IACC: New Brand Reflects Evolving Industry
After more than 35 years, the International Association of Conference Centres is now simply "IACC." CEO Mark Cooper explains why.
The International Association of Conference Centres recently unveiled a new name, logo, and brand identity in an effort to maximize the clarity and reach of its message. The organization, now known simply as "IACC" (pronounced "eye-ack"), has also introduced a new tagline: "Exceptional meetings. Powerful connections."
According to CEO Mark Cooper, the change is more than semantics. In many ways, it reflects shifts in the conference center industry, which is expanding and adapting in response to new trends in the way people meet. In a conversation with Successful Meetings, Cooper explains how the re-branding will serve not only the organization but also meeting planners at large.
What was the impetus for IACC's re-branding?
The design phase began around March of last year. Our global board met in Florida at our IACC-Americas conference and addressed one very obvious and powerful question: Do IACC's name, identity, and brand represent what our membership is now?
Our existing members traditionally used the word "conference center" as a differentiator in the title of their property to separate themselves from other, non-meetings-focused venues. Over the last five years or so, however, we have seen some members dropping the word "conference center" and using other identifiers, such as "seminar houses," "day meeting venues," "corporate universities," or even just meetings-focused "hotels and resorts." On top of that, we saw incoming into the membership a new breed of venue that absolutely did not want to use the descriptor "conference center" because they perceived it as being slightly stale, and they were looking for something different. Being the International Association of Conference Centres, this posed potentially a big challenge for the association, as you can imagine. So we set out to research our members, the industry, and stakeholders to see what would best represent our membership in the next five to 10 years. The result of that is the new brand we introduced last week.
What's the significance of being "IACC" the name instead of "IACC" the acronym?
IACC as a name in the industry is well respected. It's 35 years of age, so there are many people who know what it is and what it stands for. It was important for us to retain that. So instead of getting rid of it entirely we decided there was no need to have a descriptor. We will be referred to purely as "IACC," with the tagline, "Exceptional meetings. Powerful connections." We've put in place a set of very clear brand pillars that represent what we do and what we stand for, and we're excited to let those do the talking for us.
Are you leaving the term "conference center" behind entirely?
Not at all. That term is still used extensively throughout our membership. In fact, we have a new member opening next year at UCLA, and they choose to define themselves as a conference center. So we're not moving away from "conference center," but there are definitely some members that want to stand alone by way of their own descriptor. Our largest member group globally, for instance, is the Châteauform brand, which has 45 venues; they provide an IACC conference center experience, but they choose to go by the name "seminar house," which is a name and descriptor that is more sympathetic to their brand. Dolce Hotels & Resorts is another example. It used to be referred to as "Dolce Hotels and Conference Centers."
So it's not that we're moving away from conference centers; it's that we have a real mix of venues [towards which we want to be inclusive]. For example, take day venues, which are non-residential urban day centers that are specialized 100 percent in meetings; that is one of the fastest growth areas for our membership that we've seen in many years.
Does your re-branding in any way reflect a shift not only in venues' verbiage, but also in the experiences they're providing?
Is the meetings experience and environment changing? Yeah. Absolutely it is. There are some clear trends and changes to the way people meet now. Meetings are now less content-driven, for example. In fact, we're being told by just about every major global organization out there that content-driven learning is gone. That's impacting the environments people want to meet in. For example, there used to be a time where everybody would come from the same office and go to the same venue for a four- or five-day meeting; they'd already built relationships with other people in the office because they met every day at the water fountain and had lunch together every day in the cafeteria. Now, of course, organizations are global and there's more of a culture of [telecommuting], so when you bring people together there's more that needs to be achieved besides the meeting agenda. Collaboration is really important, and so is learning from each other. As a result, there's more importance placed on the spaces outside the meeting room. It's not just the "conference" anymore. Creating an environment where people can network and socialize is equally important.
IACC still represents the very finest examples of meetings-focused venues that are out there. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that you can no longer identify a best-in-class meetings-focused venue just by the name they put above the door. Many years ago, when "conference center" was put above the door of a venue it indicated to meeting planners that they were entering a venue and a product that was the best at putting on meetings. Over the years, many products that don't necessarily meet our best-in-class standards have taken up the name "conference center." So the standard of excellence is no longer attributed to the word "conference centers"; it's attributed to the word "IACC" because the IACC certification we provide venues is a badge of honor that meeting planners trust to tell them they're going into one of the very best examples of a meetings-focused venue There are only 380 IACC-certified venues in 22 countries at the moment, so it really is a small, unique group. As a result, planners trust [the "IACC" name] more than any single descriptor above the door.
What about the new generation of meeting planners, which isn't necessarily familiar with the IACC brand? Are you at all concerned they won't know who you are without your former, full name?
The new generation of planners is more aware of the fact that they need to look beyond a brand and a logo to understand what an organization represents. They no longer need to see a description of an association right there up-front on a logo. What will raise our profile and demonstrate the strength of our brand in the eyes of meeting planners will be what we do out there in the field -- the education we provide at industry events and the research that we generate. That's what will provide the correct descriptor for IACC in the future as opposed to what might be termed today as the lazy way of doing it, which is putting a descriptor underneath the logo and expecting that alone to sell what you do. Our audience is more clever than that now. What they see us doing in the industry under the name of "IACC" will answer all their questions.
Change is hard. Have your members embraced it or resisted it?
We launched our new brand at our [IACC-Americas Connect] conference in New York because we wanted to look our members in the whites of their eyes and see how they felt. After 35 years of being known as the International Association of Conference Centres, we were expecting some shuffling of bums in seats when we launched the brand. But the only response we've received is, "Yep. That makes perfect sense. It's about time." Our membership acknowledges that IACC needed to evolve, is glad that it's evolving, and is excited to be part of that moving forward.
