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Group Delphi |
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October 20, 2014 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Face-to-Face Marketing Solutions and Complete Digital Integration |
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About Group Delphi For more than 25 years, Group Delphi has served as a worldwide leader in the design and production of trade show exhibits, events and environments, as well as museum exhibits. Group Delphi is a diversified enterprise with a robust offering of face-to-face marketing solutions serving more than 150 clients each year, including Apple, Pixar and Medtronic. The company's award-winning work features complete digital integration and reflects the collaboration of a team spanning from fine artists to wood workers to technologists. Group Delphi is a privately-held company based in Alameda, CA and with offices in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Paris, France. Find out more at www.groupdelphi.com.
Justin.Hersh@groupdelphi.com
As the founding partner of Group Delphi, Justin has been, and continues to be, committed to assembling the most talented team of creative professionals in the industry – those who share his passion for delivering creative solutions to clients’ marketing communication needs. His work in this space spans more than 25 years, ranging from experimental theater projects with George Coates Performance Works to collaborations with some of America’s leading companies including Apple, Virgin Galactic, Medtronic, Applied Materials and Novellus Systems, as well major museum installations. Group Delphi's culture is infused with the spirit of Justin’s theatrical training, where people work as teams to create engaging experiences, using a touch of magic in an atmosphere where ‘the show must go on.’
After studying theater design and technical production at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Justin immersed himself in design and production of large-scale events, trade shows, and museum projects. He grew up in a creative household where his father, Howard Hersh, composed classical music. Justin’s earliest production project was helping his dad set-up slide projectors in the atrium of the De Young Museum for a performance piece. He has been a co-producer on two recording projects with his dad, with whom he still collaborates.
Interview conducted by: CEOCFO: Mr. Hersh, would you tell us about Group Delphi? Mr. Hersh: For many large companies event marketing is really their number-one marketing spend and it is certainly getting more challenging for them to justify the spend within the digital marketplace. Essentially Group Delphi is company with 25 years of helping brands connect with their customers through compelling face-to-face experiences, whether it is with trade show exhibit, a pop-up store or a museum exhibit. We do this by designing and building engaging exhibits and events environments. Today we serve over 150 companies each year ranging from Apple, PIXAR and Medtronic, among many others.
CEOCFO: What is it that you understand fundamentally about engaging that perhaps others do not feel in their bones? Mr. Hersh: We live in a time where everybody is talking about content marketing but our roots are in the theatre where the whole point is to create a compelling experience based on content. Our point of view has always been that it is about the message that the client needs to convey to the audience and how we do that in a way that is likely to actually compel the audience to take action. We are able to deliver on this because we have this broad range of experience from 3-D designers and 2-D design, project management, custom exhibit fabrication, exhibit rental, graphic production, warehouse logistics, technology and digital content -- all under one roof. A recent example of this is what we did an exhibit for PIXAR at Siggraph 2014, a show where they normally base their exhibits on the current movie releases. But this year there was no new movie to build the exhibit around. Therefore, we worked with PIXAR and looked at the Teapot, which is this very iconic element of their history of early animation. We then built an experience around a contest and a museum engagement, and had people literally lining up for two or three aisles at the PIXAR booth.
CEOCFO: When you are assessing what will move people, will the 24 to 35 year age group typically be moved by a certain type of presentation? What are some of the things that you would take into account that others do not? Mr. Hersh: There is a great deal of interest in content and a lot of obsession about technology. In theory, both those things are important. We are agnostic about the specific solution and we are cognizant that different audiences learn in different ways. Part of what we do is strive to understand the specific audience that our client is trying to reach and figure out how they are likely to engage with information. For some people that might be a live presentation while for others that might be self-exploratory through digital content.
CEOCFO: How do you build on the knowledge and experience but not reuse the same concepts? Mr. Hersh: People want a fresh experience. There are a three ways we approach that. One is having a very diverse group of people who work in the company. There is a ton of creative talent whether from a scenic artist or a designer or a creative director. Also, having a collaborative and integrated process allows us to bring ideas from several distinct vantage points. Lastly, because we are not a niche player in terms of simply focusing on trade shows, we can draw creativity and perspective from other areas in which we work, such as events and museums. We may have done something interesting in a museum that might come over through the trade shows.
CEOCFO: If you have the choice, what types of projects do you like? Mr. Hersh: Personally, many of my interests are in the development of talent and people, and thinking about how we pull the best and brightest. To attract those kinds of people, you have to do a diverse group of projects. The projects that are the most exciting are not necessarily the biggest projects, but they are the ones that have a particularly unique challenge. We just completed the first series of projects for projects for e.a.t., which is a Chicago based nonprofit. We are working with them to take no-longer-used magazine stands on the streets of Chicago and turn them into micro food stores. We had to deal with the infrastructure of the kiosk, health and safety issues around the food, as well as coordinate with the city. I enjoy those projects we have not done before -- and frankly nobody has done it before -- but we figure out how to bring our client's vision to life.
