How Disability Expos are creating an impact through choice
Kathryn Carey, Head of Events at ImpactInstitute, sits down with Mark Jones to share how she markets Australia’s biggest Disability Expo series to bring people and services together.
Organisers can’t overlook the amount of care and attention needed to include the community when planning events. That’s according to Kathryn Carey, Head of Events at ImpactInstitute, who says that empathy and inclusivity are the two most important considerations to help bring the community into your event marketing, regardless of the sector.
Kathryn is responsible for marketing Australia’s largest Disability Expo series, connecting over 1000 exhibitors and sponsors with more than 20,000 registered attendees every year. It’s an opportunity to create conversations with NDIS product and service providers, government and community organisations and people with disability, their families, and carers.
Navigating the system is challenging and it doesn't necessarily fit absolutely everyone. The challenges people are facing are brought to light at the expos. “People are hungry for information that they may not have so that they can enact choice and control,” Kathryn says.
Kathryn explains this ongoing information exchange is at the heart of the events, “You're seeing people come in and say, ‘I need X and Y, how do I put that together?’ So they're looking for information because to enact choice and control, if you don't have the information that you need to do that, then you can't actually do that effectively,” Kathryn says.
“It's not a set and forget model. You don't get your funding and then you put a bunch of things in place, and there you go, you are set for the next couple of years,” Kathryn says. “It just doesn't work like that. It's a daily contest of other services that I have correct, do I need to adjust and people's needs change.”
It’s important to take the time to ensure we’re involving the communities that we’re serving in our marketing conversations. For Kathryn, listening to attendees and including inspirational ambassadors and MCs who are members of the community was the most obvious way to connect positively with the community.
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The CMO Show production team
Producer – Candice Witton
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au
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[Transcript]
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Kathryn Carey
Mark Jones:
When it comes to events, we marketers like to put on a show and tell people to come. And it's a very one way type of thinking. What would it be like if we actually flipped the script a bit and asked a lot of questions first? What would it be like to put on an event that was actually a conversation?
Mark Jones:
Hello, and welcome to The CMO Show. My name is Mark Jones. Thanks for joining us again. Now it turns out, I don't know if you've seen this, but events are back and not only are events back, but marketers, communications, professionals, we're all starting to think about how do we run them? How do we market them? How do we involve people, particularly in this kind of hybrid world is one issue, questions about, will they come? And what do people want?
Mark Jones:
Well, one of the key things that we need to think about is who are they and how do they feel? And so in that context, I'm so excited, our guest today is Kathryn Carey. She's Head of Events at ImpactInstitute. That's right, she's one of my colleagues and I'm really excited to have her on the show today because we run the Disability Expo Series. It's a series of events for people with disability run here in Australia, in multiple locations.
Mark Jones:
And they are extraordinary events. And Kathryn has been working in this space for many years now. And she's got some great insights into not just how to run an event, but how to really understand your customer, the participants in an expo and how you can bring both B2B audiences and B2C audiences together. So let's go to my chat with Kathryn.
My guest today is Kathryn Carey, Head of Events at ImpactInstitute. Thanks for joining me.
Kathryn Carey:
Lovely to speak to you.
Mark Jones:
Now, of course, this is all very formal on a podcast. We work together.
Kathryn Carey:
We do.
Mark Jones:
And it's not every day we interview our own people or if you like publish a conversation between colleagues, but I'm really excited about our show today, because we're going to talk about the events business, and we're going to talk about the Disability Expo Series that we run here at ImpactInstitute. This has been a big part of your personal and professional story for, I want to say seven-ish years now. Is that right?
Kathryn Carey:
Yeah, that's about right. About 2014 was the first time I got involved in the Disability Expo, was looking for a change in my career and ended up with the Disability Expo as a project and just absolutely loved it. And it's gone on from there.
