Will Rogers once said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.” Stewards of great brands have this mantra practically tattooed on their foreheads, and go to great pains to protect their brand assets. There’s a reason Tiffany hasn’t changed the color of their box (trademarked as Tiffany Blue) since the mid 1800s.

What we’re witnessing now is a master class on how to destroy a brand in record time. A series of seemingly premeditated steps is tarnishing America’s reputation as a top destination for tourism and events. And the collective response is shockingly tepid.

In today’s newsletter:

• Opportunities & Updates

• How to Destroy A Brand

• A Playbook for Undermining Brand USA

• Making America Less Appealing

• Increasing Costs & Uncertainty

• Adding Friction to Points of Entry

• The Impact

• Response

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Opportunities & Updates

• In its fourth major acquisition this year, PA-based Clair Global has acquired Milwaukee-based production services and systems integrator Clearwing.

• Hyve Group has been on a tear this year. It’s recent acquisition of GSV Summit is its 5th deal in 2025.

• Condé Nast Traveler turns their sites on the incentive industry with it’s August 6th article The Extravagant Rise of the Corporate Incentive Trip. As usual, Padraic Gilligan has an insightful take on this.

• On September 15th I’ll be interviewed by Miguel Neves at the Skift Meetings Forum in NYC on how buyers value event businesses, and the state of event industry M&A in general. 

• On October 7th I’ll be leading a session on M&A at the SITE (Society of Incentive Travel Excellence) C-Suite Agency Summit during IMEX America.

• I’m advising an event production company (creative, scenic, staging, lighting, sound, etc.) on a roll-up. We’re looking for companies with around $1M in EBITDA. To learn more, email me here.

How To Destroy A Brand

Strong brands confer a premium. Tiffany can charge more for their jewelry because of the reputation they’ve built, embodied by their signature blue boxes with white silk ribbons. Great brands are carefully guarded. Missteps can damage decades of good will, and are often irreversible. Witness the following examples that now serve as business school case studies on what not to do.

• HBO had carefully cultivated a reputation for quality programming, so much so that actors, directors and writers typically took far less money to have their shows air on HBO because of the gravitas the network commanded, as evidenced by the record number of Emmy nominations it garnered. Despite that, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery seemingly made every effort to undermine HBO’s brand cachet by engineering it’s very own identity crisis: HBO > HBO Go > HBO Now > HBO Max > Max, and back to HBO Max last month. Only time will tell how much damage this has done, but it’s already squandered a decent chunk of brand equity.

• Everyone knows the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC. But up until 2002 the group was actually a Big Five, Arthur Andersen being the fifth, with 28,000 employees and revenue of nearly $10 billion. It took a single scandal - as auditor, they signed off on energy giant Enron’s fraudulent reporting of $100 billion in revenue - to collapse the entire firm.

• In 1985 Coca Cola took the bold - and nearly suicidal - step of changing the century-old formula for Coke by launching the ill-fated New Coke. The public backlash was swift and brutal; within three months the company reversed course and re-introduced the original product as Coke Classic. This is one of the few examples where a brand survived a colossal blunder, but only by quickly recognizing and correcting their mistake.

A Playbook for Undermining Brand USA

[NOTE: In this article I’m referring to “brand USA” as the image America puts out into the world - and its impact on tourism, travel, meetings, and events - and not the destination marketing organization Brand USA, though the two are surely intertwined.]

With several marquis events taking place here - 2026 World Cup, America 250 (the country’s 250th anniversary) and the 2028 Summer Olympics, to name a few - we should be pulling out all the stops to showcase the United States. And coming on the heels of the U.S. recovering from the Covid-era disruptions faster than any other country (October 2024’s cover story in The Economist featured America’s economy as “The Envy of the World”), we could be ushering in a new golden age of tourism.

Instead of capitalizing on all this positive momentum and putting out the biggest and most beautiful “Welcome” mat, however, the Trump administration seems determined to erect giant “Keep Out” signs. Whether that’s their intent or not, it’s certainly the result of their actions.

And based on those actions thus far, one could assemble the following playbook for attempting to totally undermine the value of Brand USA.

Step 1: Make America Less Appealing

• 1.1 Gut Brand USA’s budget from $100 million to $20 million, kneecapping one of the leading advocates for bringing tourism, events and business to the U.S., despite warnings from the U.S. Travel Association that it would “significantly impact every sector of our industry”. Ignore industry voices, like Travel Technology Association CEO Laura Chadwick, who says that the Big Beautiful Bill “unfortunately cuts funding for Brand USA at a time when the U.S. should be doubling down on promoting tourism, not pulling back. With major global events like the 2026 World Cup . . . on the horizon, this is a critical moment to strengthen — not weaken — our international marketing efforts."

• 1.2 Have masked ICE agents conduct roundups of suspected migrants like a “modern day Gestapo”, creating viral social media clips that “force the cancellation of summer festivals”. Randomly interrogate people going to work and demand they show proof of citizenship, prompting companies like Serendipity Labs to draft policy statements to guide employees on how to respond when this happens.

• 1.3 Be rude to entire countries and their leaders to rile up national pride and stoke anti-American sentiment. And do it publicly, on social media and from the White House. Talk about making Canada the 51st state and annexing Greenland from Denmark. Make derogatory comments about Europe until their perception of the U.S. plummets. Make tourists and event planners from other countries so enraged that they willingly boycott the U.S.

