David Rich Honored with RISE Award for Meetings Industry Leadership
David Rich is known for his unique, strategic approach to the discipline that is now rapidly being
adopted by organizations across the globe, transforming the way marketing teams plan and
execute event programs in order to achieve higher return-on-investment.
Now the senior vice president of strategy worldwide for George P. Johnson Experience Marketing
(GPJ), Rich created and currently leads the agency’s global consulting practice, providing
marketers with the strategic framework, experience planning methods, measurement, analysis
and technology tools to make better decisions and continuously improve meeting and event
investments.
At the same time, he has become a tireless advocate for the crucial role of strategy within the
meeting and event function, championing the ideas and best practices that translate into
immediate cost savings and performance improvements.
“I’ve pushed hard on doing all we can to move the industry in a strategic direction,” says Rich.
“It’s been my life’s focus.”
Some of David’s most well-known advancements in the area of meeting and event marketing
strategy:
Creating the Strategic Experience Mapping model. This audience analysis model creates a
truly customer-centric roadmap, which in turn is used to shape the optimal event experience,
select live and digital experience formats, develop creative ideas, and align all elements to
organizational objectives.
Launching the Portfolio Analyzer software. A groundbreaking enterprise software package
based on Rich’s pioneering work in portfolio planning strategy methodology, the PA tool helps
corporate marketers institutionalize across their organization the ability to adjust their event mix to
precisely align with their business objectives as well as the sequence of touch points that
audiences need to have in order to move them to specific behaviors efficiently as possible
Advocating for the intersection of online marketing and physical meetings and events. As
web-based communications increasingly complements the meeting and event experience, Rich
continues to lead with research and best practices around the use of the web to create truly
integrated online-physical meetings and events, enhanced by social media. This continues his
work in pioneering the incorporation of event marketing into integrated marketing communications
approaches.
Strategic innovations such as these have been embraced by some of the most influential figures
in the business community. David’s leadership of the strategy work for IBM, for instance, was
critical to the agency’s win of the first ever EX Award for “Best Global Business-to-Business Event
Marketing Program.” And the Strategic Experience Mapping model has been cited by Cisco CEO
John Chambers as “setting the new industry standard.”
A former two-time president of the New England chapter of MPI, and international director, and a
participant in a long string of a variety of industry association initiatives, Rich has been an active
leader within the global organization and the industry at large. “It’s been incredibly gratifying to
see how strategy is increasingly being talked about as a must-have discipline with the
community,” says Rich. “The RISE Award is a great honor, and I take it as recognition of the fact
that strategy has been and will continue to be a transformative practice for our industry.”