Clarion Gaming managing director Kate Chambers has been at the helm of gaming exhibition ICE for almost 10 years, gradually expanding the show to occupy 38 of London ExCeL Centre’s 44 halls.
With more than 30,000 attendees at the 2018 show, the three-day event has overtaken Las Vegas-based rival Global Gaming Expo and recorded eight consecutive years of growth on Chambers’ watch.
Kate Chambers
The freedom Clarion has given her to express herself, she said, in turn has given ICE its unique flavour; a charisma that she says is difficult to boil down into its component parts but is unmistakable when you see it.
“It’s not about the size and scale of it, it’s about the loyalty,” she explains. “If every time they touch the brand, they can just fall a little bit more in love with it, then that’s all I want to do.”
This year’s “Spirit of Genius” theme celebrates the creativity and innovation of the gaming industry, likening it to trailblazing moments in history such as the invention of the light bulb or the contraceptive pill.
Some business-to-business event organizers might shy away from making such bold comparisons, but Chambers is no fan of understatement. With a set of team values including “we champion unconventional thinking” and “we love different,” originality is high on her agenda.
“I like to run consumer-led campaigns, rather than B2B campaigns. It’s about engaging with people on a different level”, she says. “There is a format which everyone else applies and I suppose my approach is to tear that up and just do it my way.”
Asked what the most challenging aspect of her role is, she is momentarily contemplative. “If you’d asked me that eight years ago, I would have had a very different answer…” she eventually says.
“Back then I would have said making people believe in me was the hardest thing to do because I came in and made a lot of changes. I don’t think that’s true at all now, it’s managing people’s expectations which is most challenging, whether that be my team at Clarion, or the industry.”
It’s true that ICE is unrecognizable as the show Chambers inherited almost a decade ago but in recent years the changes have been subtler and more iterative.
“I’m very conscious that when a show is at the top of its game, trying to keep it there is much harder work than at any other part of its lifecycle. It is an instinctive decision-making process about what’s right and what’s wrong and if you don’t know exactly what the recipe is, and you change something… that’s what keeps me awake at night”.
For now the ICE brand is flying; in the last two years it has been exported to Africa and the States, where, although the shows are smaller, Chambers says delegates can expect to find the same “content formula”, including seminars, country briefings, and Clarion Gaming’s hallmark Pitch ICE, which has launched several successful start-ups.
For those attending the London show this year, Chambers has two pieces of advice; “First, plan your visit and work out who you need to see”, she says.
“Then, once you’ve done the core business part of your trip; the meetings, the deal, whatever it is. Just stop and watch because round corner there’s something interesting going on.”