Mark Jones:
Here at ImpactInstitute, we have an events business that you run. We also have an impact advisory team and we also have a brand storytelling team. So these are, if you like three pillars of our organisation and you are running that. Give us a quick sense of the Disability Expo, it's worth painting a big picture of what we do every year.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely. Look, we run about seven or eight disability expos around Australia. The disability expos are really events that just bring the disability community together. They're all run in their local areas. We bring together service providers, product providers, government agencies, everyone in the sector comes together for people, with disability, their families, and their carers, people in the industry. We all come together in the one place at the one time, all under the same roof andthe events are run over two days and it's just a wonderful event each time we run them. We really enjoy them.
Mark Jones:
From a broader community perspective, I don't know that people realise just how many people attend. They're actually pretty big, right now, just terms of numbers of attendees?
Kathryn Carey:
So every year we register about 25000 people with disability to come along to our events. Each event has somewhere between three and 5000 people actually attend over the two days. And we have between about 150 and 250 exhibitors at any one event. So these are big events. We're talking Sydney Olympic Park, the Melbourne Convention Centre, large scale venues, good old exhibition style events.
Mark Jones:
Look, it really is a good old style. One of the things I like about the way that the team has structured this, we have these sponsorship packages. So the platinum, gold and silver sponsors, and they're the bigger shiny stands that you meet when you first come into the room. And we also have all of these exhibitors. So it's interesting the way that it's been structured, because we have effectively all shapes and sizes of exhibitors and sponsors, all these incredible array of people who come, and look to connect with people with disability. Can you give us a quick sketch of the types of people that are coming and offering services?
Kathryn Carey:
We have been really deliberate about this to ensure that we have a really big breadth of organisations that attend everything, as you said, from the larger sponsors, right down to very small community, niche community groups that may only provide a very limited service, but a really important service.
Kathryn Carey:
And that was very important to us that we didn't create an event that was only specific for the big guys. A big part of our philosophy is making sure that these are community events. In fact, they started as community events. That's the way they started. The history is that a group of organisations decided that this was a service that was needed, but they outgrew that kind of model. It just got too big to be delivered in a volunteer model. And so they were looking for some assistance, that's how we got involved.
Kathryn Carey:
The community aspect of the event is the thing that I really enjoy. And look, it would be very easy to sort of just, gravitate one way or another, but it was very important to us that we kept the community groups in mind. They're incredibly important. They often do a lot of advocacy work with people with disability.
Kathryn Carey:
And it was sort of thought once the NDIS came in, well, maybe you didn't need advocates anymore, but in fact, it couldn't be further than the truth. Now it's completely flipped around the other way. So everything from service providers, your plan managers, people providing services, we try and encourage all the government agencies to come along. Everything that you could want under one roof, so products, services, government agencies, advocacy groups, and pretty much everything in between.
Mark Jones:
I've seen some pretty advanced tech. I've seen people with cleaning allied health services, just an incredible array. But one of the things that actually has impressed me coming into this, so it's been a year now since Social Impact Institute and Filtered Media merged to form ImpactInstitute. And I've had the privilege of attending the events now for a year and hosting of course, speaking and welcoming people to the events. One of the things that's really struck me quite profoundly actually is just how much the exhibitors like each other.
Kathryn Carey:
It's amazing. It is really amazing.
Mark Jones:
And not only that, the vibe, the positivity in the community when everybody comes together.There's a really positive, almost excitement in the air as people are mingling and talking. And that is quite honestly extraordinary because if I compare that to other sectors that I've worked in, tech, business environment, other sort of more traditional business areas, you tend to have competitors, right?
Mark Jones:
And the exhibitors are not talking to each other because they're all fighting as it were, to get attention for the customers. So just explain that community dynamic for, we're thinking here, of course, marketers, comms people who are imagining how this universe can exist and what we can learn from it. Why is that the case? Why is this so open and caring?
Kathryn Carey:
I think it comes because of the nature of the community sector. By sort of definition to get into the industry, really, you have to come from a background of wanting to help people, or be interested in providing services for people with disability. And so most of those organisations have grown up in an environment, well, firstly, there's the legacy of the way the funding models worked. So, consumer directed care has been in now since what, 2015 I think the NDIS was originally implemented. But before that there was block funding. So, the industry grew up on a model that was not competitive for a start. So I think they're the two big drivers of it.
