VIRTUAL AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg on The Road Ahead. Today I have three amazing guests. I have Erik Johnson from Katapult Events. He's the co-founder and president. I have Nick Farrell who's the vice president executive producer for TEK Productions. I have Dawn Stefanich, who is the head of digital engagement with BlueprintNYC. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Les. Thank you. Well, today we are talking about audience engagement for virtual events. And I know all of you have done virtual events. I'm 100% convinced that that is what we've been doing for the last few months. So we are going to talk about audience engagement. And one of the things I always wonder about is when people are watching on screen, do they get Zoom burnout or Teams burnout, or go to meeting burnout or all of the different platforms? And how do they have so many distractions? And we're really going to get into that and maybe some of the best practices that you've learned. But I'm going to start this question off. I'm going to throw it to Nick first. Nick, how much fun has it been during the last six months doing virtual events? I would say I would start off by saying fun might not be the word I would use to describe it. I think the we can all agree that the state of the industry is in such a way that fun is far from our minds, as we think about getting everyone on their feet and getting, working and engaging again, the I would say, you know, I get my problem solving, I get sort of that engagement and enrichment from the problem solving and the new challenges that we're facing. So that's where I get energized and stay motivated. So problem solving and coming up with ways to engage is what brings that's what your fun is. So I'm throwing this to Dawn. Same question during the last six months. Pandemic started around April and it's now December. Tell me, has it been fun? You know, I think it actually has been a lot of fun in some ways and obviously crazy at the same time. You know, we had a bit of a head start in this whole thing because we've done a lot of virtual events or elements of virtual events. So we had kind of the basis in place to deliver events virtually. But obviously we had no idea how much use we would get out of these tools and just how crazy it would get. But but it's been a lot of fun. Okay, so I've got kind of fun and a lot of fun now, Erik, take me home. Tell me about the last six months. Fun. Not fun. What do you think? Well, I agree with Dawn. I think crazy is the right word for it. Especially, you know, unlike Dawn, our the first time we had ever produced a virtual event was this past April. So just the challenge. And there's so much that goes into a virtual event that's not a physical that you don't think about in a physical event. So what we've had to learn to be able to pivot in such a short amount. Just a great skill set for all have moving forward as COVID. It sounds like what you just told me. We had a little bit of audio. Brooke is having to learn how to do these virtual events. That's been one of the most challenging things. So I'm going to go on that same topic and I'm going to throw it to Nick. Nick, what do you think is the most challenging part? Because you've got everybody who's watching from their two dimensional screen somewhere, whether it's at their office or at their home. And how do you categorize what was the most challenging part? I would say that, you know, the challenging part is for us, we have to adjust to a little bit of a new normal as it relates to the quality of production, which has been really hard for for all of us to, you know, no one wants to see webcams for hours on end. No one wants to see poor lighting or audio drop out due to, you know, internet connectivity issues, things like that. All the stuff that we're now faced with that's out of our control and a lot of a lot of ways. So I would say it's trying to figure out how best to deliver quality and bringing our clients along with us on the journey, because, you know, many of them, we've found that they're they're just happy to get the word out and the messaging out. And that is absolutely paramount. That's the goal. But let's see how we can elevate the process along the way and to convince them to come along and work with us to do that has been an ongoing journey. That sounds very interesting. Okay, same question, Dawn, what has been the most challenging part? And I know for your company, we have done lots and lots of virtual events. We have. What would you say? What is the most challenging part? Yeah, and I really like what Nick had to say. I totally agree with all those things being big challenges coming into the virtual world. And I'm not for another one, which is it kind of is at the very beginning of even thinking about virtual events. It's really shifting. The mindset of everyone involved has been the biggest challenge, I think, because, you know, at the beginning of this, when everyone was kind of like, you know, I need to do a virtual event, let's figure out how to do this. The approach was kind of, you know, let's take the content and the plans that we had for our live event, and let's just find a tool and just deliver it, deliver it on the tool, on the on the platform, deliver the same content, the same plans. And that just doesn't work. It doesn't work from an engagement perspective. And it it just isn't the right way to approach it. So, you know, you really need to rethink the entire experience from the very beginning to ensure that you get the engagement in the virtual space. Got it. That's very interesting