October 28, 2020 • 47 mins
Event marketing may never be the same after COVID-19. A world of in-person events was forced to migrate to virtual almost overnight. The impact was an exploding world of virtual events, where many left the attendees missing in-person events. It's safe to say online meeting fatigue and the lack of human interaction is having a drastic impact on field sales and marketing teams, but not all is lost.
In this episode of The Summit, special guest Aubri Nowoweijski covers the changing landscape of event marketing. She'll share insight on:
- Picking the best software for your budget
- How to create an unforgettable experience
- Creating a connection and pulling off an event people want to come back to
About Aubri Nowowiejski
Aubri Nowowiejski (No-Whiskey) is an award-winning event producer. She specializes in virtual, in-person, and hybrid experiences at Coterie Spark; a global meeting and event management firm based in Houston. Aubri earned her degree in Mass Communication with an emphasis in Public Relations from Texas State University. She began her career in corporate America as a Trade Show Coordinator and worked her way up to Marketing Manager before joining Coterie Spark as an Executive Producer. When she's not planning events, public speaking, or supporting her family brewery, her hobbies include hot baths, collecting crystals, walks with her pup Habibi, and playing dominoes with her Nana.
About Kyle Hamer
A sales and marketing veteran with a deep understanding of strategy, digital marketing execution, and using technology to enhance brand impact. A hands-on leader with a passion for solving business challenges with process, operations, and technology. When Kyle's not tinkering on businesses, you'll find him spending time with those he loves, learning about incredible people, and making connections.
About Hamer Marketing Group
Market growth for a new product or service is often limited by market distractions, unreliable data, or systems not built to scale. Hamer Marketing Group helps companies build data-driven strategies focused on client acquisition and sales development supported by the technology and operations necessary to create profitable growth.
Helping B2B SaaS companies use technology to create unforgettable sales and marketing funnels.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyle Hamer (00:00):
Welcome to the summit, a podcast focused on
bringing you the knowledge andinsight for industry leaders.
I'm your host, Kyle Hemer andI'm on a mission to help you
exceed your potential.
As a sales guy, turned marketer,I am passionate about building
sustainable businesses, andthere's one thing I've learned.
You won't find an overnightgrowth scheme, shortcut to
success, or a way to hackyourself to the top.
(00:22):
Nope.
Success is the by-product ofgreat relationships and we're
here to help you unlock thatsuccess.
One conversation at a time.
Aubri Nowowiejski (00:29):
I mean the worst thing that you can do is
do nothing at all.
I think there are so many peoplewho fell into that camp that
thinking, Oh, surely things aregoing to be backed by Q3 Q4 of
this year.
And the reality is that is notthe case.
You absolutely have to govirtual at this time.
Kyle Hamer (00:46):
Hi, I'm here with my good friend Aubri, Nowoiejski.
What a great last name, Aubri.
Welcome to the show.
Aubri Nowowiejski (00:55):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Kyle Hamer (00:58):
Um, so Aubrey is a, production manager would like
tell us a little bit aboutyourself, who you are, what you
do and in, you know, how youmake the world go round for you.
Aubri Nowowiejski (01:08):
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Uh, title is executive producer.
I work for coterie spark.
We're a global meeting and eventmanagement firm.
That's based in Houston, Texas,but again, we do events all over
the world and we specialize inin-person virtual and hybrid
experiences specifically.
Kyle Hamer (01:31):
I would imagine
Aubri Nowowiejski (01:32):
Holy smokes.
Yeah.
A lot of the industry isdefinitely evolving, but if
there's any industry that can,you know, think on their feet, I
would say event professionalsand event industry in general.
Uh, we're, we're tackling it asbest we can.
Kyle Hamer (01:48):
Awesome.
Well, today you and I are goingto talk a little bit about, uh,
the, the world of events, theworld of changing world of
events.
You can just kind of like, Imean, I would assume it's the
day in the life of, of, of Henribecause have there been two same
days in the last six months,
Aubri Nowowiejski (02:04):
You know what, this is why I chose this
career path, because I don'tlike any days that are the same.
And quite frankly, it's nodifferent than pre COVID to now,
like with, there's always a newchallenge, which my motto in
life has challenges areopportunities and disguise, and
that's actually how we'reapproaching this whole situation
with COVID from the very startfrom the first contract
(02:25):
cancellation with one of ourclients to present day and
looking out to 2021 and 2022events.
What does that looking like?
Um, and, and yeah, I'm, I'mexcited about the challenge.
Kyle Hamer (02:37):
Well, and I don't want to spend too much time
going backwards because I thinkeverybody's kind of lived it,
but there are a couple of thingsthat I think are really, um, are
unique and interesting aboutwhere the events space is at.
You know, you have differentsized organizations trying to
figure out how to be agile andnimble, right.
Um, organizations like inbound,they just completed their first
(02:57):
fully virtual event.
And, and for them, that wasprobably a little bit easier
because maybe they had theresources versus a, um, a small
association who historicallymight have only ever done things
in person.
You know, they have smallergroups of folks and trying to
figure out how to continue todeliver and provide that value
of that membership value thatnow all of a sudden they can't
(03:19):
do what, what have you seen askind of been the, the, you know,
one or two takeaways, like bigaha moments for organizations of
various sizes over the last sixmonths where it's like, Oh, this
is how we can address it andstill provide value.
Aubri Nowowiejski (03:35):
Right?
I mean, the worst thing that youcan do is do nothing at all.
I think there are so many peoplewho fell into that camp that
thinking, Oh, surely things aregoing to be backed by Q3 Q4 of
this year.
And the reality is that is notthe case.
You absolutely have to govirtual at this time.
A lot of, uh, hotel properties,especially if you had larger
gatherings are limited tobetween 50 to 250 people max and
(03:58):
that's with strict socialguidelines as far as social
distancing guidelines.
Um, and so that really in manyways inhibits the program that
you probably previouslyenvisioned.
So keeping that in mind, you,you really do, especially for
larger events need to take thosevirtual or even for your smaller
then.
So, you know, there there's somepeople who do not feel
comfortable getting out inperson.
(04:18):
And quite frankly, you do wantto look out for the best
interests of your membership,your leadership, who, whoever is
attending your events.
So, um, that is the biggesttakeaway is to do something and
not nothing.
And I think people need toembrace this new, it's not a new
tech age has we're already inthe tech age, but these tools
(04:41):
have been available and haven'tbeen utilized for their full
capabilities before because youknow, nothing compares to
in-person and I'm not making theargument that, you know, virtual
is the same as in-person or as,even on the same level, it's,
it's completely differentexperiences, but you do need to
work with what you have.
And there is a really awesomeand unique ways to build
(05:02):
connections and to somewhatemulate and replicate what you
would have as an in-personexperience.
So I guess the next takeaway isto get creative as well.
Kyle Hamer (05:12):
Well, it's, it's, it's interesting area.
You talk about getting creativebecause I would assume that as
an executive producer, like nosingle day is the same and your
job is different depending onthe client and their particular
needs.
But my, my summer experiencewith, you know, with several of
these, um, courses that haveearned a courses, but these
events that have migrated froman in-person destination, you
(05:35):
know, highly driven by whatyou're going to experience when
you get there to some sort ofonline engagement experience,
and it's not the same.
And how do you try and replicateit?
Some have been very, verysuccessful and some have been
well, frankly, pretty terriblein, in, in unimpressive.
And it's not really budgetspecific for, for your clients,
(05:57):
the clients that can't do thein-person event, what are the
things that you're helping coachthem think about, tell them that
to consider, as I say, okay,Hey, I can't do the same rubbing
elbows, shaking, hands going andgetting a coffee after the event
type of networking.
And in in-person experience, howdo you help them reset their
expectations?
(06:17):
Or how do you help frame it sothat they can create an event
that is successful virtually,
Aubri Nowowiejski (06:23):
Right.
I think the first thing that youhave to understand is there is a
difference between a virtualevent and a webinar.
I think everyone's experience,you know, pre COVID was just
with a zoom webinar.
And although you can use zoomand create an event, the
differentiation is theexperiential enhancements is
(06:43):
what we call it, right?
So, um, you need kind ofmultiple components to your
event.
You need the event platform.
Um, sometimes you need thestreaming tool in addition to
the event platform.
So zoom is kind of one and all,but when I'm talking about,
about platforms, I'm talkingmore about sophisticated HTML
websites that are built anddesigned to kind of host larger
(07:06):
events where you haveintegrations with these
streaming platforms.
Um, and then again, you needyour experiential enhancements
on top of that.
And so experiential enhancementscan run the gamut between having
a Lama pop-up surprisingly inone of your zoom calls or in,
you know, a virtual platformthat you have.
You can have different winepairing and tasting events, um,
(07:28):
virtual entertainers, whetherthat's MCs or magicians or taro
card readers.
I mean, there's so manydifferent things.
If you think about an in-personevent, let's say it was a social
event.
What are the components youwould have?
You'd have a photo booth, Hey,guess what?
There are virtual photo booths.
You would have a, uh, you know,FNB, so food and beverage, so,
(07:48):
Hey, can we pre mail themsomething?
Or can we email them a giftcertificate to door dash or grub
hub and have them select whatthey want and get it delivered
to their home.
So there are so many differentthings you can do as
experiential enhancements.
I think another part ofeducation is on budget.
So I think a lot of people justassume that, Oh, we're going
virtual.
So it's going to be free becausewe can use the limited zoom
(08:11):
account and still have X numberof people on there.
And the reality is that if youtruly want to produce an event,
you've got to put some moneytowards that.
Now more than ever an audiovisual production team is an
essential element to any virtualevents, because that is what's
bringing the show value, theproduction value to keep people
(08:31):
entertained.
Um, especially when there's somuch zoom burnout right now.
I mean, like again, justunderstanding that difference
between a webinar and a trueevent and experience and how to
create that,
Kyle Hamer (08:43):
You know, I'm going to, I'm going to echo that just
from my, my experience, therewas a, there was an event that I
attended for a, a fairly largesoftware company.
And I was, um, I was, uh, youknow, not vested interest.
I was just doing some studyingof what was working, what wasn't
working.
And what I thought was really,really interesting is this
company had taken the time andthe money to invest in an emcee,
(09:05):
right?
They wanted to have this largerthan life personality, open up
and create an experience, whichI was really excited for.
And then during the openingkeynote, we went from
prerecorded MC to prerecordedsenior leadership.
And it was like, one minute wewere, we were watching Tigger on
(09:27):
the screen and the next minuteit was ER, and the, the, the
complete energy change that fastwas that nobody had really
thought about the productionvalue of, Hey, we're going to
keep the energy up, or we'regoing to maintain a level of
energy.
We're going to do something sothat we can transition so that
it makes sense emotionally orthematically so that we can
(09:49):
match these, these tones andtimbers.
How do you help companiesthrough that thought, like,
they've never done a productionbefore, right?
They've not actually produced ashow.
How are they, how are they,where do they begin?
How do they prevent that fromhappening?
Aubri Nowowiejski (10:05):
Right.
And, you know, it's evolved evenas COVID has taken place.
So originally it was straightlocked down.
So everybody was in their home.
The only real option was to maila camera, kit, a studio K with
the lighting, the audio, thevideo to that person's residence
.
And they're going to shoot fromtheir living room or wherever
they can hardline it.