Mark Jones:
Sorry, just to jump in for those who don't understand. So block funding was where the government gave money to a service provider.
Kathryn Carey:
That's right.
Mark Jones:
And then they just delivered services, but of course that created lots of problems, right?
Kathryn Carey:
Yeah, absolutely. It was sort of efficient from the government's point of view to just give very large chunks of money to predefined organisations, to deliver services. But of course that left the person with a disability without any choice, any control over the services that they might want. And if you look at anyone with a disability, it often involves a very complex set of interrelated services that they might need in order for them to be able to do what the rest of us sort of often take for granted.
Kathryn Carey:
And so, it was disempowering to people with disability, that model and it's one of the great legacies of the Gillard government that the NDIS was put through, it was advocated for by the industry. There was a lot of industry consultation that was pushed very hard from within the industry. And a lot of people worked very hard over many years to really change that. And that change came in 2015.
Kathryn Carey:
And the NIDS is not perfect. We know that, people within the industry know that it's not perfect, but it has the advantage of delivering choice and control to the person with disability. The implementation of that is sometimes quite a bit rocky, but that was its intention. And in many ways there are many more people getting funding now than there were under the old block funding models.
Kathryn Carey:
So sort of just to come back to your point, firstly, I think there's the caring element, there's the legacy of the industry, but I think it's that there's a recognition of that complex need to put together patchwork of services. So people are more than happy to say, look, yes, I can deliver X to you, but you also really need Y, and the people who can deliver you Y just happen to be down the road. They're literally three stands down from me. So why don't you just go and have a chat to them? And so there's the recognition of what a person with a disability needs in order to be able to put their funding packages together. That's really well understood by the community.
Mark Jones:
And for somebody outside of the disability sector or who doesn't have experience being friends with, or in a family with somebody with disability, this is an entire another universe. And a bigger aha moment for me, a year ago was talking to somebody, an attendee at the event and just wanting to learn and understand, and I asked, how many service providers do you need, or do you work with just to live? And this person said, oh, somewhere between 10 and 20.
Mark Jones:
So that's kind of incredible when you think about, for myself as an able body, get up, look after myself, get dressed, get the kids off to school, come to work. But for a different person, all of those detailed activities require assistance from one or more people. And then we've got medical issues and so on and so on.
Mark Jones:
So it is extraordinary to me to consider the complexity of managing, if you like that little ecosystem of suppliers, service providers, carers, it's a lot, right? So it actually brings a whole new dynamic to this exhibition space. That's actually what's going on in part behind, right?
Kathryn Carey:
Correct.
Mark Jones:
So, in terms of understanding the community, what's that experience like for people?
Kathryn Carey:
I think you've touched on a really important point. When the funding model changed, it provided choice and control to the individual. But I think what probably wasn't really well understood was the amount of effort that goes into corralling or coordinating that level of service. It's a hidden thing. It's not a specific, it's not a service in its own right. It's something that you have to do to put all of those services together.
Kathryn Carey:
And so at the expo, absolutely that's what you're seeing. You're seeing people come in and saying, well, I need X and Y, how do I put that together? So they're looking for information because to enact choice and control, if you don't have the information that you need to do that, then you can't actually do that effectively.
Kathryn Carey:
It's not a set and forget model. You don't get your funding and then you put a bunch of things in place, and there you go, you are set for the next couple of years. It just doesn't work like that. It's a daily contest of other services that I have correct, do I need to adjust and people's needs change, right?
Kathryn Carey:
So, it is a little bit of a one size fits all model that doesn't necessarily fit absolutely everyone. And so those are the challenges that people with disability are facing on just an absolutely daily basis. And that's what you see enacted at the expos. People are hungry for information that they may not have so that they can enact choice and control.
Mark Jones:
One of the reasons I'm really interested in this conversation, when I'm thinking about what lessons can we learn from this is to think about the level of care and attention and understanding of the community that's required to host these events.