Reported by: Successfulmeetings.com
The International Association of Conference Centres recently unveiled a new name, logo, and brand identity in an effort to maximize the clarity and reach of its message. The organization, now known simply as "IACC" (pronounced "eye-ack"), has also introduced a new tagline: "Exceptional meetings. Powerful connections."
According to CEO Mark Cooper, the change is more than semantics. In many ways, it reflects shifts in the conference center industry, which is expanding and adapting in response to new trends in the way people meet. In a conversation with Successful Meetings, Cooper explains how the re-branding will serve not only the organization but also meeting planners at large.
What was the impetus for IACC's re-branding?
The design phase began around March of last year. Our global board met in Florida at our IACC-Americas conference and addressed one very obvious and powerful question: Do IACC's name, identity, and brand represent what our membership is now?
Our existing members traditionally used the word "conference center" as a differentiator in the title of their property to separate themselves from other, non-meetings-focused venues. Over the last five years or so, however, we have seen some members dropping the word "conference center" and using other identifiers, such as "seminar houses," "day meeting venues," "corporate universities," or even just meetings-focused "hotels and resorts." On top of that, we saw incoming into the membership a new breed of venue that absolutely did not want to use the descriptor "conference center" because they perceived it as being slightly stale, and they were looking for something different. Being the International Association of Conference Centres, this posed potentially a big challenge for the association, as you can imagine. So we set out to research our members, the industry, and stakeholders to see what would best represent our membership in the next five to 10 years. The result of that is the new brand we introduced last week.
What's the significance of being "IACC" the name instead of "IACC" the acronym?
IACC as a name in the industry is well respected. It's 35 years of age, so there are many people who know what it is and what it stands for. It was important for us to retain that. So instead of getting rid of it entirely we decided there was no need to have a descriptor. We will be referred to purely as "IACC," with the tagline, "Exceptional meetings. Powerful connections." We've put in place a set of very clear brand pillars that represent what we do and what we stand for, and we're excited to let those do the talking for us.
Are you leaving the term "conference center" behind entirely?
Not at all. That term is still used extensively throughout our membership. In fact, we have a new member opening next year at UCLA, and they choose to define themselves as a conference center. So we're not moving away from "conference center," but there are definitely some members that want to stand alone by way of their own descriptor. Our largest member group globally, for instance, is the Châteauform brand, which has 45 venues; they provide an IACC conference center experience, but they choose to go by the name "seminar house," which is a name and descriptor that is more sympathetic to their brand. Dolce Hotels & Resorts is another example. It used to be referred to as "Dolce Hotels and Conference Centers."
So it's not that we're moving away from conference centers; it's that we have a real mix of venues [towards which we want to be inclusive]. For example, take day venues, which are non-residential urban day centers that are specialized 100 percent in meetings; that is one of the fastest growth areas for our membership that we've seen in many years.
Does your re-branding in any way reflect a shift not only in venues' verbiage, but also in the experiences they're providing?
Is the meetings experience and environment changing? Yeah. Absolutely it is. There are some clear trends and changes to the way people meet now. Meetings are now less content-driven, for example. In fact, we're being told by just about every major global organization out there that content-driven learning is gone. That's impacting the environments people want to meet in. For example, there used to be a time where everybody would come from the same office and go to the same venue for a four- or five-day meeting; they'd already built relationships with other people in the office because they met every day at the water fountain and had lunch together every day in the cafeteria. Now, of course, organizations are global and there's more of a culture of [telecommuting], so when you bring people together there's more that needs to be achieved besides the meeting agenda. Collaboration is really important, and so is learning from each other. As a result, there's more importance placed on the spaces outside the meeting room. It's not just the "conference" anymore. Creating an environment where people can network and socialize is equally important.
IACC still represents the very finest examples of meetings-focused venues that are out there. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that you can no longer identify a best-in-class meetings-focused venue just by the name they put above the door. Many years ago, when "conference center" was put above the door of a venue it indicated to meeting planners that they were entering a venue and a product that was the best at putting on meetings. Over the years, many products that don't necessarily meet our best-in-class standards have taken up the name "conference center." So the standard of excellence is no longer attributed to the word "conference centers"; it's attributed to the word "IACC" because the IACC certification we provide venues is a badge of honor that meeting planners trust to tell them they're going into one of the very best examples of a meetings-focused venue There are only 380 IACC-certified venues in 22 countries at the moment, so it really is a small, unique group. As a result, planners trust [the "IACC" name] more than any single descriptor above the door.
What about the new generation of meeting planners, which isn't necessarily familiar with the IACC brand? Are you at all concerned they won't know who you are without your former, full name?
The new generation of planners is more aware of the fact that they need to look beyond a brand and a logo to understand what an organization represents. They no longer need to see a description of an association right there up-front on a logo. What will raise our profile and demonstrate the strength of our brand in the eyes of meeting planners will be what we do out there in the field -- the education we provide at industry events and the research that we generate. That's what will provide the correct descriptor for IACC in the future as opposed to what might be termed today as the lazy way of doing it, which is putting a descriptor underneath the logo and expecting that alone to sell what you do. Our audience is more clever than that now. What they see us doing in the industry under the name of "IACC" will answer all their questions.
Change is hard. Have your members embraced it or resisted it?
We launched our new brand at our [IACC-Americas Connect] conference in New York because we wanted to look our members in the whites of their eyes and see how they felt. After 35 years of being known as the International Association of Conference Centres, we were expecting some shuffling of bums in seats when we launched the brand. But the only response we've received is, "Yep. That makes perfect sense. It's about time." Our membership acknowledges that IACC needed to evolve, is glad that it's evolving, and is excited to be part of that moving forward.
Reported by: Successfulmeetings.com
