David Peckinpaugh, president of Maritz Global Events, and Dale Parmenter, CEO of DRPG, a creative communications agency based in the U.K., shared an e-stage on Tuesday during a virtual media event to announce a strategic alliance of their companies.
While Maritz and DRPG have worked together in the past, the alliance formalizes their partnership. However, the companies have not merged. Maritz specializes in corporate and association meetings, incentive travel, and experience design. DRPG, which launched as a video production company 40 years ago, now provides a variety of creative-campaign services, including research, design, digital experiences, and video and motion graphics. Together, the companies have more than 1,500 employees.
“Maritz Global Events and DRPG have been collaborating over the past seven years, getting a very deep knowledge of each other,” said Maritz’s Ben Goedegebuure, enterprise vice president, global & industry presence, while addressing the audience from Mexico. The pandemic, he noted, provided them with an opportunity to “relook at the industry” and to see that they “complement each other in very significant ways,” pointing to similar corporate cultures, client-focused solutions, and a global footprint.
In recent client research, commented Dagmar Mackett, global development director at DRPG, organizers have said they “really wanted to get back to live events—being able to meet people in the flesh—but they also talked about the audience segmentation that they have observed and that the demands of the markets have changed. We're no longer working in single-channel communication; global communication is all about a multi-channel approach now.”
The alliance will be exhibiting together at IMEX America under their campaign slogan, “More Than Experience.” When asked what exactly the companies will be providing “more” of, Maritz’s Greg Bogue, enterprise vice president, brand, experience & innovation ecosystems, talked about where he sees the strength of the alliance: “Over the last number of years, experience and experience design has been the hot topic. … And I think what we're really talking about is a deep knowledge through data insights and research into audience needs. If we understand the audience better, we can then deliver a richer, more personalized experience.”
“As we evolve out of the pandemic, [event participants] are going to start looking for things that are truly relevant to them,” Bogue added. “We're going to have to understand the various audiences, the audience segments, how they show up—and that's what we're going to do. We're going to really focus and double down on this idea of audience insight.”
Among the events Maritz Global Events and DRPG have collaborated on is the November 2020 International Congress and Convention Association’s hybrid conference, which connected five hub locations and included a hologram of the organization’s president.