Mark Jones:
And I think a lot of lip service is paid in other sectors where I work, where we talk about the customer, we talk about customer experience, we talk about knowing what they think, feel, and want to do, but there can be a real lack of empathy for the real experience of customers. And you can't miss that here, because if you do miss that in the disability sector, you're actually going to very quickly find yourself on the outer, if you don't get that right, right?
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely.
Mark Jones:
And you and I have had some really great conversations about language, for example.
Mark Jones:
Because language is everything in terms of communicating meaning, sentiment, shared understanding. Can you just give us a little picture into that world and from a marketer's perspective and a communicator's perspective when we're hosting, talking about advertising these events, just how important that messaging and that shared sense of value is?
Kathryn Carey:
Yeah. Look, you need to understand your customer as a marketer. It's kind of marketing 101. When you're talking about people with disability, unless you have a disability and probably even if you do have a disability, it's very difficult to put yourself in that customer mode. So you have to find other ways to be able to do that. And for me, the way I've gone about that is really to learn, is to talk to people who are key in the industry to learn and understand.
Kathryn Carey:
Empathy is really important. You have to listen to your customer because you can't walk a mile in their shoes. It's just impossible. So you have to understand what they're telling you and put aside your kind of preconceived ideas of the way things should work and really understand what they're telling you. And if you don't understand it, then take the time to find out. And language is a really powerful tool, as you said, and one of the things that I know in particular, the disability community is very focused on, is the language that is used to describe people with disability.
Mark Jones:
In fact, you sent me a handbook at one point.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely.
Mark Jones:
What was that one again?
Kathryn Carey:
So, People With Disability, the organisation, People With Disability Australia have put out a sort of a language guide just to help people understand what it means when you say something. Just a really small example is people living with disability or people with disability. And that's a really minor change. People might think that, that's no big deal. Why does it matter to you?
Mark Jones:
As opposed to a disabled person, which would be offensive.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely. But even down to the nuance of people prefer, or the guides from people with disability, I mean, they are called people with disability, and why don't they like the term people living with disability and that was a term that we used to use and we've subsequently stopped using it.
Kathryn Carey:
And it's because it makes the person with a disability feel like they are a burden. And I don't profess to speak for the disability community. But the one thing I have learned along the way is that they aren't any different from you and I.
Kathryn Carey:
Yes, there are some differences in the way they need to live their lives, but they aren't fundamentally different to you and I. And that's really important to them. And they don't want to be seen as a burden. They don't want to be seen as special or unique. They just want people to understand that for them, there are some concessions that need to be made, a ramp is really important for them and it needs to be right. And I don't think it's asking too much and we should absolutely listen to what they need.
Mark Jones:
If we want these open inclusive communities, we need to make sure that all those facilities are there all the time.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely.
Mark Jones:
It's learning how to best support and create an environment where language is inclusive and open and there's many other aspects too. So physically from the environment, we bring in lifts, we bring in all sorts of other accessibility services, there's an RFID system, which lets people navigate for the visually impaired. Correct, right?
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely.
Mark Jones:
So, there's a lot of detail that goes into this and I think it's really worth thinking about that sense.
Mark Jones:
Let's switch gears just a little bit and talk about the marketing aspect of these expos and what we can learn. There's social media, we've got digital, we've got PR, there's all sorts of materials that are produced for the event itself. Give us a quick sense of the programme, how you bring people together, what sort of work does it take?
Kathryn Carey:
Oddly enough, quite a lot of people think that all the work happens at the event and look, those days are long and quite exhausting, but also exhilarating. But the vast bulk of work actually happens in the around 12 to nine months leading up to the event. And of course we have two audiences. We have to think about two audiences. We have our exhibitor audience, and then we've got a consumer audience.
Kathryn Carey:
So we start at the beginning when we are putting the programmes together. And we think about how do we best reach both audiences and put together integrated campaigns, but two. So we're working on two different integrated campaigns at any one time. And the B2B work starts a little bit earlier than the consumer work.