Right.
Um, now things have started toopen up a little bit, so we can
(10:25):
get back into actualprofessional studios and kind of
have a PR professional set, uh,that you're broadcasting from.
And they are implementingamazing social distancing
measures, where really, you justhave the camera, man, you've got
your prompter and you've got theperson who's being interviewed,
or if there's multiple peoplethere they're spread out.
And everybody's in mass, ofcourse, uh, except for the
person presenting, they'll takeit off when it's time to
(10:47):
present.
Um, that is definitely a notchup on the production.
There are different platforms aswell, stream yard being an
example where you can, uh,really kind of animate if you
will, your production and that'stransitions in and out.
That's lower third banners ofpeople's names and titles or
bottom bars that prompt peopleto, you know, contribute to the
(11:10):
poll, vote on the poll, or, youknow, make a comment in the
chat, those, those kinds ofthings, um, that can definitely
add a level of enhancement to,to your production.
I think linking up with an eventmanagement firm, an audio visual
partner, whoever you might haveused for your in-person events
in the past, almost every singleone of them have had to pivot
during this time.
And they are surely tech savvy.
(11:32):
This is just another, uh,element or aspect of the
technical capabilities that theyhave.
And they can advise you throughthat.
Having a show flow and a showscript, it was just as important
as in-person for in-personevents, but it's extremely
important for, uh, for virtualevents as well.
And making sure that you have anopen line of communication.
Sometimes that's a secondarySlack channel.
It could be a WhatsApp chat,different ways to communicate
(11:54):
between the people who arebackstage virtually, and those
who are watching the forwardfacing platform.
So there, there is a biglearning curve I would say.
And that's probably the biggestchallenge with virtual events
right now is, is that learningcurve, but you've got people out
there and resources who can helpyou to bridge that gap.
Kyle Hamer (12:11):
Well, it's, it's, it's interesting.
It's interesting to me that someof the things that you touched
on as it relates tocommunication and production
life set, versus being at homein a we're entering the season
where a lot of companies willbegin doing their, their annual
sales meetings or their, theannual kickoffs.
And now what are we going to do?
You know, I think we were on a,we were on a panel discussing
(12:34):
last week, how, um, one of the,one of the panelists has got a,
um, uh, an economic event that'scoming up, right.
And they have it say, it's a bigevent for them.
And they they're used to havingthis, this production value in
these things going on.
What's interesting to me is theconsideration of, um, most
(12:56):
organizations don't thinkthrough, well, what if I
actually had to produce that instream, at live as though it's a
TV show or something where,where people on the other side
can consume it from home andfeel like they're, they're a
part of it.
Um, the NFL NBA organizationsthat have in-person events, they
have, you know, they, they, theymay not have fans right.
(13:16):
There may not be people in theaudience, but they're still
delivering that same level ofproduction as they did last
year.
When there were people in thestands, what are some things
that organizations can do orways that they can get creative
with platforms?
Like, w what'd you say, streamonline stream yard, stream yard,
um, there's stream yard, there'slive stream.
(13:38):
Um, there there's different onesthat you can use for, for try
casting type productionelements.
What are, what are some of thethings that they can, um, think
about as it relates tocoordinating an event so that it
feels like I'm still having somelevel of that experience versus,
Hey, I'm watching my boss in hiskitchen.
Talk to me about what we'regoing to do in 2021.
Aubri Nowowiejski (13:59):
So basically the difference between being
talked at, and actually havingsome engagement in participation
in it.
Yeah.
And this is another aspect ofvirtual events that I cannot
wait for the evolution to come.
So a lot of the event platformsthat are out there are not one
size fits all, or end all beall.
They don't have all thecapabilities built in, or if
(14:19):
they offer certain capabilitiesof probably not the best that's
out there to offer.
So there's a lot of integrationthat takes place almost think
about almost like widgets,right?
To your HTML website, forinstance.
So you're taking this eventplatform and you're saying, Hey,
I want to have main stagekeynote time, which is someone
kind of directly talking to you,but I also want to have
(14:41):
breakouts.
So a lot of platforms don't havetheir own internal capability to
push breakouts and segregatepeople.
And so sometimes you have tointegrate with like zoom, for
instance.
Uh, so you've got thatcomponent.
Then you have a mixture of yourprerecorded, uh, and your live
content or sending you livecontent, but it's kind of a
(15:04):
blend of the two where it's madeto appear as if it's recorded
live.
So there are so many aspects toa Noma, gosh, hire an event
management company.
I mean, I'm not trying to like,but even if it's not us hire
somebody who has that, there's alot, a lot of moving parts to
it.
And there's a lot, quitefrankly, that could go wrong.
I always send emails now.
And I'm like welcome to virtualevents where tech checks are
(15:28):
absolutely mandatory.
Like get excited.
There's no way to skip this.
Um, and, and people are stilllearning too.
I mean, it's, it's remarkable ona, you know, you have a tech
call and the purpose of a techhall is that you're in the same
location using the samecomputer, the same internet that
you plan to use day and not someother location.
And, and you're kind of defeatsthe entire purpose.
(15:49):
So, um, I, I have gone down adifferent path on this, this
thought process.
I don't know if I've answeredyour, your initial question or
not.
Kyle Hamer (16:01):
Yeah, sorry.
So I, you know, I think one ofthe things that you touch on
there that I think is I've livedit, right?
So, uh, think two or two yearsago what the organization that I
was a part of decided to do ahuge brand reveal and
simulcasts, and they wanted itto all be part of this, um, this
(16:23):
EV like there were like ninedifferent physical locations.
And so every location theywanted it to have this, this
level of, Oh, I'm experiencingthe same thing as this, if I'm
not at the live event.
And so the coordination of whatare we doing with the live
stream and how are we cuttingback and forth, and, and what's
the what's happening on thestage and what are we, you know,
how long when somebody's on,when somebody's off, when do we
(16:44):
get people in the room to makesure, I mean, there was just all
of these logistics that
Aubri Nowowiejski (16:50):
Different times zones.
Kyle Hamer (16:51):
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Right.
And in the, the headquartershappened to be on East coast.
And one of their most recentacquisitions happened to be all
the way on Pacific time.
Right.
And so they wanted to start theday at nine o'clock, which was
like 5:00 AM.
Right.
It just, there's all kinds oflogistical things to think
through that a lot oforganizations or, or, uh, events
(17:14):
folks haven't had to go throughyet.
Right.
And I think one of the biggestthings that we, we learned, or,
you know, biggest takeaways forus was there are a lot of
organizations that have beendoing this, that you don't have
to reinvent the wheel, like thisisn't virtual events.
Right.
(17:34):
In, in, in some sort ofproduction or, or thing it's,
it's been going on for a longtime, mega churches do it every
week.
Right.
Whether it's different versionsof it, right.
It might be, um, the mega churchthat does it on NBC.
And I can't think of the name ofthe pastor right now.
That's, you know, that he's beendoing it for years, or it could
be just your local mega church.
That's doing some sort of livestream, right.
(17:58):
Where can, where can, what are,what are, where are some common
sense places to look for you andI, that other, you know, other
folks listening in may not thinkit was, Oh yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
This person might be doing this,or I can get some advice here or
there to understand, Hey, justhow complicated or challenging
(18:20):
this, this conversion might be.
If you're really interested in,in having an experience
Aubri Nowowiejski (18:24):
Well, like any marketing, I think you need
to understand where your targetdemographic is, you know, are
they hanging out on Facebook?
And then in which case you mightdo a Facebook live or are they
on YouTube or even know whatthat is?
And you might do a YouTube livestream.
Do you want this to be public?
Do you want this to be privatematerial that is password
protected?
That is all gonna dictate whereyou need to host your content
(18:45):
and, or, you know, push yourcontent to, um, so that's number
one, number two, I can't, Ican't stress enough, like your
audio visual partners, theywould be the best people to, or
your event manager would be thebest person to kind of advise
you, basing it based on yourevent and understanding what
you're trying to accomplish,because there are so many
platforms out there, and yes,there you are valid in saying
(19:07):
that this is not anything newvirtual events have been here
for a while.
We just haven't had the sameamount of focus on it.
That being said, you've got your, your platforms that have been
in the game for a while.
Currently they are extremelyinundated because the best of
the best at this moment, andbest I say best of the best is a
relative term, because it maynot be the best for XYZ event
(19:29):
because it doesn't, you know, itdoesn't line up, but they are,
they have waiting lists.
Now, you know, it used to be,Oh, we can turn your event out
in 90 days.
And now that timeline has beenstretched to three months, six
months, so on and so forth.
And the prices have tripled bynow because there's this supply
and demand for those platforms.
At the same time, I always likenit to like the space age for
(19:51):
virtual events, everyone andtheir mom is coming out with an
event platform right now.
And so another place to look, ifyou have done events in the past
that were in person, and maybeyou had a conference app, a lot
of the conference apps arecoming out with their own
virtual platform versions andthe two integrate.
So that would be a great placeto start too, rather than
reinventing the wheel.
If your attendees are alreadycomfortable with utilizing a
(20:13):
certain app to say, Hey, you canaccess it not only on your
phone, but you can also accessthis experience on your desktop
as well.
Understanding there are a lot of, uh, growing pains as I would
call them because theseplatforms, they are trying to,
to meet the demand.
And they're trying to, you know,have their tech teams work
overnight to get these platformsup and running and without fail,
(20:37):
there's going to be some kinks.
There's going to be some brokenlinks.
And a lot of the eventprofessionals and the people
utilizing these platforms arethe ones submitting those help
desk tickets saying, Hey, thisneeds be fixed or that needs to
be fixed.
Or they might've promised that,you know, chat and polls were
going to be available on thefirst release.
And they then had to postponethat timeline.
And if you already have, youknow, a contract locked in and
(20:58):
your event date, you just gottaroll with what you've got.
And again, get creative withother integrations that you can
kind of plug into bandaid forlack of a better word, as things
start to catch up with you.
So we have definitelyexperienced that.
And, and again, just to kind ofreiterate, even with our
clients, we have done events, Ithink, on over four to five
(21:19):
different event platforms now,because again, it really does
depend on the client and theevent on what we're going to
recommend to you because thereis no, there no one straight
answer for, for everyone.
And I think a budget again, is ahuge component.
So yeah, you can talk aboutthese megachurches.
You can talk about, you know,NFL and the sports.
Realistically, most people donot have that budget and are not
(21:42):
going to have that level ofproduction.
I think that's another kind ofeducation moment is, you know,
it's easy to say, Oh, we'regoing to have three 60
simulcasts from 20 pluslocations, but you're working
with, you know, a budget that isnot the NFL.
It's just, it's not, you gottabe realistic with your
expectations, I guess what I'msaying.
Kyle Hamer (22:03):
Well, no, and I, and so by the way, I agree with
that, but I think that the thingthat's important to that, that,
that people will maybe think isas well, if I have budget, then
I can skip on production.
And I think for, from, from,from my perspective, what I was
just only trying to draw thesimilarity to is is that even
though budgets may be impacted,that's the one thing you
actually cannot skimp on.
Aubri Nowowiejski (22:25):
We honestly will not take a client who will
not allocate funds towards,towards the production element,
because, and again, going backto the whole argument, we are
not in the business of webinars.
