Rejuvenating the WPPI show, with George Varanakis

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talked with George Varanakis, strategic advisor of the WPPI Photo Group, part of the Emerald Exhibitions company. Varanakis started his industry career at WPPI/Rangefinder and was among the team that built WPPI into a must-attend photography event. Now, after a sojourn into video-streaming and education startup, he’s returned to WPPI. In this interview, Varanakis shares the challenges and opportunities for growing events in the post-COVID market.

WPPI is part of the Photo X network of brands, which includes the Rangefinder publication and education and community with The Portrait System powered by Sue Bryce, The Portrait Masters, and The Wedding School.

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Transcript

Erin Manning  0:02  
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and School Photographers of America.

Gary Pageau  0:19  
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by George Varanakis is the strategic advisor of the photo group at Emerald. Hi, George, how are you today?

George Varanakis  0:34  
Gary, I'm great. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Gary Pageau  0:37  
We go back a few years. A few. But first, for those who don't know, what is the photo group at Emerald what does that encompass?

George Varanakis  0:48  
That encompasses WPPI, The Portrait Masters, the Portrait System by Sue Bryce Education, the new WPPI podcast that we launched two weeks ago and the portrait system podcast that is a part of the portrait system, educational membership group

Gary Pageau  1:08  
and also the venerable rangefinder and rangefinder. Yeah, so you got a mix of everything in there, you got publications, you've got online media, and you've got physical events. That's, that's hard to bring in. So I can't think of a better person to manage that than yourself. For those who aren't aware of people. I'm really I'm really putting it on thick, you're on it. So. So for those who may not know of you, what's your what, what is your background? Because you really have touched on every single one of those areas in the past?

George Varanakis  1:40  
That is very true. You know, I started out of college at Rangefinder selling advertising and an old magazine that used to be they're called Photo Lab Management.

Gary Pageau  1:53  
We competed against them back in the PMA days.

George Varanakis  1:57  
Yeah, so I was just a young snot-nosed kid back then selling advertising. And then I left and came back a couple years later, when Skip Cohen was named president, he asked me to come back and be the sales rep for the East Coast. Was there for 10 years watched the rise of W PPI go from? I think when I started it, we were at 3,000 attendees I think and then I left in 2012. I think we were around 15,000 attendees. Yeah, was quite a rise. And you know, those days with Rangefinder got I think, in 2007-08, we averaged around 250-300 pages. I mean, yeah, it was. They were great times back then. Yeah, that

Gary Pageau  2:43  
was really, you know, that was sort of at the tail end of the PMA days. And I remember that was sort of the WPPI was the hot show, right? That was the show you're competing with Imaging USA primarily for that market. And you guys really did a great job of creating a community around kind of the entry-level photographer, and then the photographers who would come in and mentor them, right. So there's that mentor-mentee kind of community that really just blew that show up.

George Varanakis  3:16  
It was, it was an unbelievable kind of trajectory of that show. It really did just blow up. And we just had such an incredible staff that you and I were talking earlier before about Skip, really being a visionary and Bill Hurter being one of the best editors, and you know, skipping billboard mentors to me, Arlene Evans, who I'm still working with after 20 years, which is pretty hilarious. Come back to WPPI. We really had an incredible run. It was we had a blast. They really had so much fun every day, coming up with new ideas and how to grow the show. That was really one of the best parts of my career really.

Gary Pageau  3:58  
And it showed it showed in the event. It was a joyful event. When you went it was a good time had by all but you chose to leave in 2012. And where did you go from there? You did something in the industry, but different.

George Varanakis  4:10  
I did. I went to Creative Live. And I was there for three years moved up to Seattle. Craig Swanson, who was the co-founder of Creative Live recruited me up there. And again, that was it was such a difference it was a completely different experience than what I had at WPI and rRangefinder. And then it was it was live streaming education. Right. And I was the head of education. So I was recruiting all the instructors. And then we did some really amazing events like Photoshop Week, which were basically kind of like our online conferences before there were really online conferences, right. We did photo week and those things were just huge flagpole events for us every year. It was a really fun to create as well. And I learned just a ton and then from there in 2015 In Craig and I, and Aaron Anderson, who is now the brand leader for the Photo Group, all kind of came together after creative life, and decided to start we started in 2016, the wedding school with Susan stripling, and Sue Bryce education and the portrait masters. And I was there for five, six years. And then we were acquired by Emerald in April 2021.

Gary Pageau  5:26  
What's interesting is you made the jump from kind of the physical space to the virtual space, the online learning space, which is, you know, for in that era, that was like anathema. You didn't, you know, the virtual people were almost a threat to the physical event people right there, because there's really not an idea that, you know, one was going to cannibalize the other. And I think what's happened is, it's been shown that they can enhance each other.

George Varanakis  5:58  
Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And we didn't do any physical events. Creatively, we did kind of some smaller ones. But really what we found when we launched diversification, and the portrait masters and then eventually launched the conference was the Sue Bryce education really fueled the portrait masters conference, it was all the members that now had a place to meet, engage, network, meet with vendors, and it just became our Super Bowl every year.

