Posted by Will Ng Responses (4)

In the past week, I’ve been hearing about and seeing the terms “recognition events” and “tone deaf” a lot, labels that have been respectively slapped on incentive programs and the organizations that had scheduled them, like a pair of albatrosses.

With first AIG, then Bank of America, and now Wells Fargo succumbing to the media sharks, and now with Congress debating restrictions on travel and meetings for bailed out companies, is there any doubt left that the meetings and incentives industry is under a full-scale attack and in the fight of its life?

There are finally signs that the industry is mounting a response, and a concerted one at that. Last month at the Professional Convention Management Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, the major meetings and travel trade groups announced plans for a unified initiative to make the government and public more aware of what meetings really are about and the economic impact they have. That initiative to lobby Congress was reiterated yesterday at Meeting Professionals International’s MeetDifferent annual conference in Atlanta.

While this concerted effort among the industry’s top trade groups is noble and to be applauded, the hang-up is that it is going to take a year to 18 months to complete, with all the fractured industry-wide data and research that needs to be sourced, compiled, and packaged.

Frankly, the industry can’t waste any more time.

Many out there agree. As Dave Lutz of Velvet Chainsaw Consulting wrote in MiForum: “We all need to do whatever we can to spread the word. Write your congressman, newspaper, blogs, listserves, petitions, whatever it takes.”

Some are doing it, like Keep America Meeting, a grassroots petition whose goal is to collect 1 million signatures and deliver them to the White House, Congress, and Fortune 200 captains of industry. You can join the petition at www.keepamericameeting.org.

While that is happening, one (or, better yet, all) of the industry trade groups needs to reach into its pockets now and underwrite a promotional blitz. I’m talking a blitz of radio spots, newspaper ads, and television commercials explaining, unequivocally, what meetings and incentives are, how they benefit hardworking Americans, and consequently why they should be valued—not dumped on like some cause celebre. These promos need to be on the air and in print immediately, on the major TV networks in primetime and in major metropolitan newspapers. Heck, get them on YouTube.

To quote Successful Meetings editor-in-chief Vincent Alonzo in his February column, “As an industry we’ve done a terrible job explaining to the public at large exactly what role meetings and incentives play...”

It’s time for the industry associations to step up now, not 12 months or 18 months later, and take back control from the mainstream media. Or, we’ll be seeing more full-page ads from companies trying to defend themselves—like Wells Fargo did yesterday and Sunday—on a regular basis.