answer. Okay. I'm throwing it to to Erik. Erik, tell me what has been the most challenging part? I think it's just the amount of pre-work that the show takes. There's so much more content creation on the front end. It's like a TV show. And then having to think about the web platform that sits on streaming out multiple languages, sorry, Les, but there's there's a lot of challenges to do it. Well, you know, it's not that. It's just it's interesting because, you know, multi-language, you know, distribution of sound, but based on what we've learned is that in a virtual world, the audience size gets much bigger. You know, we're dealing with the world and there's time zone issues, there's language. There's, you know, there might be a different message for a different group of people that are in Japan than the message that would go to Australia, or the message that would go to the people in England. So so it's kind of a it goes in the challenge column, you know, and and adding language to it. Okay. Back to Nick. Nick, could you tell us something you've learned in the last six months as a result of having to do all the things in virtual land? What? Give me give us 2 or 3 things that you've learned. Yeah, I think the first one is really would touch on kind of what Dawn was saying, the you can't go into this and say, I'm going to replicate the experience of a live event. It's just not going to happen. Right? So there has to be it's effectively learning that there's a whole new set of rules and measurement for success around a virtual event. It's its own thing. So focus within this now new delivery method to to bring the best product forward. That was a big learning. Many people would, you know, right out of the gate in March, April, May were saying let's just bring all our, you know, exactly what we were going to be doing in the live space. Let's let's do this online. And it doesn't work. So that is very much at the heart of this discussion today about audience engagement. So back to Dawn. Dawn, tell me something you've learned in six months of this, you know, conundrum of the pandemic. And your experience has brought you to saying, wow, we learned something new. Yeah, I one of the things that I, I think that we've learned is there really isn't an easy one stop shop to virtual events. You know, I think sometimes we look for these magic tools to do everything that we need them to do, and it just doesn't exist. And so I think what we've learned is you really have to look at what are the objectives of the event and what's, you know, what are they trying, what are they trying to do? What's their creative and find the right set of tools that helps them deliver on those objectives for the event. And then the next piece is then how do you bring all of that together? Because you have now all these disparate things. How can you bring all of it together in a way that's seamless to the attendee and easy for them to use? So that's that's kind of what we've been working on as, as a learning this. Okay. I'm going to throw it to Erik. Erik, can you tell me what you have learned about doing virtual events for the last six months? Yeah, I mean, what we've learned is that our client, normally the VP of events, needed a little help explaining to the sea level executive that rehearsals are still needed and that this is not a low key zoom. You know, we need to test with live remotes. And now that we've done a few with each of our clients, the executives get that that live. The virtual events take a whole lot of pre-work. Got it? Well, more than we thought. Let's just leave it at that. We thought we could load into a ballroom, have a tech day, have a rehearsal day and show day. And now we're dealing with so many other variables, especially the lovely internet, which decides sometimes it doesn't want to be our friend. Okay, I'm throwing this to Dawn because you had my interest on your last answer. Tell me the secret to. How have you found to keep the audience engaged? This is the essence of this podcast today. What you say now is the magic. Tell us. Share. That's so much pressure. Less. I know, I know, but this is a good stuff. This is the good, juicy stuff people want to hear. Yeah. And that's a really important it's a really important question. I mean, engagement is really the most important part of an event. I mean, obviously, otherwise why would we do it right? But it's also the trickiest to achieve. So I think, you know, it's important to plan the event entirely around keeping people engaged. And I think one thing that is easy to do right off the bat is really keep an eye on the length of the meeting. You know, we can't go into these and, and expect people to remain engaged for an entire, you know, eight hour day. So it's really best to keep it, you know, the meetings to a couple or few hours, even if it means spreading it out over several days. You know, another is to give your audience something to do while they're meeting, particularly if they're watching broadcasts or things like that. So, you know, things like polling and trivia, online chatting, breakout sessions, those kinds of things. And then lastly, it's, you know, we found that it's really important to break things up during these meetings with virtual games and stretch breaks and social feed activities and other kinds of fun activities like that. I want you to know, when I we did corporate events, I remember there were these videos of Hans and Franz when we went to a coffee break, that we were to pump you up, or they were these little kind of going to break fun things. So you're having to do that in a virtual world