Kathryn Carey:
It finishes a little bit earlier, but then the consumer work starts a little bit later, but goes for a little bit longer and closer to the event. But it's around nine months to put it all together. We need people to understand what the event's about to get them excited, to get them on board, put the event together and then let people know that the event's on and to come along, be that through, as you said, digital or traditional or whatever means the campaigns are put together.
Mark Jones:
What do you find are the channels that are most effective for driving attendees to the event?
Kathryn Carey:
Look, over time and probably more and more like much of the marketing space, we are moving more and more and more to digital channels. And that was really exacerbated through the COVID era. But in addition to that, some of the traditional methods still work, it depends a little bit on the audience. We actually find there's a difference between a regional audience and a city based audience.
Kathryn Carey:
So we need to think about that as well. Some of the more traditional media like TV works really well in a regional audience, it works fantastically. In a Sydney audience, not so much. So it's not only about thinking about who your customer is, but what market you're in, whether it's regional or sort of city based.
Mark Jones:
Just to jump in there. I remember and actually it was just a fantastic moment where we saw how well PR works. So we had organised in the gold coast, we had a TV crew come and they did little spot for the news that night. So it was open on the Friday night. Which station was it? Do you remember?
Kathryn Carey:
I think it was Channel 7.
Mark Jones:
So we had them come, do little spot and of course, beautiful visuals, always in terms of the people and the smiles, it's one of those fantastic feel, good stories. And then we saw in the hour after that segment went to air about 1000 registrations, I recall just coming straight through because it's a free event, but we just saw this immediate uptick and it was just, you don't get those moments too often in the sense of owning your own event, having that kind of impact. And for me, that was just so satisfying, right?
Kathryn Carey:
Yeah. No, public relations has been a really big part of what we do and it's growing. We do more and more of it these days than we have in the past. We've really seen the value of getting behind the story of people and the people with disability using their own story. So using influencers, for example, to tell their story and why they think it's important to come along to a disability expo and what it could do for you. I think it's much more powerful if someone else is telling the story, someone with a disability is telling the story, it's much more powerful.
Mark Jones:
And to that point, our much love Mel, who is the MC for our events, obviously she's in a wheelchair, she's our MC . it's those sorts of things that are really important when it comes to including the community.
Kathryn Carey:
We've worked really hard to build very strong relationships with the community over time. We have lots of dance groups that come along, lots of speakers. We give opportunities to speakers that might not get a voice anywhere else. We have fathers who are running Facebook groups for people with autism and he's doing that because that's what he wants to do.
Kathryn Carey:
Now, in any other sort of event, he might not get a voice, but we give those opportunities for people to get up on our stage and just be able to present.
Mark Jones:
It's worth just explaining too, we do have a little stage set up in the corner of the exhibition hall. It's part of the main area. And so we have a mixture of events coming through there. And so people don't have to travel far. What can we learn from the way you work with ambassadors?
Kathryn Carey:
We choose an ambassador for each of our events, are always a person with a disability obviously. And what I think is really important about having somebody else be the ambassador for our event, again, it comes back to the respect. It comes back to putting people with disability at the forefront of these events. These events are for people with disability. And so having someone who is an ambassador that does have a disability be the ambassador is really powerful for the event and for the community, because it says to people, this is for me, this is my community, these are my people. This is for me.
Mark Jones:
One of the things I enjoyed about my conversation with Connor Wink, who was on The Voice and shot to fame, and he was at our Hunter Disability Expo just recently and his message he was explaining, and it's a recurring message we've heard a number of times, which is you can do it. If you have a dream, a vision, some sort of aspiration, be it singing, performance of some kind, work, whatever it might be, you can do it. Just give me a sense of the sentiment and the ideas behind that. There's a very conscious message that I've heard from our ambassadors, which is to encourage and to want to inspire the community to achieve, to live out the dreams that they have.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely. Probably the one that stands out for me is a fellow by the name of Ben Felton. If you've never heard of Ben Felton, look him up, he's an amazing fellow. So Ben was born sighted, but started to lose his sight at around the age of 15, they kind of initially picked up that he had some sight issues and he's been totally blind since he was in his sort of mid to late 20s.
