We begin 2021 with a feeling that we are on the heels of a COVID-19 recovery. Though there is still a long way to go before we see a return to “normal” operations in the event industry, we’re feeling more and more confident that there are a few things we can count on being forever changed after this pandemic.
One positive thing to come from the COVID-19 pandemic is that it accelerated progress in some areas that were vastly in need of evolution.
Year-Round, Integrated Engagement Strategy
2020 taught us how to engage thoughtfully with a digital audience and we now see how crucial this will be to the success of future events. Although the return to in-person events is inevitable (and necessary for all of our sanity!) future events will now be more thoughtful about designing their engagement strategy with remote and in-person audience needs in mind.
There’s a lot of buzz about “hybrid”—or what we call integrated, events. And for sure, there will be some events that warrant serving both a remote and in-person audience simultaneously. However, with more events being conceived as completely digital from the start, we believe these fully remote engagements will continue to hold a place in the corporate event portfolio. In our minds, the real opportunity when defining your event strategy going forward will be to craft a year-round engagement strategy, using the medium of in-person or digital interchangeably, based on what will achieve the best outcome.
And while we all eagerly anticipate in-person events resuming, audience and company risk tolerance is still a big question mark. It remains unknown what will be required to ensure attendee physical and psychological safety, or what types of event experiences companies will deem worthy of funding for in-person travel and attendance.
As the event industry rallies to define the safe resumption of in-person events, our focus is instead on predicting and defining the experiences audiences will value enough to brave the risk of exposure to gather in person. We believe this will initially be smaller gatherings and highly-curated experiences that prioritize peer networking, facilitated conversations and exclusive access to products, solutions and experts. Additionally, internal sales incentives, kickoffs and in-person leadership and departmental offsites will likely be quick to resume in person. While standard presenter-led and “sit-and-get” and traditional educational content will largely continue to be delivered digitally.
All of the above reinforces our hypothesis that digital will remain a critical cornerstone of both attracting underserved audiences and attaining broad reach through an engagement that offers a lower, less costly, and safer barrier to entry--via our desktops.
Solving for Inclusion and Accessibility
COVID helped us crack the code on inclusivity and accessibility in ways we didn’t expect, but I hope are here to stay. In addition to the obvious benefits of reduced expenses and less time out of the office, individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities now have the option to attend more comfortably from a remote location. Additionally, consider social preferences, people who don’t enjoy a crowded conference experience, and digital natives who simply prefer to engage online. We learned from one of our recent surveys that 30% of audiences say that they will still prefer to engage remotely even after in-person events resume. The more we design with multiple, diverse audiences in mind, the better value we can offer to audiences and the deeper engagement we’ll experience because of it. This is arguably a compelling reason to keep digital in the mix of your event portfolio and experiences going forward.
Fast-Tracking the Event Technology Roadmap
The value of the data and insights digital events can generate has resulted in a fast-track investment by event teams in both attendee-facing software platforms and capabilities, and event marketing technology, data, and systems integration. Events, traditionally latent in advancing a sophisticated event technology roadmap, now have the attention (good or bad) of their IT or digital marketing counterparts. The opportunity to fully integrate event software and systems into the marketing and sales tech stack has never been greater. Contributing to the accelerating investment is the fact that prior to COVID, technology to enable a truly compelling digital, remote audience experience was seriously lacking (as in limited to essentially two “virtual” event platforms).
In the past 10 months, we’ve witnessed industry innovation at warp speed, with new technology players and traditional event agencies all racing to launch or reinvent technology platforms to fill the void left from the past 20 years. And we’ve seen equally compelling innovation coming from inside companies with event teams creating their own solutions by blending best-in-class software and platform solutions to deliver digital event experiences. See our case studies on Google, Cisco, ServiceNow and in our 2nd and 3rd editions of our Digital Event Forecast for a few examples.
There is certainly much to look forward to on this front, and those teams who are garnering support for the investment in event tech now will win in the future in deploying an integrated digital + in-person, year-round engagement strategy.
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Raising the Experiential Bar
Through this forced period of disruption, our industry has explored new depths of creativity and we’re now armed with additional insights and knowledge of what works and what doesn't in a digital-only environment. In the past few months we’ve seen teams take calculated risks on live hosts and moderators, breakouts and hands-on workshops, crowd-sourced customer testimonials, and highly-produced, aesthetically captivating keynote experiences. In an industry that has always been committed to executing highly produced, entertaining and engaging experiences, we can expect the bar to be even higher going forward. Differentiation and hyper-relevance have taken on an entirely new meaning. Curating meaningful connections through facilitated sessions, workshops and other small group engagements will be vital. Event professionals will need to create stronger value propositions than ever to attract and serve target audiences going forward as digital events endure while in-person events resume. The value exchange must be a win-win and as an industry, we will need to continue to push the limits on content and experience relevance in order to garner the attention and participation of either digital or in-person audiences.
Reimagining Speaker & Talent Engagement
Savvy speakers and musicians/performers have shifted to offer more creative structures to their engagements that include recorded content, intimate live performances from home, and other ways to increase the interaction with topics and influencers, both for in-person and digital events. Digital events have also allowed high-profile talent to avoid travel, public exposure, and other challenges of appearing in person, making speaking or performing remotely via digital events more attractive and lucrative.
Further, there is a higher tolerance for speakers specifically to engage in live Q&A in a digital format where it can be monitored in real-time for appropriateness. And lastly, speakers have realized they don’t need the traditional bureau/broker model. Sekou Andrews is one of those leading the charge in going direct to his buyer and creating greater efficiency and creativity in his engagements. Net-net, we think remote speaker and talent involvement in events through digital platforms will be one of those things that persist even after in-person events resume. And it offers those with smaller budgets an opportunity to engage top talent, often at a lower price.
What else would you add to the list? Is there something you see being forever changed in the post-pandemic 2021 event world? What are there must-haves that I haven’t considered?