now to keep people engaged? Okay, Nick, same question. How do you keep the audience engaged? Yeah, it's funny because a year ago right now, I would be having these same kind of conversations with clients about how do you keep them engaged in a live ballroom audience space. So now, based on where we are delivering virtually, the discussion becomes even more difficult or the challenge becomes more difficult when it you know, I echo a lot of the sentiment of what Dawn brought forth there. I believe that I come from a broadcast background originally, and the need to think like a broadcaster and make better TV has never been more important, right? So it's all, if you're going to do that 45 minute to an hour and 15 minute long segment, and I wouldn't recommend, you know, keep it under that if ever possible, have have the right lighting, have more than one camera involved, have a little bit of more of a broadcast dynamic to it that would deliver a more engaging piece for that audience to stay focused on for longer is the one main piece, I would say. Do you know what? I only have a comment to that. We realize that any virtual event can't look like a Zoom or a Teams call or go to meeting call. It's kind of look a little different to have that different experience. And I think that's what you're commenting on about more of a broadcast experience. Erik, we're going to you to find out the same thing. What have you found that keeps your audience engaged? Yeah, our audience is mostly really love a they come from a physical event that was kind of like a corporate pep rally. So we we still bring in a DJ, kind of like a hype man. We hire MC talent because some of the executives don't want, don't really want that to be their job, to carry the energy. As Dawn was saying, we do a live chat. We do a lot of live interactive video walls, putting a lot of people on the screen simultaneously, giving them sales promotions to promote prior to the event. And if you do a certain amount, then you can get live on the wall. And so that's something that engages even the event ahead of time. And then kind of a funny one that we've learned is we also need to figure out when we don't want them to engage. So a lot of our clients are now putting like restroom and food breaks, literally on the agenda. Because if we tell them when there's going to be a restroom break, then we won't lose them when we don't want to lose them. That is very interesting. A bio break is in the schedule. That is something I just learned. Wow. You know, you always learn something. Now I'm going to actually learn that. That's right. Don't don't leave just yet. We've got a product a product to launch first before you, you know. But there's a restroom break in ten minutes. Okay, I'm throwing this to Dawn. How do you know your audience is watching with all the distractions we deal with? And that would be whether it's a pet at the house or the email or, you know, all the things that can happen and people when they're working from home. Yeah, that's a tough one, isn't it? It's it's hard to get people full attention while we're at home with kids in school. And like you said, pets and other things going on. And, you know, there's certainly ways to monitor for people's, you know, attention through through metrics and things that that you can manage and monitor. But I think we look at this a little bit differently than kind of monitoring for attention and, and all that. And so we we look at it as instead by to offer a lot of opportunities for the attendees to participate, which really helps them with engagement. So, you know, I mentioned earlier breakout sessions, they're a really good way to keep the audience members engaged through participation. So you can have small groups. They work together directly on something. They may present back to the larger team. And then again, there's there's all those ways to keep the audience interacting while listening to others speak like things I mentioned, like the polling and the trivia and those kinds of things. So rather than approaching it from a how do we ensure that there, there, there, we look at it and how do we make them want to be there? Wow, I love that. Sounds like a tweet. How do we make them want to be there? That's a good sales tweet. All right Nick, same question. How do you what does work best. You know, to get that high engagement and and how to how do we deal with these distractions. So how do you make sure that your audience that are watching your show are really watching? Yeah, I think the in the one to many scenario, when you're when you're doing a stream, you know, the chat features and polling etc. is a good way to know that a portion of your population is checking in. Or you can check check in with them as far as truly engaging them. And are they absorbing the content the way you want them to? It's harder in those situations. There's not a ton of accountability. People are at their homes. They're there by themselves on a computer. Right. So the smaller group interactions where there is accountable, where you are part of a team. So going to that that breakout idea or just discussion platforms where, you know, small think tanks breaking out off of larger meetings where people have to be present is a great way to to drive engagement. And also, you know, we believe that the information is better absorbed because they're actually walking it and talking it with each other. You know, they say the general session is for the big message, but most of the real learning happens in that breakout room when there's the smaller groups and there's a leader in that room