,” he says. Speaking to two big multinationals earlier this week, Sanz de Acedo has been told that one of them will be doubling the number of their people that attend, and another will be bringing four people, instead of the usual one.

“Let's not forget the great advantage of going virtual,” he says, citing the lower costs of the conference. The standard member registration fee is $850, and $750 for early bird registrants, making fees 32% lower than the typical annual meeting fee. It’s 62% less when you combine the cost of the typical annual meeting and leadership meeting.

The INTA Daily News, which is published by WIPR, will be “even more critical” during the online meeting, says Sanz de Acedo, as it will provide virtual support to members on what's going on. “It’s something that all our members enjoy very much,” he says.

Sanz de Acedo describes the meeting a “unique sponsorship opportunity”, where you’ll be in front of 10,000 people in a way you've never been before.

INTA’s New York conference—Brands in Society: Their Influence and Responsibility—which is due to take place online later this month, presents a good opportunity for a test-run, albeit on a much smaller scale. Sanz de Acedo believes INTA will learn a lot from its virtual conference, but the association is not planning to use the same platform for the combined annual and leadership meeting.

“We’re very confident of our offering [for the annual meeting] being far better in terms of experience,” he says.

A digital transformation

Going virtual is a “very natural evolution” of what the association has been doing on digital transformation, explains Sanz de Acedo. “We’ve been forced to go virtual because of coronavirus. But even if we hadn't had [this], INTA would probably have been working on some kind of virtual offering. Perhaps not a fully online experience, but certainly we’d be developing virtual content,” he adds.

In addition to two virtual conferences, in the coming weeks, INTA will be launching its new website.

He adds that INTA takes a lot of pride in being a “permanently evolving organisation”. As part of its digital transformation plan, the association is launching a new platform for committee members. In 2021, INTA plans to institute a new job bank to make more of its career center.

Sanz de Acedo says: “In every negative experience or aspect of life, you need to extract the positive part of it. This pandemic and the social environment we live in is extremely concerning and very sad. It has affected some of us personally.

“But still, it’s bringing an opportunity to find new ways of doing business, to interact with new people and to detect talent within our organisations that we perhaps had not identified.”