A former Walt Disney Company trainer, Master Wandkeeper at Universal Orlando and keynote speaker at last year’s Sandler Summit, Louie Gravance talks about service being a superpower. Courtesy of Richard Schlep

The only constant in life is change. This realization has been validated by many, from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus to present-day poets, pundits and prognosticators. Corporate event planning certainly has not been spared from shifting gears either. Gone are the days when planners would hire speakers who would deliver hour-long speeches. Instead, there are the half-hour interactive sessions focused on impactful storytelling.

Having been roiled by a pandemic, buffeted by inflation and shaken by alarmingly powerful, new technology, meeting planners have assessed, through multiple measures, where the industry is now, where it needs to be in the future and what challenges they will have to overcome to get there.

One change to note is the way a speaker is introduced to an event audience. Speakers are more likely to leverage video and other technologies to help introduce themselves to audiences ahead of an event.

Richard Schelp, the co-owner and president of the Executive Speakers Bureau (ESB), reflects, “Even when it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, you’ve got to be willing to make a change.”

His company, the third-largest speakers bureau in the country, responded by relying heavily on virtual presentations. As of 2022 and into 2023, ESB’s in-person events were unquestionably down. Toward the end of last year, and continuing into this year, events with speakers have rebounded.

Jenna Fitch, senior director of community and conference content for New Hope Network, which is part of Informa, a London-based international events, digital services and business intelligence company, agrees. In-person events have rebounded, and overall attendance is strong. In March, Fitch wrapped up the largest and most successful Natural Products Expo West in the company’s history — with more than 65,000 attendees.

Valerie Franco, marketing director and head of the midwest region for Marcum LLP, a nationally top-ranked accounting and advisory firm, hasn’t seen attendance come back from the pandemic decline as vigorously or quickly as she thought it would. “You’d think that after COVID, people would be flocking to events.” She’s now seeing more of a turnaround, though.

Across the industry, this upswing isn’t happening by magic. It’s the result of carefully selecting topics and speakers of sufficient current interest to motivate potential attendees to invest the time and effort it takes to show up. “I think one of the challenges right now is getting speakers who are going to be attractive enough to audiences to get them out of their offices,” continues Franco.

As the pandemic faded and life normalized, Fitch says she and her team were asking themselves fundamental questions: “Who are we to our audience now? Do they need us?” Her answer was, “Yes, people need us. People are craving connection; they want to talk to experts, they want to see each other. They’re seeking new knowledge, especially with so many people continuing to work remotely. They’re saying, ‘Tell me what I don’t know.’”

Themes & Topics

Schelp, who books thousands of speakers a year, says that artificial intelligence (AI), in all its forms and potential uses, is currently one of the hottest topics. People want to hear about what new applications are on the horizon and how AI will impact the workplace and employees’ jobs. They also want to hear speakers address the diverse ways, ranging from the beneficial to the disastrous, that AI can impact culture in general. Franco says that cyber security is also a hot topic in the financial arena, Marcum’s sector.

Based on The Speaking Industry Benchmark Report produced by AAE Speakers Bureau in 2023, 50% of speakers are currently using artificial intelligence in some way, and another 25% plan to. On the planner’s side, 33% are currently using AI in some way while another 33% plan to sometime this year. The survey was compiled from more than 300 responses from both event organizers and keynote speakers in hopes to better understand the speaker-booking process.

Fitch is using AI to help generate session titles and for closed-captioning speakers’ presentations. Speakers use it to research their audiences and to flesh out topics. And as the world shrinks and speakers are increasingly in front of audiences whose primary language is not necessarily the speaker’s, AI is also being used as a translation tool.

For younger audiences, presentations addressing mental health and wellness are in demand, according to Franco. That demographic is also “more attuned to the broader landscape of corporate responsibility and corporate giving.” They’re looking for more purpose-driven events and authenticity, she says.

Mindfulness, happiness and burnout prevention are also high on the list for younger audiences. Justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, sustainability and cultural appropriation are areas of particular focus for Fitch and her team as they seek to broaden the range of voices being given a platform.

She says, “How many voices are we not hearing and how many ideas are we shutting out, if we don’t do our best to be inclusive?”

Innovation and creativity have also found their way back onto the cardinal list. “For a long time, people didn’t care about those things because when you go through a pandemic, people only care about the survival stuff, and innovation and creativity are not usually considered something to survive by, but now that we’re in a more stable environment, they’re huge,” Schelp says.

Anything to do with leadership, he’s finding, is also a big deal. “Being able to manage through change is a very hot topic right now.” Apparently, Heraclitus was right.

Having winning topics is only half the equation, though. Getting a speaker who is sufficiently engaging no matter how sizzling the topic might be, is the other half.

Rising Costs

Event organizers are concerned with both increasing costs and attendance numbers for this year. Rising inflation experienced across all sectors of goods and services before the pandemic and since has unquestionably extended to the cost of producing meetings and events. Fitch, Franco and Schelp are in universal agreement that prices have soared.

Booking local speakers as a way to reduce travel costs is now popular, as it frees up budgets for non-negotiable expenses. For many events, speakers will be chosen based on outcomes and relevance versus celebrity alone.

Celebrities of every sort have always come at a premium, but in the last 10 years, Schelp says the fees have risen three-fold. The fee for high-name-recognition celebrities can be as much as $750,000. Speaking fees for non-celebrity, but highly-booked business speakers have also gone up, but not as sharply.