Anybody can host a webinar,anyone can schedule a zoom call
and share their screen.
We are, we are there for theproduction in order to have that
production value.
You need that productionpartner, just like you would
(22:46):
apply to that.
I would never walk into aconference center and have a 500
person multi-day conference.
And I am the one doing thesoundboard and the, the screens.
You, you would never expectthat.
So in the same respect, you needyour audio visual partners for,
for virtual events now more thanever.
Kyle Hamer (23:05):
Well, in, in the, um, the example that I have for,
for me personally, is just, likeI said, I was at a, a really
large, uh, software as a servicecompany who had their event.
We talked about the, you know,the disconnect in emotional and,
and in, in arch, as it relatesto their production in their
keynote, like you got to getthat one, right?
(23:26):
However, you know, and they wereusing the big platform, see van,
they, I mean, they had tons ofvendors, they had tons of
sessions.
And the whole thing was, was,was, uh, was, you could tell,
was an incredibly large lift fortheir, for their company.
Flip it on its head though.
There was a very smallassociation where I'm a part of
it.
They might have a thousandmembers, right?
(23:49):
So they're not dealing with hugebudgets.
They used, they used zoomwebinars, but they invested all
of their money and effort intocreating what I will call the
Jerry Lewis telethon version of,of a zoom webinar, where there
were commercial breaks.
There were interludes, you movefrom one speaker to the next,
you had a nice Q and a, they dida, um, you know, a virtual horse
(24:13):
race where they had foundsomebody that had a recording of
a horse race.
They put it up and you had toplace your bets on what horse
you thought, like they took,they, they took what they had
and they made it an experience.
And it was something where youcould immerse yourself in and
actually have a good time.
It wasn't, it wasn't the sameamount of money you spent it at,
at inbound or at this otherconference, but they really
(24:35):
focused on that experience.
How important is it?
Aubri Nowowiejski (24:38):
It's so crucial.
I, you and I had kind of talkedabout this when we met last week
for that panel.
And I said, one of the thingsthat I'm most excited about is I
feel like with events, we haveveered so far on the other end
of the spectrum of equatingsuccess for an event to the
total number of attendees.
And just having these massquantity of attendees
understanding though that on theother end of the spectrum, the
(25:02):
more intimate the event istypically that's the, that's
where memories are made.
That's where the most lastingimpact is created.
And that is what drives sales orwhatever your ROI ends up being.
And so, um, even with eventplatforms, there are capacities,
you know, and there are optimalnumbers, not just from an
attendee perspective, but alsofor the amount of time, you
(25:23):
cannot expect people to dedicatetwo full days like they would at
an in-person conference.
Absolutely.
Don't do that.
And if anything, take advantageof the fact that you don't have
those geographic limitations orthat hotel contract limitation
spread that content out, youknow, make this something that
we have all admittedly failed atdoing is that whole follow-up.
(25:44):
How do things build from oneevent to the next and how can
you, you know, kind of put allthese puzzle pieces together and
connect it and really kind ofmake change.
I'm just so excited aboutgetting back to the intimacy of,
of events.
And, and I feel like where theymight have fallen flat is they
were just checking boxes on howcan we get everyone into general
(26:05):
session and how can we, youknow, just kind of in their own
way, replicate what would happenin an in-person event, but they
were missing the quintessentialelements of an in-person event
that we too often take forgranted.
And that's walking through thehallways, you know, that's the
like water cooler conversations,the nights at the bar where, you
know, the business deals anddiscussions actually happen, the
(26:26):
connections are actually made.
They were just doing thebaseline framework and they
weren't thinking about thoseinteractive entertainment type
elements that people have notreally experienced in a virtual
sense.
And so it takes them bysurprise.
Even the smallest little thingscan add so much to an event.
And you're absolutely, theydon't have to cost a ton of
money, quite frankly, withvirtual events now more than
(26:47):
ever with a lot of musicians andartists, and, you know,
everybody who's in anentertainment is stuck at home.
They are much more willing towork with you on your budgets.
You can get speakers that youwould've never gotten before or
cameo.
You can go to cameo.com and getsome famous celebrity from the
office.
You can give a shout out to yourattendees, you know, so there
(27:10):
are a lot of really fun optionsout there.
Kyle Hamer (27:13):
Yes, there are a lot of fun options out there.
Um, you know, one of the thingsI think is there's, there's a
couple of pieces.
If we keep talking about the,the event and the production for
the, for the company holding theevent, what are the there, and I
think there are two parts of theevent that typically make it, I
don't wanna say valuable for theattendee, but valuable for the
(27:35):
vendor or valuable for thesponsor or valuable for the, for
the host.
And those two pieces are how doI exhibit in a virtual
environment and have it reallybe worth anything.
And then on top of that, how do,how do I get my outside sales or
my field salespeople that areused to going to these shows and
(27:56):
these events and makingconnections and rubbing elbows,
how do we extend thosecomponents?
Can we, or, I mean, can we todayor those things that really need
to be explored in, in, you know,fleshed out.
Aubri Nowowiejski (28:11):
It is definitely evolving.
I'll be honest with that.
But I personally having been acorporate marketing manager in
my past life, having producedtrade shows, that's where I
started and doing a lot oftraining on trade shows, even
just, even with in-person tradeshows, Oh God, there's so much
training that needs to be donewith, with booth representatives
who just assume that people aregoing to come to you and to your
(28:32):
booth and engage with you andask you questions and you'll get
a chance to do your pitch.
It's no different now invirtual, you've got to go out
and seek them.
So one of the amazing abilitieswith these virtual events is you
pretty much have access to theentire attendee list within
those event platforms mostoften.
And so you have the capabilityto direct message anybody, and
(28:52):
often they'll have links totheir social media profiles.
You can connect with them onthere and start to build, Hey,
you know, I'm so glad that weboth attended XYZ event this
last week.
I didn't get a chance to talk toyou.
Can we set up a coffee dateoffline, you know, and then the
same thing about drawing peopleto your booth.
You can invite them to do thatwithin direct messages.
You can have pre-marketingcampaigns that are so important.
(29:14):
You can still have giveaways andentice people that way and, or
work with your conferenceplanners.
Maybe there's a larger overallgift.
So there's a lot of luxury giftexperiences where you can get
like, you know, over a hundreddollar pair of sunglasses or
both speakers just by going andvisiting a certain number of
booths.
And so they can then kind ofcash in to get these incentives
and rewards for, for doing thosethings.
(29:36):
There's also entertainmentdepending on the platform and
capabilities, but you could haveknow a spin the wheel and your,
and your virtual booth.
You could have a virtual photobooth within your booth, you
know, and have it branded foryour company.
There's all kinds ofactivations, essentially that
you can do in a virtual sense.
If you get creative and you gobeyond just, you know, the page
(29:58):
essentially that's provided foryou on that event platform
beyond just this text box videois King making sure that you
have a professionally producedvideo that very quickly explains
what it, what it is that you do.
And again, potentially has somesort of value add if there's
some sort of incentive, whetherthat's like a discount or a
coupon or a free consultation,like be thinking about what you
(30:22):
can offer these attendees.
And absolutely don't just expectthem to come to your booth.
Think about your own actions asa marketer.
I always say that like, thinkabout what you do.
Would you just, you know, likeclick on a link without knowing
what it was for?
Like, why would you take thetime to do that?
So knowing that you've got tokind of overcome those
challenges and things that thinkoutside the box, and then from a
(30:42):
production and contentstandpoint, more than just
having, you know, a loop of, oflogos, like you would have in a
general session, there are greatways to integrate, you know,
promo videos into your content.
You can have certain segmentsthat are sponsored by one of the
sponsors.
So for instance, grub hub, andthey can design the e-gift card
(31:02):
to have this lunch is brought toyou by XYZ sponsor, you know,
or, I mean, just, there are somany touches within the
conference.
You mentioned the horse racing.
There's also, can I say a swearword?
Well, it's just a word, whateverchicken, shit, bingo.
Like they can have virtualchicken, shit, bingo, or
Armadillo races, you know, andyou can bet on and those
different animals or whatever itis can be sponsored by a
(31:25):
particular sponsor.
I mean, there's just so manythings that you can do in a
virtual realm.
I, I would hope just people getmore excited and the more that
these platforms evolve, they arealso enabling people to have
one-on-one video conversationsand scheduled time, you know,
and all the analytics, Holysmokes, like most events don't
(31:48):
have the capability like RFIDcapability at in-person events
to track people's, you know,heat mapping and that kind of
thing.
They don't have the budgets todo that with virtual.
You got it all there.
You can see all the analyticsand real time who's clicking on
what page, how long have theybeen there?
Where were they cooking from?
You know, what brought themthere?
There's just so much that wecould get excited about for
(32:09):
virtual guys.
Kyle Hamer (32:11):
You know, you mentioned, you mentioned a
couple of things here that yougot my creative juices flowing
when it comes to being anexhibitor or somebody who's, um,
you know, sponsored events inthe past.
And like, and most of the timewhen you, you sponsored event,
they're like, Hey, can you putup some, uh, PDF collateral and
a basic description of yourcompany and give us a video.
(32:33):
And the video almost always isyour boiler plate.
This is our company.
That's the same thing.
You, your new hire when theyfirst show up, right?
Like, and it's not necessarilysomething somebody is going to
be like, Oh my God, yes.
I love that.
Like, they might apply for ajob, but not necessarily engage
you for, um, buying your productor service.
But, but I do think that we'rein a unique spot with the stuff
(32:54):
where artists are stuck at home.
Um, you you've got stuck withcameo.
Uh, was it true fan now?
I, I don't know I'm saying thatwrong, but you have an
opportunity with creating yourown spinoff webinar and inviting
people that came to that to cometo your special little event,
you may not be able at a normalSalesforce, um, Dreamforce
(33:18):
conference to, to afford hiringup van Halen and holding a
concert.
But that doesn't mean you can'thave your version of that with
some small local little, youknow, reggae band or whatever is
your, your company's extensionof your brand invite folks to
come in and start building that,you know, that relationship.
(33:40):
And it might actually be bettermoney spent at 25, 3,500 bucks
or whatever it may be to hirethe band for, for a, a live
event, a handled handled overvideo conference, then trying to
go out and figure out how to buyeverybody a beer.
Or if you do both, maybe that'seven better.
But I mean, there's, there's,there's so many ways to get
creative over just status quowith the, what the platform will
(34:04):
allow you to
Aubri Nowowiejski (34:06):
Her son and like any conference, most of
those sales guys would havetaken people out to MTVs or some
fancy steak dinner or whatever.
How can you replicate somethingsimilar to that?
I love going on.
I'm probably given too much ofthe sauce away, but like Airbnb,
as an example now hasexperiences.
And I love going to see, you canget, you know, someone's Italian
(34:26):
grandmother in Italy who is likehand-making pasta in front of
you and teaching you how, orlike there was a girl who does
lemon cello.
Like you can follow along withher family's recipe on how to
make this lemon cello.
Like how dope of an experienceis that, that you can do from
the comfort of your living roomor your home or your office or
whatever, you know, and there'sways to get your, your spouses
(34:48):
and your kids involved, likenever before, you know, and, and
incorporate them into events.
So events that, you know, we'rekeeping that in mind of the
other people who are in thehousehold and how can, how can
we entertain the kids so thatthe parents can actually get the
most out of this experience, youknow?
