Hybrid Event Production Archives

Consider the pending shift from virtual events to a hybrid format. While not all hybrid and virtual events are created equal, the common pitfalls experienced in their creation and execution are equal. From sales kick-offs to full-scale user conferences and cutting-edge awards ceremonies, understanding the gaps ahead will prepare you to execute a seamless event, the first time.

So here we go, the five biggest hybrid and virtual event pitfalls and how to leap over them.

Choosing the Wrong Tech Platform

It all starts here. With the wide range of event technology available and the feature set expanse laid before you, the right commitment can be daunting. Make sure you are crystal clear on your program goals and outcomes and then ask yourself these questions:

Will the content be live, on-demand, or a mix?
How does your audience need and want to engage?
What’s the tech-savvy rating of attendees and presenters?
What is the networking scope need to look like?
Are specific analytics and footprint data important?

Now, check your answers against your overall strategy to identify specific capabilities you must have to meet your goals. Next, send them to a platform provider and have them tell you what they can and can’t do.

Underestimating Production Support Needs

Producing a virtual event can be somewhat lighter than a full-blown live experience, yet there are still complicated logistics, integrations, technical expertise, and delivery channels that only an experienced hybrid and virtual event company can offer. So, here are the challenges you have to consider:

Access to stable internet connections and hard-core bandwidth
Multiple presenters in different and often remote locations
Symbiotic organization and collection of content for the platform and live stage
Quality of production value to deliver branded content that reflects your tone of voice
Driving interactivity beyond just networking

Each moment, presentation, and intent need to be considered, planned for, and expertly produced, or audiences become easily disconnected and distracted.

Unprepared Remote Presenters

Oh so critical! Don’t take for granted that just because they hold the title of “speaker” or “host” that they are A-OK with presenting to a webcam or a mostly empty room. They are likely experts in presenting to a live audience that amps them up and urges them on to be engaging, but any other assumption can be dangerous.

Presenters are developing a whole new skill set for connecting audiences to their content. Rethinking the length of presentations, minimizing slides, and nailing key messages with crisp graphics are the starter package for today’s presentation.

Then there are the essential tools and prep:

An optimized capture device fully loaded with enhanced lighting & audio to deliver killer production quality
Speaker “tech-ins” to ensure they record a solid presentation or are prepped with the right camera angle, lighting, sound quality, and teleprompter tools
If a host or moderator, seamlessly transferring between the virtual and live audience in a hybrid setting so it has an all-inclusive feel
Recording practice sessions for timing and confidence for the day of the show so they don’t fall into the next pitfall of …..

Not Engaging Your Audience

For hybrid or virtual events, dynamic content delivery should include numerous channels for the maximum attendee engagement experience. In other words, identify the best tools to match audience engagement goals for:

Polling
Live chat for Q&A
One-to-one or one-to-many networking
Social media feeds
Gamification
Music

Don’t let the tail wag the dog. If you do, you cast that Zoom fatigue spell over your audience quickly. Engagement tools like those listed above are part of both your tech platform and the production expertise. Used in tandem, audiences get the full engagement of networking and overall event interaction.

Denying Data

Analytics and measurement should NOT be an afterthought, therefore, pre-determine the types of data you need to measure the impact on event goals and the post-event follow-up are key metrics to consider. For example, you’re able to track your attendee’s actions before, during, and after the event with just a little forethought:

Identify which sessions drive interest, which have the most attendance, and how long members attended those sessions
Look at what questions were asked and in which format
Find out which devices they’re using
Recognize where attendees lost interest or changed their engagement behavior
Post-event feedback on inclusion, especially when hybrid

All indicators of intent, preferences, and triggers that can enable your team to discover best practices and outline future changes for better results can be established with the right analytics strategy.

What did we miss? Have you tripped and dropped into any hybrid and virtual event pitfalls you can share?

Who We Are

OVATION is a live, hybrid, and virtual event production company that elevates event experiences to fuel meaningful connections between people and brands.

From wow-worthy event design and production to anywhere, any time, any device content design, we integrate your event content and strategy with your company’s overall strategic initiatives. Let us help you identify opportunities for strategically integrating all things virtual into your next event. Contact us today.

