YPIE Blog Day Two Part Two: UBM

Sean Duffin of Muirhead Leather, a participant on this year’s Young Professional Industry Experience (YPIE), writes about the group’s visit to UBM.

At UBM, we met Sam Fisher and Joel Butler, who explained the purpose of the business. UBM organises 350 events over a calendar year, which are complemented by 100 publications. The company plays a huge role in providing a platform for businesses to network and have face to face connections.

Their strap line is “See you there”, which was clearly evident in their behaviour.

Only recently they have implemented an exhibition team which manages a considerable amount of activity, some of these are detailed below:

• Operations (Logistic teams, suppliers, arrange the creations provide at shows)
• Sales (Gives content, sponsorship)
• Brand (Customer Experience, Provides Themes, Communication)
• PR/Content (External PR, Interview Designers – getting peoples attention)
• Marketing (Emails, Social Media, Get people there, Promotion)

Design Thinking

• Design minded company
• Manifesto (what we stand for)
• Fail Fast (make your mistakes quick, learn from them)
• Whole brain creative (art meets the science)
• Dimension of beauty (colour, contrast, content, shape, texture, Image etc.)
• Madonna Curve – make changes when you are at the top, it will be a slow decline if you are too late with your approach (must understand when you’re at the top and try to reinvent yourself)
• Break through the noise (one unit of work equals one unit of noise, this includes competitors etc.)
• Designing Time – building the experience (making this more than just a product)
• Tell your story – add value to the product (what makes you unique as a company)

We spent the rest of the session planning an event. Our role was to develop a new design and launch this product at an exhibition.