Oh gosh, I'm just genuinely soexcited about virtual events.
I think this is just thebeginning, you know,
Kyle Hamer (35:12):
I agree.
Well, I, and I think that it's,it's been a long time coming.
I mean, I remember when on 24had their first virtual exp, uh,
event many, many, many, manyyears ago.
And I was like, well, this islane.
It's like, you know, you'd sendoff, you'd send off a message
and then you'd have to wait forlike 20 or 30 minutes till
somebody would respond back.
And again, just the experiencewasn't there yet.
(35:32):
And now being stuck at home,we're, we're forced to, uh, to
accommodate and our behaviorchanges, right?
We're not distracted by as manyother things that are happening
in real life.
So these virtual events arehaving a, having a bigger
impact.
Talk to talk to me a little bitabout the platforms that are out
there.
You know, you mentioned some ofthe big boys are buried to me,
(35:53):
taking on a big platform is likebuying a brand new trade show
booth.
Like there's a lot of things tothink through, um, and build
out, right?
Like you've got produceeverything who are some of the
guys that are doing it reallywell.
And then talk about maybe someof the other things that are
surprising that that folks maynot know about,
Aubri Nowowiejski (36:12):
Oh gosh, everyone has different
experiences too.
And because of this pandemic,which is unprecedented, as we
all know these same words,right.
You know, on 24 in Trados, someof the leaders in, in the game,
you know, again at the start, itwas all the bells and whistles,
all the technical support we canoffer you.
And now I'm not calling on themspecifically, but other events
platforms, you know, they, againare just so inundated that it's
(36:37):
now, okay, it's on you to set upyour exhibitor booth and like,
you're going to have to pay Xamount, extra for technical
support, or just, you know, chatinto this chat box and hope
within the next 24 to 72 hours,even if it's the day of your
event, that you get some sort ofresponse.
So it isn't, it is a completelydifferent world that we're in.
Um, some of the, um, I don'twant to say, I'll say more
(36:59):
economical, let's go with thatword.
Uh, hop in is a great tool at 10to five, that was a conference
app that we, um, had, had usedfor a couple of our clients that
now have an event platform.
Again, a lot of, um, lessonslearned as well, because they
are in the process of rollingout.
And even your event platformsthat have been around for a
while, they too are doingupdates and upgrades to their
(37:20):
platform.
And so some of the questions youhave to ask is like, Hey, do you
have an upgrade scheduled forthe day of my again, event?
And what could that potentiallycause as far as, you know,
broken links or something thatwas originally working two days
ago when we did all thetechnical checks and now the
zoom is not integrating into theplatform, you know, like
literally we're learning by theday and just having to kind of
(37:41):
go with it and find workarounds.
Um, but those are some initialplatforms.
Hub is a great one.
Again, it really does depend onwhat you're trying to accomplish
, uh, and what I, or anybodywould recommend that you
utilize.
But those are a couple of theplatforms that we, um, I most
recently used and, uh, anddefinitely word on the street,
(38:02):
but there's a lot of forumsgoing on with different event
planners across the country whohave their own good and bad
stories and experiences on, onany, again, none there's no one
size fits all or end all be allplatform.
We're all kind of going throughthis, this growing phase
together,
Kyle Hamer (38:22):
You know, and I think you're right.
We are one of the things that Ithink is, was most interesting
in our panel discussion, we hada couple or last week was the
impact on the actual hospitalityand the physical location space,
honestly.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it'sdisappointing for them because
they've been such great partnersfor, for throwing events and
(38:44):
helping us be successful withwhatever we're putting on.
Right?
As you look at creative ways tokeep your partners involved, as
you're transitioning, right,this hybrid model, what are some
examples or ways you can thinkof how you might use the space
or how you might use a, aversion of the space or how you
might stitch this together sothat the there's a hybrid or
(39:06):
that you're still allowing the,the, uh, the physical event
spaces and locations to bearound, because if we don't use
them, we're going to lose themin, in, in, in quickly.
So what are some examples of howpeople could creatively leverage
a space that they've alreadypaid for space that they've
already added?
Aubri Nowowiejski (39:25):
Right?
There was a couple of differentoptions.
So you could have essentiallywatch parties.
And that could be in multiplecities across, you know,
wherever United States, theworld that are different
properties in differentlocations.
If you have a actual conferenceor event that originally would
have been in one large generalsession room, and you have the
ability to break them out intosmaller rooms, and either
(39:46):
ideally have your speakersrotate, instead of having the
masses of people rotate, that'sanother way that you can utilize
space and still keep people kindof socially distance and
separated.
You can also just like you woulda live event where maybe you did
have that general session room,and maybe you do have the
spacing apart with the classroomstyle seating, one per classroom
now.
Um, but then you have anoverflow room.
(40:07):
So the overflow room is whereyou have a broadcasted live
stream of what's going on inthat general session room.
Um, I also have always been abig fan of the, you know, kind
of disco, silent disco, youknow, so you can have multiple
speakers going on at a time andyou can switch different radio
frequencies to listen towhomever it is that you want to
hear from, I think, you know,getting creative with your, um,
(40:31):
event setups, as far as rentalfurnitures, like AFR and some of
the other rental furniturecompanies out there, they've got
some great, you know, 3drenderings and models of how
they are now, you know, settingup kind of conversation, nooks
and areas with chairs that arespaced out, or some of those
rounds that you're kind ofsitting with your back kind of
facing, but you're still havingconversations.
Anyway, they've gotten reallycreative with, uh, with the way
(40:53):
that they set things up, uh,FNB, there's been a huge change
to F and B.
Everything has to be likepre-packaged, but there's fun
ways to do that too.
Um, then a lot of your venuesalso have their own in-house
audio, visual companies or athird-party audiovisual company
that they work with.
And that's a great resource to,you know, to ask them like, Hey,
(41:14):
we originally were going to havethis as an in-person event.
We're now going to have a hybridexperience where part of our,
you know, attendees will be inperson.
The other part are going to betuning in from elsewhere.
How can you help us to, to takeour in-person content and
broadcast it, and they can workwith you on that.
Um, and also put those people towork, which is really important
as well.
Um, so those are just some ofthe, uh, initial things that I
(41:36):
would say, you know, and Iwould, you have different camps,
right?
Some people are ready to justget out there.
Like they cannot stay inside onemoment longer and others are
hibernating underneath theirbed, you know, like do not come
near me.
And so there are people who arewilling to meet in person.
I would survey them just likeyou would for, you know, any,
(41:58):
any kind of event to getfeedback.
You know, how comfortable arepeople with attending the event,
if they, and what protocols andmeasures have you put in place
WEC, um, the MPI conference,they did a phenomenal job
recently of releasing this videothat didn't so much focus on.
It was a, it was a conference Igot rescheduled and they didn't
so much focus on, like, here areall the content and stuff that
(42:21):
we're going to give you at thisconference.
They focus the majority of thevideo on what have we done to
ensure your safety for thisin-person experience.
And they interviewed the hotelstaff, they showed like an
example of a room set with thechair, spaced out.
They, you know, showed howregistration would be like,
they're pre mailing you yourbadge.
So you don't have to like go andcheck in at registration, like
(42:43):
everything's contactless.
They they're pre mailing you onmask, enhanced sanitizer and all
of these things that they'redoing to ensure your safety and
make you feel comfortable toattend.
They're also, um, you know, kindof offering a no risk
registration, you know?
So if things were to change, youknow, you have the ability to
get out or convert that to likean online ticket.
Like there are just a lot ofoptions wristbands.
(43:04):
We had talked about this lastweek.
So kind of that, you know,green, red, yellow, red being
don't come near me.
I'm not comfortable.
Uh, yellow is like, we can touchelbows.
And then green is like, come on.
Let's, let's basically shareeach other's glass.
Not really actually, but youknow what I mean?
Like I'm, I'm comfortable withhaving a conversation with
someone.
So all the different things thatyou can implement to, to give
(43:26):
business back to these venues,which is definitely needed
Kyle Hamer (43:30):
It's 100% needed.
Um, so for the, for those thatare listening that have events
coming up, or they're, they're,they're struggling through it
right now, do you have somequick and easy resources places
for them to go look where the behelpful to, to getting
additional perspective?
Not that they wouldn't beresearching it, but you're like,
Hey, I found this area, thisarea in this hair just really,
(43:51):
really valuable.
Aubri Nowowiejski (43:52):
Oh gosh.
You know, uh, that is a greatquestion.
Um, a lot of the resources thatI have are stuff that are privy
to us winning, like it's otherevent, professional, private
groups that, you know, we canhave open forum and then
dialogues on.
I always am a big advocate oflike event manager.
Blog tends to have some of thetop of the top Skift, um, and
your professional associationswithin the events industry too.
(44:13):
So you're meeting professionalsinternational, your
international live eventsassociation.
Uh, you got several differentweddings, specific organizations
at PCMA, professional conventionmeeting and events.
I'm not exactly sure what allthe acronyms are, even like your
AMS American marketingassociation, depending on what
society you're a part of.
I would plug into those groupsand see what, you know, what are
(44:35):
the best practices and lessonslearned?
I think, you know, getting itfrom a direct source, who's like
actually in it in a day to dayis a lot more valuable than an
article that might have a slantpotentially.
Uh, so, you know, check yoursources, but that's, that is
where I would recommend that.
Kyle Hamer (44:51):
So after they've, after they figured out that,
Hey, they need additional help.
How do they get ahold of youguys to get perspective on if
that's a good fit and a greatrelationship, uh, potentially
waiting to hear,
Aubri Nowowiejski (45:02):
Yeah.
Uh, coterie spark.com andinfo@coteriespark.com.
We're also on Instagram,Facebook, Twitter, all the
things, uh, I'll make sure thatyou have my contact information.
So aubrey@coteriespark.com andwe do offer free 30 minute
consultation.
So if you just really need toget a question answered or
someone to bounce, some ideasoff really quickly, we're more
(45:23):
than happy to help.
We do realize that truly we areall in this together, and that's
not just for potential clients.
That's also for partners aswell.
The start of this pandemic, Ireached out to a lot of our
partners and I said, Hey, howare you pivoting?
Have you figured out how you'regoing to pivot, regardless,
either way, let's get a callscheduled because we are truly
all in this together.
And I want to help help youguys, you know, because we, even
(45:45):
as event professionals, we haveunique needs as well.
And as this evolved, we werelike, Oh my gosh, you know, we
could do amazing tastings, butour tasting partners, maybe
haven't thought about this, orlike our catering partners where
the people that we used to getsucculent arrangements from,
like now we can ship it to themand do a workshop.
You know, there's just so manycreative things that can, can be
done.
So, um, we're here to supportyou in any way that we can.
Kyle Hamer (46:06):
That's great.
And just like, just like theother day, final thoughts, what
are you going to leave us with?
Aubri Nowowiejski (46:11):
Stay inspired?
I mean, I, as much as this yearhas sucked in some senses,
there's a lot of beauty that'scome out of it.
A lot of unity, a lot ofcreativity, a lot of thinking
outside the box, a lot ofadvancements that, that needed
to happen, the ability to workfrom home and have this autonomy
and prove to your corporate jobthat, you know, Hey, you guys
(46:31):
can save money on overhead and,you know, our corporate
Headspace or headquarters, and Ican work from home and do
sometimes more work than I wasdoing in the office.
