It's not just about CA World being canceled, its how and when it was done. The message to customers stated that refunds would be given for pre-purchased tickets to CA World 2019 and 2020. There was no proper message conveyed to customers on why this is happening, leaving them to speculate the worst. The messaging projected defeat, all but saying everything is over when it could have been phrased as positive.
CA could have easily formatted the message to spin it as a positive thing, or at least try, but no effort was made at all. Say we wanted to include Broadcom but there was not enough time, say we wanted to include new combined offerings but there was not enough time. They didn't need specifics, just a positive tease.
We sent a horrible message that our competitors are seizing on. They are using our own words as an advertisement for their solutions. How much time, effort, and money went into the Modern Software Factory campaign that no one cared about? But for a pivotal moment like the cancellation of our major customer event that we hype 24/7/365 we apparently let an intern sent out a sh-- email before they left work on a Friday?
How many deals closing soon included a trip to CA World as an incentive? How do you think our notification email read to them?
How many of those whole received that email immediately called their reps? And what message did CA provide to the reps to reassure their customers? None. So you have multiple "excuses" flying around making the reps look like liars.
Of course CA World cost way too much money. But how much is your reputation worth? If anything, we should have increased spending on this one. What's a few million dollars when your customers are rethinking their investment in CA?
Unless you don't care because it really is going to be a fire sale.