who's really kind of where the rubber and the road meet. So interesting. Erik, same question. How do you what has worked to to know your audience is watching and the distractions we deal with? Well, one thing we did back in the spring that to combat distractions when the kids were home from school, is we helped them by designing a digitally downloadable coloring book for their kids. For an audience that we had. That was a bunch of stay at home moms. So try to help them with what we know would be their number one distraction. And then more recently, we took a full virtual event with 1800 people and put them all on live Zoom, on a huge live zoom wall across 700 LED panels. And pretty much everyone can see everyone all the time. So it was fully connected and you got to dress for the event because everyone can see if you're paying attention or not. You know, that was a super cool event. It's all I can say that when you did that, we we worked with you on it. Okay. Moving on. I'm back to Dawn. Dawn, what's the single toughest part about producing a virtual event? If you could just tell me simply, what is the single toughest part? You know of many tough parts of production and producing a ritual event. I would I would come back to that, you know, ensuring that everyone understands that a great virtual event isn't just about the tool or tools. It's really about starting with the strategy, looking at the creative, and then find the of tools that are that are right to support that. And if we can start off with that common ground, then I think we're doing pretty well. That was that's awesome. Okay, Nick, your same question. Tell me the toughest part. I think it's it's mostly getting comfortable with things that would normally make us uncomfortable, like the if I think about it at the execution level, where we're typically in the same space with our fellow technicians and folks that are helping to produce an event with the separation that we've been working in virtual space many times to produce events, it's you're trusting a lot more, right? So there's a lot of, as I said before, elements out of your control, first mile, last mile, all those things come into play that bring more risk into the process. And I think, you know, we can all agree that mitigating risk is one of our biggest priorities. In any event, we do. So we've had to get comfortable in spaces that otherwise we normally wouldn't have had to. I completely agree with you on the associated risk with the internet, the last mile, and I also the comment that you made about the technicians, not all texts can cross over from a live tech to be a virtual tech, because sometimes it's a very different experience and it's a you have to get used to that. Erik, could you tell me the toughest part about producing a virtual event? Less? I think it's just educating the client because they're new at this to to all the different aspects of what a virtual event takes and what they need to get from their other internal departments. It's different for their marketing team. It's probably different for their IT team with new needs, and they have to pass that along. So they're looking to hear all that from us and we're educating them. You know, that was really insightful because I think setting some type of expectations for a customer is super important. And I don't necessarily know anyone who's who's gone on this virtual journey, who really has some strong expectations of what the experience will be like. And then somehow after they do their first 1 or 2, they start to get their arms around it and expectations go into, I know what it's going to be like, and they get a little bit more comfortable as a presenter or someone who participates. This question is to Dawn. And if you look into the future, into your crystal ball as we wait for live events to return and they will return. What do you think will evolve in the next few months as far as either it's technology or engagement, or how do you think we're going to continue to make our virtual events better? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think first of all, I think outside of technology, I think we'll start to see a little bit more of a hybrid approach to events over the next six months. And we've actually started to see some of those or work on some of those already. So maybe it's, you know, small group regional meetings that connect to a larger virtual meeting, some things like that. So combination of virtual and live but with smaller groups live and of course with the right COVID safety standards in place. So I think you know that that I as I said, I'm seeing already and think that will that will continue. I think the second thing I would say that that is evolving is there's expectations. You know, we started this whole journey with Zoom and some things and cobbling together some things many of us have. And, and I think as we've moved now, many months later, there's expectations for even even greater productions and greater technology that that really stand out from the last one that you did. And so I think that will continue to evolve as well. Cool. Okay, Nick, take me into the future. What would happen in virtual events and how will they increase, get better, evolve over the next few months while we wait for the return of live? I think our relationship with virtual events is going to continue to evolve in a good way, because I think they're going to get better, they're going to get more focused and more effective, just based on the fact that we have so many smart people working in this space right now. So I think we've advanced the technology around