So there's a, there's a lot ofgood that is going to come out
of this, but again, we are allUnited in this and, um, and
let's just help each other.
Kyle Hamer (46:46):
That's great.
Thanks so much.
You've been listening to Aubreyknow whiskey and we've, uh,
we've been talking about allthings, events, virtual and
otherwise.
So I really appreciate yourgenerosity and, um, you know,
giving, giving us the insidescoop, spending a little bit
more than the normal 30 minutesconsultation and giving us the
skinny on what's going on.
Um, and, and like you said, ifpeople want to get ahold of you,
(47:08):
it's Katari spark, C O T E R I ES P a R k.com.
It'll be in the description ofthe, uh, the podcast episode as
well as posted on the blog.
Um, thank you again for beinghere.
It's been, it's been awesome.
Welcome to the summit, a podcast focused on
bringing you the knowledge andinsight for industry leaders.
I'm your host, Kyle Hemer andI'm on a mission to help you
exceed your potential.
As a sales guy, turned marketer,I am passionate about building
sustainable businesses, andthere's one thing I've learned.
You won't find an overnightgrowth scheme, shortcut to
success, or a way to hackyourself to the top.
(00:22):
Nope.
Success is the by-product ofgreat relationships and we're
here to help you unlock thatsuccess.
One conversation at a time.
Aubri Nowowiejski (00:29):
I mean the worst thing that you can do is
do nothing at all.
I think there are so many peoplewho fell into that camp that
thinking, Oh, surely things aregoing to be backed by Q3 Q4 of
this year.
And the reality is that is notthe case.
You absolutely have to govirtual at this time.
Kyle Hamer (00:46):
Hi, I'm here with my good friend Aubri, Nowoiejski.
What a great last name, Aubri.
Welcome to the show.
Aubri Nowowiejski (00:55):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Kyle Hamer (00:58):
Um, so Aubrey is a, production manager would like
tell us a little bit aboutyourself, who you are, what you
do and in, you know, how youmake the world go round for you.
Aubri Nowowiejski (01:08):
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Uh, title is executive producer.
I work for coterie spark.
We're a global meeting and eventmanagement firm.
That's based in Houston, Texas,but again, we do events all over
the world and we specialize inin-person virtual and hybrid
experiences specifically.
Kyle Hamer (01:31):
I would imagine
Aubri Nowowiejski (01:32):
Holy smokes.
Yeah.
A lot of the industry isdefinitely evolving, but if
there's any industry that can,you know, think on their feet, I
would say event professionalsand event industry in general.
Uh, we're, we're tackling it asbest we can.
Kyle Hamer (01:48):
Awesome.
Well, today you and I are goingto talk a little bit about, uh,
the, the world of events, theworld of changing world of
events.
You can just kind of like, Imean, I would assume it's the
day in the life of, of, of Henribecause have there been two same
days in the last six months,
Aubri Nowowiejski (02:04):
You know what, this is why I chose this
career path, because I don'tlike any days that are the same.
And quite frankly, it's nodifferent than pre COVID to now,
like with, there's always a newchallenge, which my motto in
life has challenges areopportunities and disguise, and
that's actually how we'reapproaching this whole situation
with COVID from the very startfrom the first contract
(02:25):
cancellation with one of ourclients to present day and
looking out to 2021 and 2022events.
What does that looking like?
Um, and, and yeah, I'm, I'mexcited about the challenge.
Kyle Hamer (02:37):
Well, and I don't want to spend too much time
going backwards because I thinkeverybody's kind of lived it,
but there are a couple of thingsthat I think are really, um, are
unique and interesting aboutwhere the events space is at.
You know, you have differentsized organizations trying to
figure out how to be agile andnimble, right.
Um, organizations like inbound,they just completed their first
(02:57):
fully virtual event.
And, and for them, that wasprobably a little bit easier
because maybe they had theresources versus a, um, a small
association who historicallymight have only ever done things
in person.
You know, they have smallergroups of folks and trying to
figure out how to continue todeliver and provide that value
of that membership value thatnow all of a sudden they can't
(03:19):
do what, what have you seen askind of been the, the, you know,
one or two takeaways, like bigaha moments for organizations of
various sizes over the last sixmonths where it's like, Oh, this
is how we can address it andstill provide value.
Aubri Nowowiejski (03:35):
Right?
I mean, the worst thing that youcan do is do nothing at all.
I think there are so many peoplewho fell into that camp that
thinking, Oh, surely things aregoing to be backed by Q3 Q4 of
this year.
And the reality is that is notthe case.
You absolutely have to govirtual at this time.
A lot of, uh, hotel properties,especially if you had larger
gatherings are limited tobetween 50 to 250 people max and
(03:58):
that's with strict socialguidelines as far as social
distancing guidelines.
Um, and so that really in manyways inhibits the program that
you probably previouslyenvisioned.
So keeping that in mind, you,you really do, especially for
larger events need to take thosevirtual or even for your smaller
then.
So, you know, there there's somepeople who do not feel
comfortable getting out inperson.
(04:18):
And quite frankly, you do wantto look out for the best
interests of your membership,your leadership, who, whoever is
attending your events.
So, um, that is the biggesttakeaway is to do something and
not nothing.
And I think people need toembrace this new, it's not a new
tech age has we're already inthe tech age, but these tools
(04:41):
have been available and haven'tbeen utilized for their full
capabilities before because youknow, nothing compares to
in-person and I'm not making theargument that, you know, virtual
is the same as in-person or as,even on the same level, it's,
it's completely differentexperiences, but you do need to
work with what you have.
And there is a really awesomeand unique ways to build
(05:02):
connections and to somewhatemulate and replicate what you
would have as an in-personexperience.
So I guess the next takeaway isto get creative as well.
Kyle Hamer (05:12):
Well, it's, it's, it's interesting area.
You talk about getting creativebecause I would assume that as
an executive producer, like nosingle day is the same and your
job is different depending onthe client and their particular
needs.
But my, my summer experiencewith, you know, with several of
these, um, courses that haveearned a courses, but these
events that have migrated froman in-person destination, you
(05:35):
know, highly driven by whatyou're going to experience when
you get there to some sort ofonline engagement experience,
and it's not the same.
And how do you try and replicateit?
Some have been very, verysuccessful and some have been
well, frankly, pretty terriblein, in, in unimpressive.
And it's not really budgetspecific for, for your clients,
(05:57):
the clients that can't do thein-person event, what are the
things that you're helping coachthem think about, tell them that
to consider, as I say, okay,Hey, I can't do the same rubbing
elbows, shaking, hands going andgetting a coffee after the event
type of networking.
And in in-person experience, howdo you help them reset their
expectations?
(06:17):
Or how do you help frame it sothat they can create an event
that is successful virtually,
Aubri Nowowiejski (06:23):
Right.
I think the first thing that youhave to understand is there is a
difference between a virtualevent and a webinar.
I think everyone's experience,you know, pre COVID was just
with a zoom webinar.
And although you can use zoomand create an event, the
differentiation is theexperiential enhancements is
(06:43):
what we call it, right?
So, um, you need kind ofmultiple components to your
event.
You need the event platform.
Um, sometimes you need thestreaming tool in addition to
the event platform.
So zoom is kind of one and all,but when I'm talking about,
about platforms, I'm talkingmore about sophisticated HTML
websites that are built anddesigned to kind of host larger
(07:06):
events where you haveintegrations with these
streaming platforms.
Um, and then again, you needyour experiential enhancements
on top of that.
And so experiential enhancementscan run the gamut between having
a Lama pop-up surprisingly inone of your zoom calls or in,
you know, a virtual platformthat you have.
You can have different winepairing and tasting events, um,
(07:28):
virtual entertainers, whetherthat's MCs or magicians or taro
card readers.
I mean, there's so manydifferent things.
If you think about an in-personevent, let's say it was a social
event.
What are the components youwould have?
You'd have a photo booth, Hey,guess what?
There are virtual photo booths.
You would have a, uh, you know,FNB, so food and beverage, so,
(07:48):
Hey, can we pre mail themsomething?
Or can we email them a giftcertificate to door dash or grub
hub and have them select whatthey want and get it delivered
to their home.
So there are so many differentthings you can do as
experiential enhancements.
I think another part ofeducation is on budget.
So I think a lot of people justassume that, Oh, we're going
virtual.
So it's going to be free becausewe can use the limited zoom
(08:11):
account and still have X numberof people on there.
And the reality is that if youtruly want to produce an event,
you've got to put some moneytowards that.
Now more than ever an audiovisual production team is an
essential element to any virtualevents, because that is what's
bringing the show value, theproduction value to keep people
(08:31):
entertained.
Um, especially when there's somuch zoom burnout right now.
I mean, like again, justunderstanding that difference
between a webinar and a trueevent and experience and how to
create that,
Kyle Hamer (08:43):
You know, I'm going to, I'm going to echo that just
from my, my experience, therewas a, there was an event that I
attended for a, a fairly largesoftware company.
And I was, um, I was, uh, youknow, not vested interest.
I was just doing some studyingof what was working, what wasn't
working.
And what I thought was really,really interesting is this
company had taken the time andthe money to invest in an emcee,
(09:05):
right?
They wanted to have this largerthan life personality, open up
and create an experience, whichI was really excited for.
And then during the openingkeynote, we went from
prerecorded MC to prerecordedsenior leadership.
And it was like, one minute wewere, we were watching Tigger on
(09:27):
the screen and the next minuteit was ER, and the, the, the
complete energy change that fastwas that nobody had really
thought about the productionvalue of, Hey, we're going to
keep the energy up, or we'regoing to maintain a level of
energy.
We're going to do something sothat we can transition so that
it makes sense emotionally orthematically so that we can
(09:49):
match these, these tones andtimbers.
How do you help companiesthrough that thought, like,
they've never done a productionbefore, right?
They've not actually produced ashow.
How are they, how are they,where do they begin?
How do they prevent that fromhappening?
Aubri Nowowiejski (10:05):
Right.
And, you know, it's evolved evenas COVID has taken place.
So originally it was straightlocked down.
So everybody was in their home.
The only real option was to maila camera, kit, a studio K with
the lighting, the audio, thevideo to that person's residence
.
And they're going to shoot fromtheir living room or wherever
they can hardline it.
Right.
Um, now things have started toopen up a little bit, so we can
(10:25):
get back into actualprofessional studios and kind of
have a PR professional set, uh,that you're broadcasting from.
And they are implementingamazing social distancing
measures, where really, you justhave the camera, man, you've got
your prompter and you've got theperson who's being interviewed,
or if there's multiple peoplethere they're spread out.
And everybody's in mass, ofcourse, uh, except for the
person presenting, they'll takeit off when it's time to
(10:47):
present.
Um, that is definitely a notchup on the production.
There are different platforms aswell, stream yard being an
example where you can, uh,really kind of animate if you
will, your production and that'stransitions in and out.
That's lower third banners ofpeople's names and titles or
bottom bars that prompt peopleto, you know, contribute to the
(11:10):
poll, vote on the poll, or, youknow, make a comment in the
chat, those, those kinds ofthings, um, that can definitely
add a level of enhancement to,to your production.
