Joelle Morgan has known since she was four years old that the live-events business was for her.
“I started playing the piano back then, and I became a fully trained pianist and singer,” said the new chief experience officer for Bishop McCann, one of the largest event agencies in the world.
Another achievement that’s music to the ears of the agency’s clients: Morgan has written four full-length musical productions that have seen the stage in her home country of Australia.
In short, she knows how to put on a captivating show; Morgan understands what moves the needle with business-event planners seeking to educate, motivate and entertain their audiences.
She has been in the experiential marketing and events niche for more than 20 years, with the past 10 spent working at experiential-event agencies Unbridled and AssetMark, with a focus on brand-building programs.
Meetings Today sat down with Morgan in late April to find out her philosophy for business events and the plans she has in her new role of chief experience officer.
Rob Carey: From an overarching view, how do you see the role of events in driving business success for an organization?
Joelle Morgan: When you think about the most memorable moments of your life, were you alone? Ninety-nine percent of the time the answer is no. That demonstrates the impact of what we do in our work, and that is an incredibly powerful lens through which our team looks at experience design.
Specifically, I see it from the perspective of intimacy, of not looking simply at the group at large but at each attendee as an individual—who is sitting in that seat, who is experiencing that moment, and what do we want them to think, feel and do as a result of the design we’ve put into that moment. We want to deliver transformational elements that delight our clients and build their trust and loyalty towards us.
Rob Carey: As the new leader of the events team at Bishop McCann, what is your first priority?
Joelle Morgan: Overall, my mandate is to move experiences from strategy to execution and help our clients use events as a measurable driver of growth, and that entails integrating strategy and creative and operations into systems that consistently deliver impact at scale for our clients.
But first, I am getting to know the team—what their current challenges are, what their wins are, and also understand how Bishop McCann is positioned in the industry right now and what our clients are saying about us. This will allow us to have a solid, multi-layered 360-degree view of where we are now, so that we can start to iterate the future together.
Rob Carey: How has your prior experience at other event agencies prepared you for this executive role?
Joelle Morgan: My work at AssetMark was mostly around identifying which experiences result in strong impact and greater scale, and then building ROI systems that quantify the right benchmarks and match up with a client’s growth strategy.
When I'm looking at ROI, I measure it in three ways: pipeline generation, revenue influence and customer and employee retention. Then we layer in that engagement and satisfaction piece to understand long-term brand impact. That's how we can see if those metrics move, and whether the event is working as it should.
Right now, I'm looking at finding the balance between how events have the strongest impact as experiences and having those events be seen as growth engines rather than cost centers by those in the C-suite.
Rob Carey: What's something in the business-events industry you think might be lacking that you want your team to focus on?
Joelle Morgan: Rather than thinking of it as what’s lacking, I'm really looking at how do we engineer into the future alongside our clients as partners.
We've seen a fundamental shift in our industry over the past five to six years where events are moving from that execution piece alone into a more strategic element. And when we start to pull those things together, where you've got the experiential as well as the ROI piece, we can really start to make a difference as a business discipline. Moving from execution to strategy means we are expected to drive measurable outcomes from those experiences.
In that vein, ROI and data have become non-negotiable for our clients, and personalization of event sessions and attendees’ event journeys is raising that bar. Specifically, Bishop McCann has its JOY Index to measure real-time attendee engagement and elevate event strategies by capturing in-the-moment emotional and biometric signals during an event.
Events are becoming one of the most powerful drivers of trust, retention and long-term growth for our clients, so we are looking to personalize the attendee experience however we can.