CEOCFO: Is there a certain level of interactivity that you look for in your exhibits? Mr. Hersh: I was over at VMworld, which is the large show put on by VMware, which is a virtualization company that has been our client for several years. I was walking through their exhibit and looking at what we had done. We have some places where we are doing the highly technology-driven interactive on iPads with projection and it is pretty sophisticated. There were many people standing in line to do that. We have all these demo stations and each demo station has a simple white board. The demo stations have engineers who can sketch an idea on the boards in real time with customers. You really want to find that solution that engages that current or potential customer in a meaningful dialogue.
CEOCFO: How do you cut through some of the noise that you find at conferences and how do you encourage attendees to pay attention? Mr. Hersh: There is a careful balance because what we know from talking to our clients is that they come to us and depend on the "wow" factor. They want something that makes them stand out. The balance comes in because I believe there is a danger of shouting so loudly you drown out your own message. Often what we are talking about with our clients is what not to do, just as much as we are talking about what to do. It is about having a sense of focus in the design.
CEOCFO: Would you tell us about the international aspect of your offering? Mr. Hersh: Over the last ten or fifteen years, most of our clients are based in the US. As you know a broad business trend is for American companies’ revenue to come from outside the US. We are appropriately following at the footsteps of our clients and making sure that we are going where they need to go to service the business. We do projects in Europe, Asia, as well as Latin America. We actually started to do a reasonable number of projects in Africa and it is exciting to see us work in emerging markets. We see tremendous growth potential over the next ten years in the international portion of our business.
CEOCFO: How much depends on where the business is located as opposed to what it is? Mr. Hersh: The services we provide between our two locations in Alameda and Fort Wayne are largely identical. Both operations will do all of the manufacturing logistics support of the business. Our California office is more focused on the creative development side and on the content digital side of our work, whereas our Fort Wayne operation is more focused on the manufacturing logistics and support side.
CEOCFO: You did an acquisition about a year ago of Image Exhibits. Is it part of your growth strategy or more opportunistic? Mr. Hersh: It is very much part of our strategy. We actually doubled the size of the company in the last four years and that has been through a combination of carefully planned strategic acquisition and good organic growth in our existing client base, as well as new clients coming into the company. We are looking for the right strategic opportunities to acquire a company.
CEOCFO: When do people come to you? Mr. Hersh: The main driver of clients coming to us will be the reputation and referral from our existing client base. We are fortunate to have good loyal clients, which are by far our best source of new work.
We will see clients across all phases of the lifecycle, from pre-revenue startup all the way through Fortune 100 companies. If there is a commonality, it is going to be when they say they want to take their program up a notch and have a bigger presence as well as a "wow" factor. That does not mean spending more money. We have to be cognizant about how we manage our budget and control the quality of what we deliver.
Lastly, we see customers come to us when they realize that nobody else has done what they want to accomplish because they know we love to figure out how to do the impossible.
CEOCFO: What might be different a year down the road for you? Mr. Hersh: We envision three primary differences in the company over the next two years. We are going to continue to bolster our national presence and we are opening a brand-new 200,000 sq ft. facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana this year to strengthen our geographic footprint. We are continuing to look for strategic acquisitions that will expand on this footprint. We are continuing to look for new ways to help our clients engage with their audience beyond the trade show, whether it is creating an executive briefing center or mobile pop-up store. We are continuing to integrate technology and digital experiences into all of the work we do, orchestrated by our in-house digital team.
CEOCFO: How do you keep up with the changing technology? Mr. Hersh: We are fortunate in that regard. There are three key ways and the first is that our digital content group is always looking to see what is out there that is new. We spend a great deal of time looking at augmented reality and other types of virtual technologies that have potential. We have a technology group that is looking at hardware. Our creative directors have an overall responsibility not to be the experts in any one particular thing but to look at the world more holistically and see where the big trends are going. This is something that is so important to our clients. We have many high-tech companies and medical clients that want to know that we have our finger on the pulse. We know we have a responsibility to make sure we are not just doing the latest technology for the latest technology’s sake but we are doing it because it is going to help our clients be more effective.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to Group Delphi? Mr. Hersh: After 25 years, I still love coming to work and there is much about the business that I like. There are a couple key elements that distinguish the company: Group Delphi is a Cirque de Soleil experience where you have these incredibly talented people who have a great deal of passion for their work and many creative ideas. They are going to bring the best possible work to a client every day. The other differentiator is that we are not trying to sell a particular thing to a client; rather, we are trying to create the solution that is right for the client and then we are going to figure out what that medium is that is most effective to do that. That is what our clients see in us. |
“There are a couple key elements that distinguish the company: Group Delphi is a Cirque de Soleil experience where you have these incredibly talented people who have a great deal of passion for their work and many creative ideas. They are going to bring the best possible work to a client every day. The other differentiator is that we are not trying to sell a particular thing to a client; rather, we are trying to create the solution that is right for the client and then we are going to figure out what that medium is that is most effective to do that. That is what our clients see in us.” - Justin Hersh
Group Delphi 950 West Tower Avenue Alameda, CA 94501 260.482.8700
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Justin
Hersh