I think linking up with an eventmanagement firm, an audio visual
partner, whoever you might haveused for your in-person events
in the past, almost every singleone of them have had to pivot
during this time.
And they are surely tech savvy.
(11:32):
This is just another, uh,element or aspect of the
technical capabilities that theyhave.
And they can advise you throughthat.
Having a show flow and a showscript, it was just as important
as in-person for in-personevents, but it's extremely
important for, uh, for virtualevents as well.
And making sure that you have anopen line of communication.
Sometimes that's a secondarySlack channel.
It could be a WhatsApp chat,different ways to communicate
(11:54):
between the people who arebackstage virtually, and those
who are watching the forwardfacing platform.
So there, there is a biglearning curve I would say.
And that's probably the biggestchallenge with virtual events
right now is, is that learningcurve, but you've got people out
there and resources who can helpyou to bridge that gap.
Kyle Hamer (12:11):
Well, it's, it's, it's interesting.
It's interesting to me that someof the things that you touched
on as it relates tocommunication and production
life set, versus being at homein a we're entering the season
where a lot of companies willbegin doing their, their annual
sales meetings or their, theannual kickoffs.
And now what are we going to do?
You know, I think we were on a,we were on a panel discussing
(12:34):
last week, how, um, one of the,one of the panelists has got a,
um, uh, an economic event that'scoming up, right.
And they have it say, it's a bigevent for them.
And they they're used to havingthis, this production value in
these things going on.
What's interesting to me is theconsideration of, um, most
(12:56):
organizations don't thinkthrough, well, what if I
actually had to produce that instream, at live as though it's a
TV show or something where,where people on the other side
can consume it from home andfeel like they're, they're a
part of it.
Um, the NFL NBA organizationsthat have in-person events, they
have, you know, they, they, theymay not have fans right.
(13:16):
There may not be people in theaudience, but they're still
delivering that same level ofproduction as they did last
year.
When there were people in thestands, what are some things
that organizations can do orways that they can get creative
with platforms?
Like, w what'd you say, streamonline stream yard, stream yard,
um, there's stream yard, there'slive stream.
(13:38):
Um, there there's different onesthat you can use for, for try
casting type productionelements.
What are, what are some of thethings that they can, um, think
about as it relates tocoordinating an event so that it
feels like I'm still having somelevel of that experience versus,
Hey, I'm watching my boss in hiskitchen.
Talk to me about what we'regoing to do in 2021.
Aubri Nowowiejski (13:59):
So basically the difference between being
talked at, and actually havingsome engagement in participation
in it.
Yeah.
And this is another aspect ofvirtual events that I cannot
wait for the evolution to come.
So a lot of the event platformsthat are out there are not one
size fits all, or end all beall.
They don't have all thecapabilities built in, or if
(14:19):
they offer certain capabilitiesof probably not the best that's
out there to offer.
So there's a lot of integrationthat takes place almost think
about almost like widgets,right?
To your HTML website, forinstance.
So you're taking this eventplatform and you're saying, Hey,
I want to have main stagekeynote time, which is someone
kind of directly talking to you,but I also want to have
(14:41):
breakouts.
So a lot of platforms don't havetheir own internal capability to
push breakouts and segregatepeople.
And so sometimes you have tointegrate with like zoom, for
instance.
Uh, so you've got thatcomponent.
Then you have a mixture of yourprerecorded, uh, and your live
content or sending you livecontent, but it's kind of a
(15:04):
blend of the two where it's madeto appear as if it's recorded
live.
So there are so many aspects toa Noma, gosh, hire an event
management company.
I mean, I'm not trying to like,but even if it's not us hire
somebody who has that, there's alot, a lot of moving parts to
it.
And there's a lot, quitefrankly, that could go wrong.
I always send emails now.
And I'm like welcome to virtualevents where tech checks are
(15:28):
absolutely mandatory.
Like get excited.
There's no way to skip this.
Um, and, and people are stilllearning too.
I mean, it's, it's remarkable ona, you know, you have a tech
call and the purpose of a techhall is that you're in the same
location using the samecomputer, the same internet that
you plan to use day and not someother location.
And, and you're kind of defeatsthe entire purpose.
(15:49):
So, um, I, I have gone down adifferent path on this, this
thought process.
I don't know if I've answeredyour, your initial question or
not.
Kyle Hamer (16:01):
Yeah, sorry.
So I, you know, I think one ofthe things that you touch on
there that I think is I've livedit, right?
So, uh, think two or two yearsago what the organization that I
was a part of decided to do ahuge brand reveal and
simulcasts, and they wanted itto all be part of this, um, this
(16:23):
EV like there were like ninedifferent physical locations.
And so every location theywanted it to have this, this
level of, Oh, I'm experiencingthe same thing as this, if I'm
not at the live event.
And so the coordination of whatare we doing with the live
stream and how are we cuttingback and forth, and, and what's
the what's happening on thestage and what are we, you know,
how long when somebody's on,when somebody's off, when do we
(16:44):
get people in the room to makesure, I mean, there was just all
of these logistics that
Aubri Nowowiejski (16:50):
Different times zones.
Kyle Hamer (16:51):
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Right.
And in the, the headquartershappened to be on East coast.
And one of their most recentacquisitions happened to be all
the way on Pacific time.
Right.
And so they wanted to start theday at nine o'clock, which was
like 5:00 AM.
Right.
It just, there's all kinds oflogistical things to think
through that a lot oforganizations or, or, uh, events
(17:14):
folks haven't had to go throughyet.
Right.
And I think one of the biggestthings that we, we learned, or,
you know, biggest takeaways forus was there are a lot of
organizations that have beendoing this, that you don't have
to reinvent the wheel, like thisisn't virtual events.
Right.
(17:34):
In, in, in some sort ofproduction or, or thing it's,
it's been going on for a longtime, mega churches do it every
week.
Right.
Whether it's different versionsof it, right.
It might be, um, the mega churchthat does it on NBC.
And I can't think of the name ofthe pastor right now.
That's, you know, that he's beendoing it for years, or it could
be just your local mega church.
That's doing some sort of livestream, right.
(17:58):
Where can, where can, what are,what are, where are some common
sense places to look for you andI, that other, you know, other
folks listening in may not thinkit was, Oh yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
This person might be doing this,or I can get some advice here or
there to understand, Hey, justhow complicated or challenging
(18:20):
this, this conversion might be.
If you're really interested in,in having an experience
Aubri Nowowiejski (18:24):
Well, like any marketing, I think you need
to understand where your targetdemographic is, you know, are
they hanging out on Facebook?
And then in which case you mightdo a Facebook live or are they
on YouTube or even know whatthat is?
And you might do a YouTube livestream.
Do you want this to be public?
Do you want this to be privatematerial that is password
protected?
That is all gonna dictate whereyou need to host your content
(18:45):
and, or, you know, push yourcontent to, um, so that's number
one, number two, I can't, Ican't stress enough, like your
audio visual partners, theywould be the best people to, or
your event manager would be thebest person to kind of advise
you, basing it based on yourevent and understanding what
you're trying to accomplish,because there are so many
platforms out there, and yes,there you are valid in saying
(19:07):
that this is not anything newvirtual events have been here
for a while.
We just haven't had the sameamount of focus on it.
That being said, you've got your, your platforms that have been
in the game for a while.
Currently they are extremelyinundated because the best of
the best at this moment, andbest I say best of the best is a
relative term, because it maynot be the best for XYZ event
(19:29):
because it doesn't, you know, itdoesn't line up, but they are,
they have waiting lists.
Now, you know, it used to be,Oh, we can turn your event out
in 90 days.
And now that timeline has beenstretched to three months, six
months, so on and so forth.
And the prices have tripled bynow because there's this supply
and demand for those platforms.
At the same time, I always likenit to like the space age for
(19:51):
virtual events, everyone andtheir mom is coming out with an
event platform right now.
And so another place to look, ifyou have done events in the past
that were in person, and maybeyou had a conference app, a lot
of the conference apps arecoming out with their own
virtual platform versions andthe two integrate.
So that would be a great placeto start too, rather than
reinventing the wheel.
If your attendees are alreadycomfortable with utilizing a
(20:13):
certain app to say, Hey, you canaccess it not only on your
phone, but you can also accessthis experience on your desktop
as well.
Understanding there are a lot of, uh, growing pains as I would
call them because theseplatforms, they are trying to,
to meet the demand.
And they're trying to, you know,have their tech teams work
overnight to get these platformsup and running and without fail,
(20:37):
there's going to be some kinks.
There's going to be some brokenlinks.
And a lot of the eventprofessionals and the people
utilizing these platforms arethe ones submitting those help
desk tickets saying, Hey, thisneeds be fixed or that needs to
be fixed.
Or they might've promised that,you know, chat and polls were
going to be available on thefirst release.
And they then had to postponethat timeline.
And if you already have, youknow, a contract locked in and
(20:58):
your event date, you just gottaroll with what you've got.
And again, get creative withother integrations that you can
kind of plug into bandaid forlack of a better word, as things
start to catch up with you.
So we have definitelyexperienced that.
And, and again, just to kind ofreiterate, even with our
clients, we have done events, Ithink, on over four to five
(21:19):
different event platforms now,because again, it really does
depend on the client and theevent on what we're going to
recommend to you because thereis no, there no one straight
answer for, for everyone.
And I think a budget again, is ahuge component.
So yeah, you can talk aboutthese megachurches.
You can talk about, you know,NFL and the sports.
Realistically, most people donot have that budget and are not
(21:42):
going to have that level ofproduction.
I think that's another kind ofeducation moment is, you know,
it's easy to say, Oh, we'regoing to have three 60
simulcasts from 20 pluslocations, but you're working
with, you know, a budget that isnot the NFL.
It's just, it's not, you gottabe realistic with your
expectations, I guess what I'msaying.
Kyle Hamer (22:03):
Well, no, and I, and so by the way, I agree with
that, but I think that the thingthat's important to that, that,
that people will maybe think isas well, if I have budget, then
I can skip on production.
And I think for, from, from,from my perspective, what I was
just only trying to draw thesimilarity to is is that even
though budgets may be impacted,that's the one thing you
actually cannot skimp on.
Aubri Nowowiejski (22:25):
We honestly will not take a client who will
not allocate funds towards,towards the production element,
because, and again, going backto the whole argument, we are
not in the business of webinars.
Anybody can host a webinar,anyone can schedule a zoom call
and share their screen.
We are, we are there for theproduction in order to have that
production value.
You need that productionpartner, just like you would
(22:46):
apply to that.
I would never walk into aconference center and have a 500
person multi-day conference.
And I am the one doing thesoundboard and the, the screens.
You, you would never expectthat.
So in the same respect, you needyour audio visual partners for,
for virtual events now more thanever.
Kyle Hamer (23:05):
Well, in, in the, um, the example that I have for,
for me personally, is just, likeI said, I was at a, a really
large, uh, software as a servicecompany who had their event.
We talked about the, you know,the disconnect in emotional and,
and in, in arch, as it relatesto their production in their
keynote, like you got to getthat one, right?
(23:26):
However, you know, and they wereusing the big platform, see van,
they, I mean, they had tons ofvendors, they had tons of
sessions.
And the whole thing was, was,was, uh, was, you could tell,
was an incredibly large lift fortheir, for their company.