all of this light years, whereas, you know, we've probably jumped 10 to 20 years in a heartbeat, if you think about it, based on adoption. That's interesting what you just said. So so first we had to adopt learning all these new techniques. And when once people already know them, then they can perfect and they can refine. That's and that is very much what's, what's happening now and with obviously with virtual with us for the foreseeable future and perhaps forever, it's only going to be a better product because of that. Do you know, I would say we had the last six months to try and get good at virtual because when we go back to live, we're going to have to do both. And and, you know, we won't have time to get good at it. So this is this is that time. Erik, would you opine as to the future of virtual while we wait for the live events to return? Yeah, thanks. I think that it's it's going more and more fully interactive. A lot of people want to do the two way video piece, and what we're seeing is our clients are sending attendees boxes ahead of time to to just create more engagement, maybe a small box in each side inside of the big box, and you open up a small box for each day, and it has props and things so that everybody can wear those funding glasses at the same time. Now that we can see everyone. So a lot of different, just more virtual, fully engaging ideas. You know that that sounds funny. I guess I'm ready for my box and my funny glasses. So this is my final question. I'm going to throw it to Dawn first. Dawn, I always end every podcast with when are we going to bring back live events? And please open in your crystal ball, because I don't necessarily know if there's a right answer here, but I'm willing to give you the shot of giving us the right answer. Certainly. So I think, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we're starting to already see a little bit of a hybrid approach to events. So there's some live, some virtual. And I think, you know, that that will continue over the next number of months. But I don't really think that virtual events will go away ever. Maybe. I think we're really seeing value in virtual events and seeing value in that. There's a place for for the virtual aspect of events. Not to say that live events won't come back, because they certainly will, because they certainly have value, but I think we'll start to look at event planning a little bit differently, and looking at the combination of things that we can do in the future. Do you have a date and time so I can put that on my stamp as to date and time at 12:00 on on what day will we be back in a ballroom? Just please. I'm in a ballroom. You know, I'm six months from now and laugh about it. I'm going to go with the 4th of July. That is my my wedding anniversary. I got married on the 4th of July. I can never forget that. Perfect that my wife and keeps me on that day. Whatever she wants is her deal. Okay. Same question to Nick. Nick, tell me when we're going back to the ballroom. Live events. Take me there. Yeah, I see, you know, we're seeing a lot more traction around just the thought of even bringing people into a space from a studio standpoint and then adding small audiences. We're, you know, we're seeing that that start to move a little bit, I think, in, you know, in any real traction is really going to come in second and third quarter. So second quarter would be April, May, April, May is when you'll start. There'll be more talk I think actual yeah I think that's when you'll start to to hear a lot more. And there'll be smaller group gatherings and it'll build from there. Okay. Well I just want you to. Dawn gave us a date July 4th. So you got to get bold on me. You have to give me a date. And if you go with April Fool's Day, it would just be appropriate because she picked the July 4th. But why did that be perfect? April Fool's Day. Okay, so we're going back to business April. I'm more in the June timeframe, so give me June 10th if this is going to be a 10th okay. There's going to be a prize. And once we figure the answer, as long as there's a prize involved we're going to do gamification right here. Okay Erik. Same question. Final question. When are we going to be doing live events. All right. Well, you always asked this question at the end of your podcast last, this may be a surprise to you, but just two hours ago, I walked out of a ballroom where we produced a hybrid event with 650 people in the audience. Today, we had to have a large grand ballroom to socially distance. They held them. We had about 1800 people on the stream, albeit we're at a resort in Cancun, so we're not in the States. If you ask me about the States, I would say I have two clients that are expecting to do hybrid events in April. My crystal ball, I'm going to say the winter COVID rush will be down enough that we'll do hybrid events on April 15th. Okay, Nick, I want you to know there's a four day window. You said April 10th or 11th. No, you said June. You said June. I'm sorry. June. So. So you're the most optimistic. I'm taking your optimism and I'm appreciating it because we all want to get back to the ballroom and continue doing all these virtual events. I want to thank all three of you. You all are amazing, and you contribute to all the different types of events that are happening now. I want to thank you, Erik, who just came out of a ballroom. I want to thank Nick. I want to thank Dawn. You all are awesome. Thanks for joining my podcast today. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead, everybody. Good job. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks, Les.