How it started vs. how it’s going

Why EvMarCo?

In all honesty I didn’t know this was where I would end up. It was not planned, but sometimes life gives you lemons and I guess you can either screw up your face in bitterness or you can have a go at making lemonade. Ever one to look at the bright side, I decided I was going to squeeze my little brain muscles as hard as I could.

I have freelanced before, I’ve also worked for a variety of agencies, on the corporate side and as an implant but with a decade under my belt at the same organisation, in the UK account management team, then head of business development, then moving into a global sales & consulting role I’d got as far as I could just as the company announced it was planning to be sold.

I was already on the hunt for my next adventure, and I had a lot of very engaging and interesting conversations across our industry across tech, hotel, agency and even a crazy entrepreneur who wanted me to sell something I honestly couldn’t even fathom, but I also had a little spark ignited to have another go at freelancing and while talking through all of the options with any of my amazing network it quickly became clear to them and me that this was the opportunity that excited me the most.

What is EvMarCo’s goal?

In short, I want to put 20+ years of experience to good use sharing it with our amazing industry. To offer a different perspective and help business innovate and grow in an ever-changing environment.

To give a bit more context, the travel, meetings, events, marketing, experiential world is so vast, it’s a whole universe to wrap your head around. And its growing arms and legs, like an extra-terrestrial might. It’s also evolving and changing direction at warp speed.

As technology advances, so is our industry, and as event technology diversifies companies are better able to finally prove the value that events have on sales, marketing and growth. Events are finally getting the centre-stage attention they deserve, and we need to continue to ensure they shine bright.

Across the industry, there’s either a shortage of talent, or decision processes are taking much longer, or people are being asked to take on events and marketing remits they’ve never had to tackle before, or teams are being asked to manage short-term projects they simply don’t have resource for as they’re operating on a lean model, and this is where I believe EvMarCo can help. With extensive knowledge and experience across the industry I can support when and where it is needed most.

How will you support your customers?

Here are just a handful of ways I can support our industry:

Small and medium business leaders often get pulled into the operations and tactics and can’t find the time to focus on sales and marketing to continually drive their growth.

Corporate travel and/or marketing procurement managers are being asked to ‘wrap their arms around events’ alongside their already packed workloads. They need to build a policy and events program, manage stakeholder engagement, implement technology and set a strategy for their events going forwards.

Events agencies struggle to resource with the ebbs and flows that are the nature of events and need to maintain a pool of freelancers as an extension of their team as demand continues to be intermittent and contractors help them keep overheads down, while offering expertise as and when needed.

New start-ups and entrepreneurs are popping up across the industry, and they have a need for an extra pair of hands, or an extra head to brainstorm new business product ideas, new solutions or services they want to offer and want to develop a go-to-market strategy for. They need someone there to kick it all off, then they can take the day to day running back in-house.

Hotels and events industry suppliers are onboarding new, young and less-experienced talent as we continue to build back from the pandemic, and they need to train teams on sales, marketing, working with events agencies and corporate clients.

Why should they hire a contractor or freelancer?

In today’s economic climate it can be difficult to justify full time headcount, and in other cases it can be hard to find the right talent and you just need to fill a gap as an interim until you find that right super star to fill your open position. Contractors can fill both of these neds, but it’s also important to consider that having a mix of both permanent and freelance staff can often bring a different perspective.

Having a diverse workforce can create more opportunity to innovate, enable a company to be more agile, to bring new and different mindsets and approaches to something. In a world that is changing as quickly as ours, adapting and changing quickly is a strength, not a weakness. Innovation is an enabler for growth; this is where freelancers and contractors can often bring the greatest value.