Flip it on its head though.
There was a very smallassociation where I'm a part of
it.
They might have a thousandmembers, right?
(23:49):
So they're not dealing with hugebudgets.
They used, they used zoomwebinars, but they invested all
of their money and effort intocreating what I will call the
Jerry Lewis telethon version of,of a zoom webinar, where there
were commercial breaks.
There were interludes, you movefrom one speaker to the next,
you had a nice Q and a, they dida, um, you know, a virtual horse
(24:13):
race where they had foundsomebody that had a recording of
a horse race.
They put it up and you had toplace your bets on what horse
you thought, like they took,they, they took what they had
and they made it an experience.
And it was something where youcould immerse yourself in and
actually have a good time.
It wasn't, it wasn't the sameamount of money you spent it at,
at inbound or at this otherconference, but they really
(24:35):
focused on that experience.
How important is it?
Aubri Nowowiejski (24:38):
It's so crucial.
I, you and I had kind of talkedabout this when we met last week
for that panel.
And I said, one of the thingsthat I'm most excited about is I
feel like with events, we haveveered so far on the other end
of the spectrum of equatingsuccess for an event to the
total number of attendees.
And just having these massquantity of attendees
understanding though that on theother end of the spectrum, the
(25:02):
more intimate the event istypically that's the, that's
where memories are made.
That's where the most lastingimpact is created.
And that is what drives sales orwhatever your ROI ends up being.
And so, um, even with eventplatforms, there are capacities,
you know, and there are optimalnumbers, not just from an
attendee perspective, but alsofor the amount of time, you
(25:23):
cannot expect people to dedicatetwo full days like they would at
an in-person conference.
Absolutely.
Don't do that.
And if anything, take advantageof the fact that you don't have
those geographic limitations orthat hotel contract limitation
spread that content out, youknow, make this something that
we have all admittedly failed atdoing is that whole follow-up.
(25:44):
How do things build from oneevent to the next and how can
you, you know, kind of put allthese puzzle pieces together and
connect it and really kind ofmake change.
I'm just so excited aboutgetting back to the intimacy of,
of events.
And, and I feel like where theymight have fallen flat is they
were just checking boxes on howcan we get everyone into general
(26:05):
session and how can we, youknow, just kind of in their own
way, replicate what would happenin an in-person event, but they
were missing the quintessentialelements of an in-person event
that we too often take forgranted.
And that's walking through thehallways, you know, that's the
like water cooler conversations,the nights at the bar where, you
know, the business deals anddiscussions actually happen, the
(26:26):
connections are actually made.
They were just doing thebaseline framework and they
weren't thinking about thoseinteractive entertainment type
elements that people have notreally experienced in a virtual
sense.
And so it takes them bysurprise.
Even the smallest little thingscan add so much to an event.
And you're absolutely, theydon't have to cost a ton of
money, quite frankly, withvirtual events now more than
(26:47):
ever with a lot of musicians andartists, and, you know,
everybody who's in anentertainment is stuck at home.
They are much more willing towork with you on your budgets.
You can get speakers that youwould've never gotten before or
cameo.
You can go to cameo.com and getsome famous celebrity from the
office.
You can give a shout out to yourattendees, you know, so there
(27:10):
are a lot of really fun optionsout there.
Kyle Hamer (27:13):
Yes, there are a lot of fun options out there.
Um, you know, one of the thingsI think is there's, there's a
couple of pieces.
If we keep talking about the,the event and the production for
the, for the company holding theevent, what are the there, and I
think there are two parts of theevent that typically make it, I
don't wanna say valuable for theattendee, but valuable for the
(27:35):
vendor or valuable for thesponsor or valuable for the, for
the host.
And those two pieces are how doI exhibit in a virtual
environment and have it reallybe worth anything.
And then on top of that, how do,how do I get my outside sales or
my field salespeople that areused to going to these shows and
(27:56):
these events and makingconnections and rubbing elbows,
how do we extend thosecomponents?
Can we, or, I mean, can we todayor those things that really need
to be explored in, in, you know,fleshed out.
Aubri Nowowiejski (28:11):
It is definitely evolving.
I'll be honest with that.
But I personally having been acorporate marketing manager in
my past life, having producedtrade shows, that's where I
started and doing a lot oftraining on trade shows, even
just, even with in-person tradeshows, Oh God, there's so much
training that needs to be donewith, with booth representatives
who just assume that people aregoing to come to you and to your
(28:32):
booth and engage with you andask you questions and you'll get
a chance to do your pitch.
It's no different now invirtual, you've got to go out
and seek them.
So one of the amazing abilitieswith these virtual events is you
pretty much have access to theentire attendee list within
those event platforms mostoften.
And so you have the capabilityto direct message anybody, and
(28:52):
often they'll have links totheir social media profiles.
You can connect with them onthere and start to build, Hey,
you know, I'm so glad that weboth attended XYZ event this
last week.
I didn't get a chance to talk toyou.
Can we set up a coffee dateoffline, you know, and then the
same thing about drawing peopleto your booth.
You can invite them to do thatwithin direct messages.
You can have pre-marketingcampaigns that are so important.
(29:14):
You can still have giveaways andentice people that way and, or
work with your conferenceplanners.
Maybe there's a larger overallgift.
So there's a lot of luxury giftexperiences where you can get
like, you know, over a hundreddollar pair of sunglasses or
both speakers just by going andvisiting a certain number of
booths.
And so they can then kind ofcash in to get these incentives
and rewards for, for doing thosethings.
(29:36):
There's also entertainmentdepending on the platform and
capabilities, but you could haveknow a spin the wheel and your,
and your virtual booth.
You could have a virtual photobooth within your booth, you
know, and have it branded foryour company.
There's all kinds ofactivations, essentially that
you can do in a virtual sense.
If you get creative and you gobeyond just, you know, the page
(29:58):
essentially that's provided foryou on that event platform
beyond just this text box videois King making sure that you
have a professionally producedvideo that very quickly explains
what it, what it is that you do.
And again, potentially has somesort of value add if there's
some sort of incentive, whetherthat's like a discount or a
coupon or a free consultation,like be thinking about what you
(30:22):
can offer these attendees.
And absolutely don't just expectthem to come to your booth.
Think about your own actions asa marketer.
I always say that like, thinkabout what you do.
Would you just, you know, likeclick on a link without knowing
what it was for?
Like, why would you take thetime to do that?
So knowing that you've got tokind of overcome those
challenges and things that thinkoutside the box, and then from a
(30:42):
production and contentstandpoint, more than just
having, you know, a loop of, oflogos, like you would have in a
general session, there are greatways to integrate, you know,
promo videos into your content.
You can have certain segmentsthat are sponsored by one of the
sponsors.
So for instance, grub hub, andthey can design the e-gift card
(31:02):
to have this lunch is brought toyou by XYZ sponsor, you know,
or, I mean, just, there are somany touches within the
conference.
You mentioned the horse racing.
There's also, can I say a swearword?
Well, it's just a word, whateverchicken, shit, bingo.
Like they can have virtualchicken, shit, bingo, or
Armadillo races, you know, andyou can bet on and those
different animals or whatever itis can be sponsored by a
(31:25):
particular sponsor.
I mean, there's just so manythings that you can do in a
virtual realm.
I, I would hope just people getmore excited and the more that
these platforms evolve, they arealso enabling people to have
one-on-one video conversationsand scheduled time, you know,
and all the analytics, Holysmokes, like most events don't
(31:48):
have the capability like RFIDcapability at in-person events
to track people's, you know,heat mapping and that kind of
thing.
They don't have the budgets todo that with virtual.
You got it all there.
You can see all the analyticsand real time who's clicking on
what page, how long have theybeen there?
Where were they cooking from?
You know, what brought themthere?
There's just so much that wecould get excited about for
(32:09):
virtual guys.
Kyle Hamer (32:11):
You know, you mentioned, you mentioned a
couple of things here that yougot my creative juices flowing
when it comes to being anexhibitor or somebody who's, um,
you know, sponsored events inthe past.
And like, and most of the timewhen you, you sponsored event,
they're like, Hey, can you putup some, uh, PDF collateral and
a basic description of yourcompany and give us a video.
(32:33):
And the video almost always isyour boiler plate.
This is our company.
That's the same thing.
You, your new hire when theyfirst show up, right?
Like, and it's not necessarilysomething somebody is going to
be like, Oh my God, yes.
I love that.
Like, they might apply for ajob, but not necessarily engage
you for, um, buying your productor service.
But, but I do think that we'rein a unique spot with the stuff
(32:54):
where artists are stuck at home.
Um, you you've got stuck withcameo.
Uh, was it true fan now?
I, I don't know I'm saying thatwrong, but you have an
opportunity with creating yourown spinoff webinar and inviting
people that came to that to cometo your special little event,
you may not be able at a normalSalesforce, um, Dreamforce
(33:18):
conference to, to afford hiringup van Halen and holding a
concert.
But that doesn't mean you can'thave your version of that with
some small local little, youknow, reggae band or whatever is
your, your company's extensionof your brand invite folks to
come in and start building that,you know, that relationship.
(33:40):
And it might actually be bettermoney spent at 25, 3,500 bucks
or whatever it may be to hirethe band for, for a, a live
event, a handled handled overvideo conference, then trying to
go out and figure out how to buyeverybody a beer.
Or if you do both, maybe that'seven better.
But I mean, there's, there's,there's so many ways to get
creative over just status quowith the, what the platform will
(34:04):
allow you to
Aubri Nowowiejski (34:06):
Her son and like any conference, most of
those sales guys would havetaken people out to MTVs or some
fancy steak dinner or whatever.
How can you replicate somethingsimilar to that?
I love going on.
I'm probably given too much ofthe sauce away, but like Airbnb,
as an example now hasexperiences.
And I love going to see, you canget, you know, someone's Italian
(34:26):
grandmother in Italy who is likehand-making pasta in front of
you and teaching you how, orlike there was a girl who does
lemon cello.
Like you can follow along withher family's recipe on how to
make this lemon cello.
Like how dope of an experienceis that, that you can do from
the comfort of your living roomor your home or your office or
whatever, you know, and there'sways to get your, your spouses
(34:48):
and your kids involved, likenever before, you know, and, and
incorporate them into events.
So events that, you know, we'rekeeping that in mind of the
other people who are in thehousehold and how can, how can
we entertain the kids so thatthe parents can actually get the
most out of this experience, youknow?
Oh gosh, I'm just genuinely soexcited about virtual events.
I think this is just thebeginning, you know,
Kyle Hamer (35:12):
I agree.
Well, I, and I think that it's,it's been a long time coming.
I mean, I remember when on 24had their first virtual exp, uh,
event many, many, many, manyyears ago.
And I was like, well, this islane.
It's like, you know, you'd sendoff, you'd send off a message
and then you'd have to wait forlike 20 or 30 minutes till
somebody would respond back.
And again, just the experiencewasn't there yet.
(35:32):
And now being stuck at home,we're, we're forced to, uh, to
accommodate and our behaviorchanges, right?
We're not distracted by as manyother things that are happening
in real life.
So these virtual events arehaving a, having a bigger
impact.
Talk to talk to me a little bitabout the platforms that are out
there.