• 1.4 Launch a series of attacks on science, causing the scientific community to question the efficacy of hosting medical conferences and science-based meetings in the U.S.

Step 2: Increase Costs and Uncertainty

• 2.1 Increase costs on a broad range of goods by imposing tariffs on just about every country in the world, with no rhyme or reason. Include Canada and Mexico (ignore the USMCA that the first administration negotiated to replace NAFTA).

• 2.2 Resume ICE raids on hotels and restaurants, causing a negative impact on tourism, driving up labor costs in a hospitality sector already battling a hiring crisis.

• 2.3 Be highly unpredictable on tariffs and other policies to create an aura of uncertainty that makes it difficult for companies to make plans. Cultivate an economic environment that causes a good chunk of budgeted event spend to “sit in limbo”, as marketers shift from to a “wait and see” approach.

Step 3. Add Friction to Points of Entry

• 3.1 Impose a new $250 Visa Integrity Fee, despite the U.S. Travel Association saying it would cause “significant challenges.”

• 3.2 Detain, search, interrogate and, in some cases, lock up, a number of visitors at border crossings and other entry points. It can be a relatively small number, as long as the incidents go viral and lead to “global events relocating to regions with more predictable entry policies.”

• 3.3 Require visitors to the U.S. to set their social media privacy settings to “public” so CBP personnel can go through their posts upon entry to the country.

The Impact

The full impact of these actions will take some time to appear, as it takes time for them to work their way through the economy, and the effects on events still in their planning cycles have yet to surface. However, signs are already appearing.

On January 9, 2025 international travel to the U.S. was forecasted to increase 8.8%. As a result of actions taken over the past six months, that number has completely flipped. On July 22, Tourism Economics now sees an 8.2% decline.

At a recent Club Ichi Sounding Board meeting, participants expressed “raw, unfiltered concerns about the second half of the year.” Inboxes are slowing down. Many budgeted events are sitting in limbo and hitting ‘pause’ as clients wait until things settle down.

It’s important to distinguish between the cumulative effects of these actions on the U.S. event industry and the global event industry. I, and most people I speak to, am extremely bullish on events in general, as there are numerous structural trends favoring events right now and into the future, which I detailed in my recent Tailwinds post.

So any degradation of the United States as a destination will be offset by the organizers simply relocating that event elsewhere. Thus, while the net impact to the global industry is zero-sum, the U.S. is on the losing end of this equation. As an example, despite having 45% of its revenue come from the U.S., Informa just increased their 2025 revenue growth projections from 5% to 6%.

As Skift Meetings reported, the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis saw a 25% attendance drop at their annual convention in Washington, DC this past June, from 6,000 to 4,500, driven by a 55% decline in Canadian registration and 30% drops from the U.K., France and the Netherlands. The biggest reason cited? “A growing discomfort with the U.S. political environment.”

“We’re in the midst of considering whether the U.S. is the right destination for an international meeting like ours,” executive director Thomas Reiser said.  “It’s an unfortunate situation. The way the U.S. is perceived is having a real impact in the scientific space.” Think about that for a moment. Because of our diminishing reputation, DMOs around the world can now thank us for putting a chunk of events like this - that were previously headed to the U.S.- in play.

Response

It’s been pretty discouraging seeing the relatively listless response from the events industry. Legacy trade associations have been shown little leadership in the face of the steady barrage of barriers this administration seems determined to erect to dissuade events from coming here. A far cry from the muscular response they mounted against bathroom bills, religious freedom laws and other DEI-focused restrictions from several years ago.

One of the event industry’s few advocacy groups, the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance, celebrated the passing of the OBBBA, citing wins on topics like expanding Pell Grants and 529 Plans to cover training and professional certifications - a good cause for sure - but made no mention of the severe cuts to Brand USA’s operating budget. Given how effective ECA has been, it would be great to see them advocate for making America more appealing to international events and visitors.

To be clear, restoring Brand USA’s budget will not solve the problem. We could double their budget - and probably should - but there’s only so much a DMO can do when the president continues to publicly antagonize their potential customers. The leadership team there is excellent, but they’re being asked to do their jobs with one hand tied behind their backs.

Conclusion

Obviously there are many factors that drive an industry as large and diverse as events. And the numerous tailwinds propelling the events industry are very strong, mitigating much of the damage of these actions. It’s entirely possible that the combination of tax cuts and reduced regulation in the OBBBA will overcome much of this friction, and the impact of AI looks to be an enormous net positive disruptor.

Still, I can’t help thinking there’s a way to implement the administration’s policies without the harmful rhetoric and chaotic public spectacle that are doing so much damage the United States as a global brand.

Here’s to taking your event business to the next level!

Howard Givner
Senior Advisor | Oaklins: DeSilva & Phillips (M&A) email me
CEO | Heathcote Advisory Group (Consulting) email me

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Catch up on recent articles:

• The Canceling of Colbert and the Rise of the Creator Economy - Events Ecosystem

• The View From Private Equity: Truelink Capital’s Luke Myers on the GES Acquisition, Investing in Events, and Why Deals Collapse

• Tailwinds

• Preparing Your Event Business For Sale

• 15 Agency CEOs Walk Into A Bar . . .

If and when you’re ready, here are ways I work with event business owners:

• Business Coaching & Owner Accountability

• Business Diagnostic & Company Valuation

• Growth Consulting

• Exit Planning

• M&A (Buy Side & Sell Side)

Wanna chat? Email me, or schedule an intro call.

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