The future of events will be a fascinating story to tell. For those that openly embrace the new chapters being written, there is enormous potential. How will your event story unfold?

With the rising action of the pandemic, we ushered in digital events at a level never seen before. Traditional B2B and B2C events were halted almost immediately, forcing a reinvention of almost everything.

Staying relevant with virtual experiences emerged as the main idea and its story has been building momentum ever since. As a result, business data, culture, experiences, and values are now delivered in new formats. While not new setups, these presentation mediums haven’t been forced upon us ever before with such mightiness.

Planning Your Hybrid Event Story

Hybrid events are a mix of in-person and digital events. You take your live event, complete with an audience, content and your brand then add a virtual component to it. The goal is to have your audience participate and engage with your event, no matter where they are. In other words, it’s an event that includes both live, in-person, and virtual components.

While in smaller groups, across the country and around the world, physical events are making their grand re-entrance. This signals a clear shift to the hybrid event as a killer crossover move. ‘Stay agile and react fast’ is the moral of our industry’s story.

With audiences becoming increasingly rooted in digital experiences, their hunger for easy-to-attend and higher production quality event journeys is equally rising. As the mandatory need for exclusive virtual options begins to lift, event owners need to embrace change. Deciding on when and how to position a hybrid event will depend on geography and both buyer-seller needs at the personal and professional level. Just like any event done right, the hybrid channel will both show and tell an excellent story about your mission, product, initiatives, and brand.

The art of telling a successful story through a hybrid model is in the strategy behind the creation and creativity of content. Content is the connection point of every story. For hybrid events, the struggle is strategically placing content in the story that makes all audiences feel they are in a connected experience. No one hero should feel more important than the other.

Write Each Chapter With Your Audience in Mind

Hybrid is a growing narrative arc that wasn’t here five months ago. Now it’s the main character dominating the story. To write a captivating tale, event owners must embrace technology like never before.

Authoring your hybrid story must come from a different point of view than virtual or just face to face. By way of explanation, virtual storytelling takes the ancient and traditional part of in-person engagement and involves a set of technical tools and well-timed delivery that creates personal stories. Applying graphics, sounds, music, and images to accompany the authors’ voice is the impetus for an engaging presentation. Pairing the live aspects of in-person audiences and venue settings that align with the overall hybrid delivery will then engage audiences with power and depth. This is your multi-channel communication strategy or tone of voice.

Expanding Your Reach

Sticking to primarily virtual events from now on or resisting hybrid approaches while waiting for in-person to again dominate all event channels, likely means losing out on the extended reach to audiences you otherwise will never get in front of. Expanding your reach with hybrid events means growing attendance numbers and increasing sponsorship value.

This makes a great case to consider ways for both heroes in your story to interact. Either within their own like participation groups or as a larger, single group. Pre and post-event activities to run through a hybrid event platform that will engage both audiences could be:

1:1 small group video calls
Live chats and forums
On-demand content to keep the conversation going long after the event is over

Find an audience engagement platform that makes its technology user-friendly. Unless you have a substantial team of event tech experts in-house, consider a platform that supports you when enabling interactivity, like surveys, polling, live chat, and Q&A.

Hybrid Event Story Content

When outlining your hybrid event strategy, don’t simply stream the same content from an in-person setting to the virtual attendees. It doesn’t hold the same impact. Likewise, if a presentation is on the dry side, it will come across even worse virtually. It goes without saying that remote participants are lured away from the screen more readily than their live venue counterparts. Conceptually, taking the bundle of content you’ve delivered face to face or virtually and maneuvering it to fit a hybrid setting will fall flat, every time.

Embrace newer forms of event technology for better hybrid storytelling. Previously existing only in pockets pre-pandemic, event tech will inspire the innovation you need to connect with and engage your audiences. Consider some of the following options:

Virtual or augmented reality
Artificial intelligence
Event data analysis
Mobile apps

Interactive Engagement

In order to tell an engaging story with hybrid events, focus on telling it well to both audiences. Ask yourself, “What will drive my audiences to engage with our story?” Make sure you have definitive answers for both of your heroes.