It’s not just the speaker fees, though. Everything associated with meetings is up, in some cases way up. Fitch’s AV costs for Natural Products Expo West were 45% higher than just the previous year.

Budgets, unfortunately, haven’t kept up. Some corporations have responded by not hiring speakers at all or resorting to putting only company employees in front of a mic. A knowledgeable source who asks to remain anonymous says the Fortune 50 corporation he works for has stopped hiring speakers altogether for this fiscal year. Another anonymous source from a large retail corporation with 175 stores says his company has shifted to only in-house speakers and hasn’t hired any outside talent for quite some time.

According to Schelp, these sorts of cutbacks are cyclical; at any given time from 10 to 20% of companies will stop hiring outside speakers for a year or so, but when the results suffer, they revert to bringing in fee-based speakers.

Mark Twain famously opined, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” The same can be said of speakers: ineffective ones occupy the lightning bug end of the spectrum; highly effective speakers are the lightning. A great speaker isn’t an agenda-filler; they’re a difference maker. They have the ability to communicate information and ideas in a way that increases learning and yields more productive results from meetings. Based on his 30 years of experience, Schelp believes that not hiring compelling speakers is a false economy, and companies that stop hiring bona fide talent discover that attendees don’t want to go to meetings because they aren’t getting what they want out of them.

“They’re not being inspired, they’re not being motivated and they’re not being educated at the level they were before when they were able to hear high-quality speakers,” Schelp continues.

With increased presenter costs comes increased scrutiny. Speaker bureaus and speakers are finding it more necessary to not just provide favorable reviews, but delineate a clear value proposition that answers the question, “Why should my audience make the effort to come out to see you?”

Presenters are finding it incumbent upon themselves to respond by providing more customization. “For many years,” Schelp says, “companies claimed they wanted true customization from speakers, but even 10 or 12 years ago, it wasn’t actually true.”

It’s true now, though. Today, corporations expect speakers to keep their company goals and objectives in mind and tailor presentations specifically for them and their audience. They want audience members to leave saying, ‘I’m going to take this piece of information and use it in my job tomorrow.’”

Schelp says that various learning-retention experts tell him that if information from a presentation has not been used within a week, it will be lost. As a result, speakers feel increased pressure to more thoroughly research both their audience and their topic and be more granular in their presentations.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that celebrities, as opposed to drilled-down experts, have lost their power. According to Schelp, younger attendees aren’t quite as enamored of the famous as older audiences have been in the past. Perhaps it’s because streaming and social media have created such a multitude of ‘personalities’ that, in general, star wattage has diffused. But no one is entirely immune to celebrities, Schelp says. Franco and Fitch agree, and if it’s a name younger employees are following in their away-from-work hours, they get just as beguiled as the older demographic.

While speaker fees and all other costs attached to meetings are rising, Franco, Fitch and Schelp each say that budgets haven’t grown accordingly, and planners are being squeezed in the middle. They’re finding they have to be increasingly creative to bring their events and meetings to fruition.

Schelp perhaps has the easier time of it since his stable of speakers is large enough to allow him to book an effective speaker to suit almost any budget.

On the planner side, Fitch and Franco both have a daunting number of moving parts for every meeting which makes their jobs extremely challenging. On the flip side, all those line items provide opportunities to zig and zag, and make some adjustments — and still create a successful event.

One of the approaches Franco sometimes uses to reign in costs is shifting the time meetings are held. Instead of holding a meeting over lunch, switching it to a breakfast is a cost-saving method since breakfast fare is usually less expensive than lunch, or simply scheduling it for early afternoon where light refreshments can be provided instead of lunch, which can also lower overhead.

Another useful technique Franco takes advantage of is accepting free use of meeting spaces sometimes offered by friends of the company. For one memorable meeting, a blue-chip law firm headquartered in a Chicago skyscraper gave her a large part of a floor free of charge. Not only was her company spared the cost of renting a facility, but it was a superb venue with a breathtaking view providing an overall experience. Since Fitch’s biggest meeting has a trade show attached with more than 3,500 exhibitors, the number of plates she has to keep spinning in is staggering. Conversely, though, those thousands of components mean more opportunities to shift, counterbalance and trade. She gladly employs the use of bartering whenever she can.

Fitch also trades exhibit floor space in lieu of fees for non- celebrity speakers. Doing so can even help offset, at least to a small degree, the cost of having, say, Jennifer Garner speak. Yes, THE Jennifer Garner — who happens to be one of the owners of Once Upon a Farm, an award-winning, plant-based, infant and children’s food company. Of course, it also takes a sizable check in addition to floor space as compensation for such an A- lister, but being able to trade helps lower the price tag a little.

Because Fitch is often able to secure a favorable rate at hotels, since she’s buying in bulk, a block of hotel rooms given at no cost to a speaker and their entourage a little lower in the firmament can similarly reduce speakers’ fees.

The Future of Speakers at Events

Fitch and her staff will continue to push for more JEDI: justice, equity, diversity and inclusion for those who grace the podium; both she and Franco will keep lobbying for budget increases to meet the higher costs of staging meetings and events, and as co-owner of a speakers’ bureau, Schelp hopes they will succeed. However most of all, they agree that change will continue unabated.

As economic, cultural and technological issues continue to impact who makes it onto the podium at meeting and events, and as themes and topics expand and multiply, speakers will be asked to help with pre-event promotion and focus on impactful storytelling. And while planners will be focusing on the overall event content, they will be paying close attention to a speaker’s engagement style, as it will be playing a key factor in their selection process. C&IT