C&IT Brand Book Live: event professionals forecast sector by sector recovery

See photos of the C&IT Brand Book Live event here.

More than 50 event professionals gathered at the inaugural Brand Book Live event yesterday to forecast the health and recovery of events in the six top industry sectors.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals Europe, Fortnum & Mason, Mortgage Next, Logica, Porsche, and Frequency Telecom were among the event planners that joined fellow corporates and agencies to debate the health of the pharmaceutical, retail, financial services, IT, telecoms, and automotive sectors in the round table event at St Martins Lane in London.

Delegates revealed the varying extent to which each sector had been affected by the recession and associated perception issues, with automotive and financial services among those most badly damaged and pharmaceutical confirmed as the most resilient.

Peer networking and experiential events with strong educational elements are managing to secure budgets across all sectors but corporate hospitality and long haul incentives have been heavily hit across the board.

Despite the short-term impact of the recession on events, all of the sectors were optimistic about their long term health and most forecast recovery within the next two years.

In the case of retail, delegates anticipated the recovery would come in the next 18-24 months but the events landscape would be very different to that before the recession.

The Brand Book Live event was followed by the C&IT Summer Party, which attracted more than 150 revellers.
Party-goers were given a sneak preview of Brand Book 2009, which is being published with the July/August issue of C&IT, and heard about C&IT's future brand extensions and the return of Power 50.

See photos of the C&IT Summer Party here.