Gary Pageau  6:26  
Moving forward, you kind of come back home, you're back home to the WPPI, photo industry, people tend to come back home, you know, in the sense that it's a hard industry to get away from once you're embroiled in it. So but you know, you walk into the situation, it's post COVID, things haven't been great in the event space overall, a lot of you know, Photokina has been canceled, there have been some struggles in the photo world. But you've got a chance to assess the situation almost from the ground up in the sense that post-COVID, you can kind of see what needs to be done and act on it. What's your assessment of WPPI? And where is it going to be going in the near term?

George Varanakis  7:07  
That's a great question. You know, I bleed WPPI, I guess blue is it's always been the logo color, I think it's a teal. Now, having basically grown up at that show being there from 2002 to 2012. I learned so much back then. And I've always loved that show, and having the opportunity to come back. And just this full circle type of thing and see the show where it is today, the industry is different it is it's in a much different space than when it was 2012. But with that said, I think we've seen a lot of momentum of people wanting to come back to the show, I'll give imaging USA/PPA a lot of credit, they had a great show in January, and we're seeing some of that momentum carry over our show this year. So I'm really excited to where it goes to where the show goes. And where we end up attendance wise. But also, I mean, we came in in mid December. So there wasn't a ton of things we could do. But the things we did do, I think, enhancing the experience of the attendee, and also the vendors to want to make this more of an experience or show what we learned that the portrait series was an experiential show people wanted to be able to shoot and do your shooting the shooting days and do different things. And it keeps people engaged throughout those three days. Right, what we did is we brought in, we've got about 12, to 15, shooting Bay's that are gonna be on the show floor at WPPI. We've added more Photowalks, the Photowalks sell out fat, it's just unbelievable. We'll put them out, they sell out in 10 minutes, right? So what we're kind of seeing and learning is that people want that experience just walking up and down tradeshow aisles like they used to. That's not the future of really, I don't think any shows, but the show in particular, I think they just have to be a lot more experiential moving forward. And so that was the one thing that we really wanted to lean into having learned from the Porcha Masters is, let's bring more of an experience on the tradeshow floor. And for

Gary Pageau  9:09  
those who haven't marked it on their calendar, when is the WPPI show and where is it?

George Varanakis  9:15  
It's in Las Vegas, Nevada at The Mirage from March 5 through the ninth

Gary Pageau  9:21  
Okay, so it's coming up fast so you better get your tickets. The Mirage is a little different venue than the classic MGM why was that choice made? To me keep it in Las Vegas, obviously, because it's a great convention town. It's easy to get to rooms are affordable, and it's easy to get around in. But why did you change the venue from the classic MGM?

George Varanakis  9:44  
That's a great question. I wasn't here when they decided to move it. I think they went from the MGM to the Convention Center to the Mandalay and I think they realized that for going to the convention center and Mandalay that web APIs needs to be at a host hotel like one Hotel not with like, when you're at the convention center or at Mandalay, there's four other shows going on. And, you know, to really engage with that community, you have to have a home. And it's got to be the only show going on at that hotel.

Gary Pageau  10:13  
Plus to have a place where people can pull themselves aside and have a side conversation pretty easily or have or if a vendor wants to have a suite party or something like that. That's what can happen. I totally get that. So you've added the more experiential stuff that people said. So how would spend them response? You know, we're a few weeks out. Are there are there how's the buzz been on the show? Have you seen people coming in who have may have not been there the last few years because of the pandemic?

George Varanakis  10:44  
Yes, both attendees and vendors. We have Canon and Nikon who were there, I believe Nikon was there last year, but not the year before Canons and Fuji is in. I don't believe Fuji was there the last couple years. So that's really exciting that we have a lot of other vendors coming that happened in the last couple of years as well, I think the other thing that we really want to hit on is we're going to bring the energy back to this show. And if you remember, back, in the days of when it was in its heyday, there were 1000s of people at the front door ready to just pound that door down and get into the trade show. And so we added a DJ, we're going to be giving away a ton of free prizes, like there's going to be a lot of energy on this show, we've got the WPPI Lounge, which will be doing 20-minute demos on the hour. So those type of things I think are gonna bring a lot of energy to the show.

Gary Pageau  11:37  
Well, I think that sort of viewpoint is really what's necessary, because I think, you know, you can sit and sit in front of a screen and learn something which is not different from sitting on a chair in a, in a room, having someone speak to you, there's no a difference that so the difference you can make with a physical event, or a destination event is by doing hands-on doing tutorial doing short things, you know, just showing people things because, and I think photography is uniquely suited to that.

George Varanakis  12:03  
I would agree. I mean, really, it suited that more so than almost any other industry. I mean, you can sit there and watch a lighting demo and pick up things opposing demo, a Photoshop demo. There's all kinds of things that you can really showcase on the show floor for people to learn where they're not just like walking up and down. It's like you're learning you're shooting, you're getting this information from different instructors in the industry that you've looked up to your whole career. So I think that's what really lends itself to a positive experience at WPPI.

Gary Pageau  12:36  
So what about some of the other pieces in the Photo Group family? How are they fitting into the events? Opportunity?

