According to Bill Davidson, Managing Director of Staging Connections, 2006 has been a year of enormous

growth for the event services group which is now established in over 90 locations in six countries, thanks to the ongoing global acquisition strategy of its ASX listed owner AAV Limited.

“While we are celebrating our 20th birthday in Australia, we have been expanding our geographic reach. The result is that today Staging Connections operates event production hubs in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Singapore, China and Malaysia, with acquisitions in other countries in the pipeline.”

“At the same time, we are expanding the range of event production and design services to deliver integrated event solution to our clients.”

“Staging Connections has commenced a change program designed to encourage innovation across the

company, and the sharing of senior and experienced creative resources within Australia and internationally.”

“The company is also hiring additional creative and production talent. This means that Staging Connections has the creative expertise and technical know-how to deliver world class events of any scale and dimension”, Davidson said.

The Live Events Business Market Continues to Grow

Paul Kenny, the new Staging Connections’ International Creative Director, has spent his career creating high level live business events for multinational corporate clients including Qantas, McDonalds and Optus as well as key involvement in the production of major international events such as the last two world expos and the M2006 Commonwealth Games.

“Leading marketers understand that live events deliver a tangible experience and evoke an immediate response which can be quickly measured” he said.

“The growth of this market is based firmly on the shift by corporate marketers towards "the brand experience" in terms of live business events as a more effective way of communicating with clients. In this online world, there is an even stronger need for face-to-face communication and this is reflected in the continued expansion in exhibitions, conventions and special events. Staging Connections is positioning itself to take advantage of this global trend”.

New brand positions business for growth

Positioning the Company for global growth and an expanded range of production services required a reassessment of Staging Connections’ brand strategy. According to Director of Marketing, Rebecca Murray, the result of intensive client and staff research indicated that it was time for a change.

“Staging Connections is an icon in the Australasian events industry having delivered many hundreds of thousands of business events in the last twenty years. Our research found that the brand had many strengths including high awareness and a strong reputation for reliability - which is fundamental for a staging company.”

“But over the past couple of years, the service offering to the Staging Connections client base – corporate clients and industry clients as well as venues – had broadened to include event production & integration and event design in addition to its well known event staging and venue services.”

“So we needed the brand to symbolise the company we are becoming, and to assist us to align internal behaviours to support this change process. Clearly, we needed a strong, confident brand to reposition the Staging Connections business in the local market and to continue our expansion into offshore markets”, Murray said.

Murray brought 3C Brand Strategists on board, and the result is a new brand that captures the energy, creative exuberance and excitement that represents the events industry and Staging Connections expanded role in this industry.

“The new brand is quite different from anything in the market. It is young, energetic and live communication focussed. Our new brand positioning “Inspiration at Work” communicates our creativity in terms of achieving clients’ communication and brand objectives, backed up by our experience and processes that result in a reliable outcome for the client” she said.

“The new logo expresses our desired client experience – which is a WOW! for the client in terms of creativity, strategic impact and ongoing relationship”.

Australian Success Story

Staging Connections is a relatively unknown Australian success story. In terms of scale, it now dwarfs its Australasian competitors with more than 1000 employees who deliver over 50,000 live events each year, from 90 locations. Events range from small boardroom presentations to producing Australia’s largest corporate event ever for AMWAY for over 15,000 people.

Staging Connections’ offshore expansion program began early this year with a number of acquisitions which increase high level production capability, in addition to acquisitions which expand the current venue business. Most recently, two production houses, The Event Company in Singapore and Techmex in Singapore and Malaysia, have joined the fold.

This follows the acquisition of producer ETG China, based in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. On the venue side of the business, contracts have been signed up to provide in-venue event staging services at a number of five-star resorts in Fiji and China.

On the local front, Staging Connections has expanded into Tropical North Queensland with the acquisition of Stageworks, and into Canberra. “With the acquisition of these businesses, we have achieved geographic coverage across Australia, enabling us to offer a complete service to our national clients”, said Bill Davidson.