Kathryn Carey:
But during his sort of 15 to 25 year old self, he was a motorbike rider. And the first time I ever met him, he said, "Oh, I'm taking four months off. I'm going to go and contest the world record for fast's blind man riding a motorbike." I said, "So what is the record?"
Kathryn Carey:
And the record at the time was 270 kilometres an hour. And I just went, really? How on earth does a blind man ride a motorbike at 270 kilometres an hour? And, I think that was kind of the aha moment for me, that was that, not to think that people with disability can't do these things, they absolutely can and they should. And they do.
Kathryn Carey:
Ellie Cole we had on at our Sydney expo. She has a great story as well. Probably considered the best Paralympic swimmer that Australia has ever produced. And now just about to retire. I think she's got one more swim in her at the Com Games, they just get on with it. And I just love that about these stories. They're so powerful.
Mark Jones:
And when we think about the concept of impact storytelling, there is that sense of how somebody has really grown and developed, overcome incredible challenges that many people can't really deeply relate to, and obviously the impact that has on the community. And I think it's exciting that we are using this role of the ambassador as a voice and hopefully it'll inspire people, right? The idea is that yes, you came for services, but hopefully there was a chance to connect and to maybe operate at that deeper level we've sort of touched on here.
Kathryn Carey:
Absolutely. Often a lot of these people, they're like rock stars. They get off the stage and people line up to get autographs and shake their hand, which is just lovely to see. It's absolutely inspiring.
Mark Jones:
Well look, wrapping up, we are about to launch next year's series, the programme of expos for 2023. What's on your radar? What are you thinking about? And I think in the spirit of sharing lessons and best practice for events because turns out events are back again, thankfully.
Kathryn Carey:
Thankfully. Yes, absolutely.
Mark Jones:
What are the things that you're trying to improve on? How would you like to continue to develop the series? What are those challenges you're looking to overcome?
Kathryn Carey:
Look, it's a good question. We are always thinking about how can we improve the experience for not only the attendees, but also the exhibitors. So, over time we've kind of tweaked and improved things.
Kathryn Carey:
So for us, it's looking at, where to next in terms of, we're primarily on the eastern sea board at the moment, we have a mixture of regional and city-based expos, but we're obviously looking at where else might these events work really well for the community? Where else is there a need? And can we provide that service in that community?
Mark Jones:
That's great. Well, thanks for sharing your story and updating us on where we're at with disability expo and look, it's really, for me a great reminder of just how important it's to truly not just understand your audience, but get their heartbeat. What is that and how is the community doing? How are they feeling and how can we best respond? And I think that approach would, if we saw more B2B events with that desire for proper connections, I think it'd be just an incredible difference that we'd see. And I suspect with a lot of people chasing meaning and making the sort of work they do make a difference, I think, that'd be a great thing to see. So again, thanks for your time today. It was great to catch up.
Kathryn Carey:
Thanks Mark.
Mark Jones:
Well, there you go. That was my chat with Kathryn. I hope you were able to take away a lot of lessons about the event space now that we're all super keen to get back out there and meet people.
Mark Jones:
And I think for me, just taking away a couple of reflections from our conversation, given that we work together, I still learn lots of things, a great reminder that events in this context take nine to 12 months. And in fact, we plan them years in advance. And it's easy to, if you like, diminish the work that's required to think in those terms, what will be the big trends?
Mark Jones:
What's the messaging required in 12 months from now and how do we bring our whole team together on a journey towards that so that we are pacing out our work and we're also being strategic about how to best shape that story, that narrative in the future? Also, as a reminder too, if you don't have an ambassador for your event, really think about that, how can I involve somebody who is part of the community that we're serving and do it in an authentic, open, inclusive way?
Mark Jones:
And of course, reminder to everybody out there, regardless of the sector, of course, remember the inclusivity, remember to include the entire community and not just people with disability, but the entire community, what are their needs and how can we best serve them in that way so that everybody can have a positive experience. So that's it for the show today, as always, we'd love you to subscribe on all the channels and tell your friends. It's been great to have you with us. We'll see you next time.