IFSEC Emails Increasingly Desperate

JH
John Honovich
Jun 15, 2017
IPVM

IFSEC sends a lot of emails for their show. Nearly every day is the 'last chance' to get in.

This morning a new tactic was used:

It certainly is attention grabbing since a reasonable reaction is to make sure that you had not forgotten about a meeting you previously scheduled with a specific individual.

But once you open it, you realize that it's just a generic sales promotion and there was never any previous agreed to meeting:

On the plus side, I am sure it helped the open rate. On the negative side, a lot of people won't enjoy petty manipulation like this.

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Rumen Palmov
Jun 15, 2017

I visited IFSEC last year and while it was still a good show with all the major industry players along with some Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean companies, it was a logistical nightmare. First, there are few options to get a decent hotel near the Excel exhibition center in East London. Second, even if you get to stay in the vicinity (which for a big city like London is a 10-12 km. range) you have to switch several metro lines, some of them really overcrowded in rush hours. So in total it can easily take some 40-45 min. travelling/walking to get to the show and then again to the hotel. And these extra 80-90 min. of travelling after a whole day of walking on the show really hurt. The transport infrastructure is not first class, on the last day of last year's IFSEC some metro lines stopped service after overnight rain (which I saw as an ocassional drizle). The distance from the major London airports (Heathrow, Luton, Stansted) to the show is some 30-45 km. and rent-a-car in right-hand driving country is a no-go for most Europeans. When you add to this the very high pricing for transport, food and accomodation in London it becomes clear that moving IFSEC from Birmihgham to London was not a good idea at all... Most manufacturers I speak with are sharing the same thoughts, so probably the low attendance situation is the reason for these spam e-mails.

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JH
John Honovich
Jun 15, 2017
IPVM

Rumen,

becomes clear that moving IFSEC from Birmihgham to London was not a good idea at all...

That's interesting feedback. Thanks!

I don't know enough about either to have an opinion but I recall them being optimistic about the benefits of making it more 'central' in London. However, those other issues might outweigh that.

One element that I have always found strange / negative is the scheduling it in the middle of June, right before heavy vacations. Because of that, almost everyone announces major products months before to get full attention. Moreover, I would think meeting new prospects right before vacation season would be a problem for both sellers and buyers.

From an IPVM perspective, the lack of new product announcements is the main reason we do not cover it but we might in the future.

Finally, Intersec seems to be gaining ground globally in importance and they are likely helped by being at the beginning of the year a better time to introduce new products, etc.

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Rumen Palmov
Jun 15, 2017

Well, I'm not sure which benefits were expected, but everything is highly expensive in London (even by western-european standards) and distances are huge. In Birmihgham the exhibition center was just next to the airport, the city was compact and nowadays there are various low-cost flight options to this place from the rest of Europe.

The timing is not so bad, in most European countries the summer vacation comes in August, so in June most people are still at work and most manufacturers try to make key announcements at IFSEC as it was traditionally the most prestigious exhibition event for this part of the world. But now things are changing. Last year I also visited Security Essen in Germany - it is hosted in end of September (a more suitable time), it is much easier to access (visitors from some EU countries can go by car), the expo center is huge and there is growing attendance. The only disadvantage is that it is hosted once per 2 years. But otherwise it is becomming the most important security industry event for Europe. For the next show there I can make a short report for you guys, so that you can have an idea.

The Intersec is definetely also getting very intresting, I was there in this year's edition in January and it had a really global approach, along with all others advantages - the perfect infrastructure, numerous hotels, cheap taxi transport..not to mention the endless entertainment opportunities in Dubai :)

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JH
John Honovich
Jun 19, 2017
IPVM

And again from IFSEC:

Evidently IFSEC subscribes to the fear school of marketing.

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Mick Brown
Jun 19, 2017

With London almost under siege how many people will turn up

so many customers from northern England unwilling to

 visit worn torn london

Who knows who uses hikvisions drones these days 

assaid spying on its enemies with drones

how long

before they deliver sarin and vx gas

whats it going to take before the industry stops

taking the quick dime

we should ask for

best practice not how fast we can make a buck

no one needs to

imagine how many rd secrets disappearing

into Chinese backed think tanks

they have 77m political members thinking about their next

long term moves

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Harrison Mitchell
Jun 20, 2017

Um, what?

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JH
John Honovich
Jun 22, 2017
IPVM

Quite a number of people complaining about IFSEC 2017 on this LinkedIn thread, including that Tyco and Norbain (major UK distributor) not exhibiting and various complaints about having it in London.

Anyone have good or bad personal experiences at IFSEC this year?

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Mick Brown
Jun 23, 2017

We exhibited there it reminds me of the same trend I saw in the computer industry in the 80 s declining intrest less installers previoulsy their were many

hik and dahua desperate to show new technologies to keep share price increasing

spoken to dahua they are so far off kilter with customers new staff told dont worry about old customer and support issues just find project work

they banned their partners from being on their stand so they could talk to their customers directly and end users not sure why their need to keep secrets from their customers

dahua still suffering increasing bad debt as they over stock customers with old model and then introduce new ones

what is the point of pushing  4 k cvi if you can't deliver until oct will  cause customers to wait and sales will slow they have 200 engineers working on deep learning you think they just neeed 1 to work on minimising rma

the long term increasing bad debt more customers close

JH
John Honovich
Jun 22, 2017
IPVM

Btw, one other interesting element. Hikvision's booth was more than 2x the size of Axis:

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Simon Lambert
Jun 25, 2017
IPVMU Certified

On my way home from visiting IFSEC on the first day, I received an SMS. "Hi Simon, I haven't seen you at ExCel London today for IFSEC - are you coming tomorrow or Thursday? Gerry Dunphy"

After a long, tiring, costly, sweaty day to make it there and home, I was now feeling berated by someone who made it sound like I failed him in some way. Wracking my brains to think who I'd let down, I eventually came to the conclusion that it was a marketing ploy. It showed how poor their visitor management is, because I had attended. Gerry was, in fact, the person who had failed to find me.

In reality, maybe their approach brings more people in through the door. But, I can assure them, it pisses me off.

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