George Varanakis  12:45  
That's a great question. So we're doing a special cocktail party for Sue Bryce Education members, the night before the show starts to really kind of engage them. And I think we have over 500 attendees, just from the Sue Bryce education side, as I said, we're adding a lot of shooting bays that are going to be styled by the portrait masters. We've got all the fun backdrops of the one that Annie Liebowitz uses Sue Bryce uses, and we'll have models in those shooting bays. So I think that's going to make the show enhance the show that much better.

Gary Pageau  13:19  
And then what are some of the other events or pieces of the photo group going forward? Like you said, you came on board in December? And there's really not much you could do, right? I mean, you could tweak some things, but you're probably looking, you know, April and beyond what's going to be what's your what's the plan? Sure.

George Varanakis  13:38  
Well, what we have done, I think the one thing that we really wanted to also lean into, and again, going back to things we've learned in the past was really reengaged this community. And so what we've done, we launched about a month ago, every Wednesday at noon, Pacific time we do a YouTube Live and we have Elena Blair hosting them. And it's basically bring on other instructors to kind of talk about their class at WPI. We give away prizes, we answer a lot of questions, because people have a lot of questions going into the show. So it's really kind of reengaged the community, we want to do more of that moving forward. And after the show, we'll probably do him once or twice a month. And then we also launched the WPPI podcast. We'll have the Portrait Masters Conference, which will be happening in Phoenix in September. And I believe that's September 12, through the 15th that is going to be a very experiential show, where we're planning to do you know, buses to Sedona to do shoots and you know, I go back to do different shoots. It's gonna be a very, very experienced experiential show and, you know, talking about the future, those are the type of things that I see WPI moving into as well is, you know, busting out to the graveyard of doing shoots like that and doing all kinds of just different types of hands-on learning throughout the show. We have a lot of it now. I think it's going to expand five to 10 fold for 24 and beyond.

Gary Pageau  15:06  
Because I think that's really where, again, the business opportunity is because you know, anybody is selling a product or has a service, it's, you know, the online stuff is great. And even a tradeshow booth is fine. But really until you can put something in the hands of somebody, let them work with a light work with a stand work with a background work with a camera body, you don't really know. So that's where I think event like a WPPI are extremely useful, not only for professionals, but for those getting into the business.

George Varanakis  15:39  
Oh, no doubt, you know, I think WPPI over the years has always been that show for the photographer that one to five years in business. I think Imaging USA is maybe a little bit more established right? Now it really goes to their show. I mean, I think there's room for both, but especially the newbies kind of coming in. And this has always been kind of a newer attendee type of show, newer photographer, this has a lot of things where you can learn on the show floor at the Photowalks in the seminar, so that that works well for WPPI.

Gary Pageau  16:13  
On one hand, this is a very traditional industry in the sense that, you know, photography has been around for, you know, over 100 years, 150 years, right. But the technology has changed. And there's always like new things that are happening. There people are trying to incorporate video and smarter things. Have you had to address that sort of attention where you have people say, No, I just want to have lighting, and posing and those kinds of things. And other people are saying no, you got to have how to edit a tic tock video or something like that. How do you deal with that tension?

George Varanakis  16:48  
That is a great question. We have to add, we do have a video track show we have I believe they've had it for the last few years. I think there's definitely more demand for those type of classes. And we'll be adding them for 24 in a much bigger way. Next year,

Gary Pageau  17:06  
for sure. I probably drones too, right. I mean, drones are like a crazy thing at weddings. It's almost like you're at somebody's storming Normandy or something with these things in the air whenever you go to a wedding now.

George Varanakis  17:20  
There have been drone photography classes, and we'll definitely look into it for 24.

Gary Pageau  17:24  
So it's just it's endless opportunity is what I'm hearing coming from you now, where can people go if they haven't registered for WPPI and need to get on the bandwagon this year? Where did they go?

George Varanakis  17:37  
Is the WPPIonline.com will tell you everything you need to know. And you know, we're gonna shake this up, this is gonna be really fun show, it's gonna be a different show than years past. It'll be a much different show moving forward, we recognize what's going on in the industry. And I think for this event to be really successful moving forward, it's going to turn into a much more experiential show. That's not only like, but you're also gonna see that type of thing, this show this year, cannons got shooting bays, in their booth, Fuji, or they're doing sponsored photo walks with like the look-alikes, and the cast of The Hangover. And Elvis is going to be marrying people. There are all kinds of these awesome, fun events. We're also bringing back the parties that they haven't had in years past. So it's going to be a really fun experience. It's also going to be a very educational experience for the attendees. So we're really excited, and the numbers have kind of really picked up over the last month. So I think we're gonna have a great show.

Gary Pageau  18:39  
Oh, great. Well, best wishes. George, thank you so much for being with us. And looking forward to keeping in touch and continuing to inform our folks about the opportunities with WPPI is photo group and have a great week and a great show.

George Varanakis  18:53  
Gary, thank you so much. I've been a huge fan of the podcast for years and I'm just really excited that you had me on so thank you.

Gary Pageau  18:59  
Thank you, sir.

Erin Manning  19:02  
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixela Society Podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.thedeadpixelssociety.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai