James Surowiecki wrote a fascinating book called The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. In it, he presents a case for making decisions based on information sourced from large groups of people. The book’s opening example relates the true story of a celebrated English scientist who discovered that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged. Not only was the average of their guesses closer to the ox’s true weight than the estimates of the individual crowd members, it was also closer than any of the estimates provided by cattle experts.
Event marketers focus on the unique opportunity at trade shows, meetings and events to communicate their key messages and value propositions to visitors and prospects. To reach and to teach their target audience.
What about the opportunity to learn? Face-to-face marketing is, after all, a two-way street.
Shouldn’t we also be asking questions of the assembled crowd? Discovering what they can teach us about the market, our brand and our products? Using their collective wisdom to shape our business?