You know, you mentioned some ofthe big boys are buried to me,
(35:53):
taking on a big platform is likebuying a brand new trade show
booth.
Like there's a lot of things tothink through, um, and build
out, right?
Like you've got produceeverything who are some of the
guys that are doing it reallywell.
And then talk about maybe someof the other things that are
surprising that that folks maynot know about,
Aubri Nowowiejski (36:12):
Oh gosh, everyone has different
experiences too.
And because of this pandemic,which is unprecedented, as we
all know these same words,right.
You know, on 24 in Trados, someof the leaders in, in the game,
you know, again at the start, itwas all the bells and whistles,
all the technical support we canoffer you.
And now I'm not calling on themspecifically, but other events
platforms, you know, they, againare just so inundated that it's
(36:37):
now, okay, it's on you to set upyour exhibitor booth and like,
you're going to have to pay Xamount, extra for technical
support, or just, you know, chatinto this chat box and hope
within the next 24 to 72 hours,even if it's the day of your
event, that you get some sort ofresponse.
So it isn't, it is a completelydifferent world that we're in.
Um, some of the, um, I don'twant to say, I'll say more
(36:59):
economical, let's go with thatword.
Uh, hop in is a great tool at 10to five, that was a conference
app that we, um, had, had usedfor a couple of our clients that
now have an event platform.
Again, a lot of, um, lessonslearned as well, because they
are in the process of rollingout.
And even your event platformsthat have been around for a
while, they too are doingupdates and upgrades to their
(37:20):
platform.
And so some of the questions youhave to ask is like, Hey, do you
have an upgrade scheduled forthe day of my again, event?
And what could that potentiallycause as far as, you know,
broken links or something thatwas originally working two days
ago when we did all thetechnical checks and now the
zoom is not integrating into theplatform, you know, like
literally we're learning by theday and just having to kind of
(37:41):
go with it and find workarounds.
Um, but those are some initialplatforms.
Hub is a great one.
Again, it really does depend onwhat you're trying to accomplish
, uh, and what I, or anybodywould recommend that you
utilize.
But those are a couple of theplatforms that we, um, I most
recently used and, uh, anddefinitely word on the street,
(38:02):
but there's a lot of forumsgoing on with different event
planners across the country whohave their own good and bad
stories and experiences on, onany, again, none there's no one
size fits all or end all be allplatform.
We're all kind of going throughthis, this growing phase
together,
Kyle Hamer (38:22):
You know, and I think you're right.
We are one of the things that Ithink is, was most interesting
in our panel discussion, we hada couple or last week was the
impact on the actual hospitalityand the physical location space,
honestly.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it'sdisappointing for them because
they've been such great partnersfor, for throwing events and
(38:44):
helping us be successful withwhatever we're putting on.
Right?
As you look at creative ways tokeep your partners involved, as
you're transitioning, right,this hybrid model, what are some
examples or ways you can thinkof how you might use the space
or how you might use a, aversion of the space or how you
might stitch this together sothat the there's a hybrid or
(39:06):
that you're still allowing the,the, uh, the physical event
spaces and locations to bearound, because if we don't use
them, we're going to lose themin, in, in, in quickly.
So what are some examples of howpeople could creatively leverage
a space that they've alreadypaid for space that they've
already added?
Aubri Nowowiejski (39:25):
Right?
There was a couple of differentoptions.
So you could have essentiallywatch parties.
And that could be in multiplecities across, you know,
wherever United States, theworld that are different
properties in differentlocations.
If you have a actual conferenceor event that originally would
have been in one large generalsession room, and you have the
ability to break them out intosmaller rooms, and either
(39:46):
ideally have your speakersrotate, instead of having the
masses of people rotate, that'sanother way that you can utilize
space and still keep people kindof socially distance and
separated.
You can also just like you woulda live event where maybe you did
have that general session room,and maybe you do have the
spacing apart with the classroomstyle seating, one per classroom
now.
Um, but then you have anoverflow room.
(40:07):
So the overflow room is whereyou have a broadcasted live
stream of what's going on inthat general session room.
Um, I also have always been abig fan of the, you know, kind
of disco, silent disco, youknow, so you can have multiple
speakers going on at a time andyou can switch different radio
frequencies to listen towhomever it is that you want to
hear from, I think, you know,getting creative with your, um,
(40:31):
event setups, as far as rentalfurnitures, like AFR and some of
the other rental furniturecompanies out there, they've got
some great, you know, 3drenderings and models of how
they are now, you know, settingup kind of conversation, nooks
and areas with chairs that arespaced out, or some of those
rounds that you're kind ofsitting with your back kind of
facing, but you're still havingconversations.
Anyway, they've gotten reallycreative with, uh, with the way
(40:53):
that they set things up, uh,FNB, there's been a huge change
to F and B.
Everything has to be likepre-packaged, but there's fun
ways to do that too.
Um, then a lot of your venuesalso have their own in-house
audio, visual companies or athird-party audiovisual company
that they work with.
And that's a great resource to,you know, to ask them like, Hey,
(41:14):
we originally were going to havethis as an in-person event.
We're now going to have a hybridexperience where part of our,
you know, attendees will be inperson.
The other part are going to betuning in from elsewhere.
How can you help us to, to takeour in-person content and
broadcast it, and they can workwith you on that.
Um, and also put those people towork, which is really important
as well.
Um, so those are just some ofthe, uh, initial things that I
(41:36):
would say, you know, and Iwould, you have different camps,
right?
Some people are ready to justget out there.
Like they cannot stay inside onemoment longer and others are
hibernating underneath theirbed, you know, like do not come
near me.
And so there are people who arewilling to meet in person.
I would survey them just likeyou would for, you know, any,
(41:58):
any kind of event to getfeedback.
You know, how comfortable arepeople with attending the event,
if they, and what protocols andmeasures have you put in place
WEC, um, the MPI conference,they did a phenomenal job
recently of releasing this videothat didn't so much focus on.
It was a, it was a conference Igot rescheduled and they didn't
so much focus on, like, here areall the content and stuff that
(42:21):
we're going to give you at thisconference.
They focus the majority of thevideo on what have we done to
ensure your safety for thisin-person experience.
And they interviewed the hotelstaff, they showed like an
example of a room set with thechair, spaced out.
They, you know, showed howregistration would be like,
they're pre mailing you yourbadge.
So you don't have to like go andcheck in at registration, like
(42:43):
everything's contactless.
They they're pre mailing you onmask, enhanced sanitizer and all
of these things that they'redoing to ensure your safety and
make you feel comfortable toattend.
They're also, um, you know, kindof offering a no risk
registration, you know?
So if things were to change, youknow, you have the ability to
get out or convert that to likean online ticket.
Like there are just a lot ofoptions wristbands.
(43:04):
We had talked about this lastweek.
So kind of that, you know,green, red, yellow, red being
don't come near me.
I'm not comfortable.
Uh, yellow is like, we can touchelbows.
And then green is like, come on.
Let's, let's basically shareeach other's glass.
Not really actually, but youknow what I mean?
Like I'm, I'm comfortable withhaving a conversation with
someone.
So all the different things thatyou can implement to, to give
(43:26):
business back to these venues,which is definitely needed
Kyle Hamer (43:30):
It's 100% needed.
Um, so for the, for those thatare listening that have events
coming up, or they're, they're,they're struggling through it
right now, do you have somequick and easy resources places
for them to go look where the behelpful to, to getting
additional perspective?
Not that they wouldn't beresearching it, but you're like,
Hey, I found this area, thisarea in this hair just really,
(43:51):
really valuable.
Aubri Nowowiejski (43:52):
Oh gosh.
You know, uh, that is a greatquestion.
Um, a lot of the resources thatI have are stuff that are privy
to us winning, like it's otherevent, professional, private
groups that, you know, we canhave open forum and then
dialogues on.
I always am a big advocate oflike event manager.
Blog tends to have some of thetop of the top Skift, um, and
your professional associationswithin the events industry too.
(44:13):
So you're meeting professionalsinternational, your
international live eventsassociation.
Uh, you got several differentweddings, specific organizations
at PCMA, professional conventionmeeting and events.
I'm not exactly sure what allthe acronyms are, even like your
AMS American marketingassociation, depending on what
society you're a part of.
I would plug into those groupsand see what, you know, what are
(44:35):
the best practices and lessonslearned?
I think, you know, getting itfrom a direct source, who's like
actually in it in a day to dayis a lot more valuable than an
article that might have a slantpotentially.
Uh, so, you know, check yoursources, but that's, that is
where I would recommend that.
Kyle Hamer (44:51):
So after they've, after they figured out that,
Hey, they need additional help.
How do they get ahold of youguys to get perspective on if
that's a good fit and a greatrelationship, uh, potentially
waiting to hear,
Aubri Nowowiejski (45:02):
Yeah.
Uh, coterie spark.com andinfo@coteriespark.com.
We're also on Instagram,Facebook, Twitter, all the
things, uh, I'll make sure thatyou have my contact information.
So aubrey@coteriespark.com andwe do offer free 30 minute
consultation.
So if you just really need toget a question answered or
someone to bounce, some ideasoff really quickly, we're more
(45:23):
than happy to help.
We do realize that truly we areall in this together, and that's
not just for potential clients.
That's also for partners aswell.
The start of this pandemic, Ireached out to a lot of our
partners and I said, Hey, howare you pivoting?
Have you figured out how you'regoing to pivot, regardless,
either way, let's get a callscheduled because we are truly
all in this together.
And I want to help help youguys, you know, because we, even
(45:45):
as event professionals, we haveunique needs as well.
And as this evolved, we werelike, Oh my gosh, you know, we
could do amazing tastings, butour tasting partners, maybe
haven't thought about this, orlike our catering partners where
the people that we used to getsucculent arrangements from,
like now we can ship it to themand do a workshop.
You know, there's just so manycreative things that can, can be
done.
So, um, we're here to supportyou in any way that we can.
Kyle Hamer (46:06):
That's great.
And just like, just like theother day, final thoughts, what
are you going to leave us with?
Aubri Nowowiejski (46:11):
Stay inspired?
I mean, I, as much as this yearhas sucked in some senses,
there's a lot of beauty that'scome out of it.
A lot of unity, a lot ofcreativity, a lot of thinking
outside the box, a lot ofadvancements that, that needed
to happen, the ability to workfrom home and have this autonomy
and prove to your corporate jobthat, you know, Hey, you guys
(46:31):
can save money on overhead and,you know, our corporate
Headspace or headquarters, and Ican work from home and do
sometimes more work than I wasdoing in the office.
So there's a, there's a lot ofgood that is going to come out
of this, but again, we are allUnited in this and, um, and
let's just help each other.
Kyle Hamer (46:46):
That's great.
Thanks so much.
You've been listening to Aubreyknow whiskey and we've, uh,
we've been talking about allthings, events, virtual and
otherwise.
So I really appreciate yourgenerosity and, um, you know,
giving, giving us the insidescoop, spending a little bit
more than the normal 30 minutesconsultation and giving us the
skinny on what's going on.
Um, and, and like you said, ifpeople want to get ahold of you,
(47:08):
it's Katari spark, C O T E R I ES P a R k.com.
It'll be in the description ofthe, uh, the podcast episode as
well as posted on the blog.
Um, thank you again for beinghere.
It's been, it's been awesome.
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