What'cha Drinkin'? with Anastasia Ioannou
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Dan Quirk:
Hello and welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’? I'm Dan Quirk, VP, Marketing at Quirk’s Media. Today I'm interviewing Anastasia Ioannou, general manager of Informa Connect. Hi Anastasia, how are you this morning?
Anastasia Loannou:
Doing well. How are you?
Dan Quirk:
Well, I have to start out our interview by asking what are you drinking?
Anastasia Loannou:
Well, I'm having a coconut spritzer right now. Nice refreshing beverage.
Dan Quirk:
Oh, that sounds wonderful. Since it's, it's not really, I guess early morning, but since this morning I have my coffee with in my favorite mug, which is Criticism, cheerfully ignored.
Anastasia Loannou:
Love it.
Dan Quirk:
I'm actually at work, but the office is empty right now and I get tired of always being in an empty workplace so I pulled out our mascots from our events, set up behind me. So these are from our previous events where we have just different characters wander around and I thought, well, it keeps my office Interesting.
Anastasia Loannou:
So looks like great company.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, yes. So what I wanted to ask you, you've been in the event business for more than 15 years, and what I wanted to ask you is, it's a strange time. I know none of us have ever lived through this, but how are you keeping your event community engaged at this time?
Anastasia Loannou:
Yeah, well this definitely has been quite a challenge as an event producing company having to really rethink what we were doing. And we had a number of events which we actually had scheduled to take place during lockdowns that we had to either postpone or shift to digital. So we've been focusing a lot on engaging with the community through digital, pretty much what everyone else is doing, connecting on Zoom, meetings having webinars. So we've launched a number of digital weeks, which are in-depth content experiences for our community to keep them engaged. And we're doing that throughout our portfolio. So very heavily focused on the market research community, but as well as some of our other communities. And we're coming up with innovative ways to get people to stay connected in a time where what people need the purpose of connection.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, yes. Well, and I don't think other people understand the stress that this has put on event companies. And I know pharma is, if I'm not mistaken, the world's largest producer of events. So this has definitely been a stressful time. And it's amazing though how quickly companies can adapt. And I think about where we were six weeks ago. I think I saw you at our Brooklyn event, and now where we are today, it's just amazing. So hopefully it's just temporary.
Anastasia Loannou:
So yeah, we all hope so. Yes. But of these challenging times, the best innovations are get developed, so let's see what we make out of this.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, exactly. So now we move to the part of the interview where I have a box and I have questions in it, I’ll randomly draw out a question and then read it to you and see what you have to say. Your question is, what is the one thing you're going to do when COVID-19 is over? And I know you are in New York City, which is really a hotbed too, so I'm sure you have some really interesting thoughts on that.
Anastasia Loannou:
Yes, so I am living in New York City, so being locked down has been quite a challenge. Obviously, everyone wants to see their family, aside from that, the first thing I would love to do is go where the weather's nice, onto a beach and just get a tan. I miss getting the sun on my skin. Being locked up in this apartment has definitely been a challenge.
Dan Quirk:
Yeah, I can relate to that a little bit. I live alone, not in a small place, but that's why I come into work still because it's like if you can't get out in some way, you'll just absolutely go insane. Well, I want to thank you so much for participating in this. I wish you guys the best of luck. I know that we're sort of competitors, but we're also partnered, but we're all in this together and I just really want to make sure that everybody in the research industry comes out ahead at the end of this. Well, if not ahead at least comes out safe, healthy and can survive and that's why I wanted to reach out to you today.
Anastasia Loannou:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this and it's always great spending time with you, whether it's virtual or in person, and working with Quirk’s has always been amazing. So thank you.
Dan Quirk:
Well, thank you so much and let's do dinner hopefully soon.
Anastasia Loannou:
Yes, I'd love it.
Dan Quirk:
All right. Bye.
Anastasia Loannou:
Bye.