Event marketing powerhouse George P. Johnson Co., based in Auburn Hills, Mich., is broadening its event marketing capabilities. In June, the company partnered with Las Vegas-based Encore Productions to form its "Event Management Team," which will enable "consistent and streamlined event delivery to clients across all event formats," the company says.

In our September issue, Special Events Magazine interviews Carol Krugman, CMP, newly named GPJ director of client services. She discusses how the company is expanding the scope and reach of its experiential events.

Q: Would you define the difference between an “event” and an “experience”?

A: Experiential event marketing goes beyond the traditional definition of what an event should accomplish. The true event “experience” is designed to support and highlight the marketer's brand and business objectives. An experiential event is designed to launch that audience on a specific cognitive or emotional journey that will result in actions that achieve the marketer's goals.

Q: What are some strategies that successful event marketers will be using?

A: They will require technology such as our “Global Links” suite, which is currently in use worldwide in nine languages. Global marketing often requires local implementation, and local implementation does not always occur in English.

   {At exhibitions}, we don't want people to just visit the exhibits we develop for our clients and leave with a brochure that gets thrown away before they leave the exhibit hall. We want to engage them, have them interact with our client or our client's product, and learn as much as we can about what they want and need while they are in that space. The exhibit experiences we create differ from industry to industry, but the central objective is always the same — when they leave that exhibit space, we want the customers to be empowered and act in a way that is beneficial toward our clients and their products and services. That is, we want the exhibit experience to contribute to the growth of our client's business in a clear, measurable way.

For the complete interview, see the September issue of Special Events Magazine.