How can you make attendees feel connected to your brand, each other, and the host of the event? When audiences aren’t live, it’s easy for presenters to overlook their virtual presence. Make sure both audiences stay engaged by coaching speakers to address the live audience in front of them. Similarly, guide them to address the camera that is broadcasting to remote attendees, often. These protagonists are the voice through which your audience hears everything … the keys to sustaining engagement throughout the entire event.

Identify engagement best practices that can make the most of your speakers and hosts. Then build a hybrid program that religiously uses them at every turn. Think seamless and consistent activity points:

Truncate content sessions and deliver in a conversational format with a moderator
Push out polls or surveys at regular intervals and remind both groups of attendees to answer
Use shout outs to acknowledge participants in the room and behind the screen
Ask remote attendees to send in questions or comments via the technology platform or social media and have speakers respond live
Get feedback from participants in a chat feature to tap into the wisdom of the crowd
If group work plays into your story, present a challenge and set up a virtual brainstorm between both groups to collaborate and develop new solutions

Broadcasting and Live Streaming

Broadcasting and live streaming adds that tech element to your virtual event through an interactive platform and leaves your audience engaged and entertained. When hybrid is your choice, it’s critical to make the virtual component like a TV broadcast from a studio. However, be careful not to make this a passive protagonist. The goal of the broadcast approach is to motivate your audience to take action or interaction.

Consider hitting on these interactive moments throughout the hybrid event story to elevate the broadcasting elements:

Strong graphic elements that drive the brand connection
Incorporate meal breaks and short re-charge moments (recall in-person events where breaks were meant to delight with a selection of beverages, petite desserts, and popcorn machines)
Set up ways for live and remote groups to interact, like facilitated chats or brain dates right after each major session
Use breakout room sessions for group huddles to match in-person attendees with remoters for discussion and networking
For transactional events, incorporate search platforms and e-directories to connect and find buyers and suppliers

What Will Set Your Story Apart?

To completely understand what hybrid events will look like in the near future, all new considerations should be entertained for our omnichannel heroes to emerge to the forefront.

The necessity to tackle the “voyage and return” narrative of our hybrid story as audiences visit a new world and return with a new perspective is massive. Regardless of what your hybrid story will be, what sets your story apart will also include your event team structure, the role of event technology, and production value that bring the two heroes together for a compelling version of your story.

COVID-19 has forced event participants to make choices. Now they expect to have them. Offering them an option to consume your event story using strategic narratives and emerging technologies across virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face venues will give your business a competitive advantage much needed in today’s environment.

OVATION’s Story

OVATION is a fully integrated virtual event platform and hybrid event production partner. We support you with tech gurus, production experts, and creative producers to complement your internal teams. Get in touch for a discovery call to learn how we might help you write your hybrid story.

The Bridge Between Digital & Physical Worlds

Hybrid events can be, well, a hybrid of both virtual and live events. That wasn’t so hard, was it? After the year that shall not be named, traditional events, like many things, entered a heavy downward spiral. The industry began looking inward and found the answer at home.

Streaming had been dragged further into its own spotlight as a means for its industry to continue onward and upward. This insight brought about a new wave of thinking in how we experience our world at large and on a modern scale.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen both brands and businesses moving further into the experiential world as traditional mediums of impact move further into socially shared experiences. These moments allow consumers and coworkers alike to finally share a tangible entrance in both brands and businesses we have conventionally participated with alone in our own heads.

Event channels now combine the physical and digital by broadening the audience and allowing any given space to become a stage. It’s a given these (those) days that if you were to go to a music festival, you see people all around you with a device in hand sharing the physical experience with a digital audience of their own. It’s been around us the entire time. Not yet on an industrial platform, but instead within the end-users sharing these memorable moments with their friends and family.

Internet and broadband continue to expand. Literally now orbiting earth in the form of satellites and below the surface as fiber networks. This growth and potential in live streaming (along with any large-scale projects) only grows the global outreach most businesses only dream of retaining.

This saves cost and time on enormous traditional event builds. It also strengthens the brands’ digital footprint and audience alike while growing towards an energy net positive experience.

Why Hybrid?

“I learned that we could do anything, but we can’t do everything…at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities, not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.”
Dan Millman

It’s true; we’re attempting to run two separate events simultaneously. Before you dive too far into the safety of the past, here’s a healthy reminder we live in a world of forward-thinking. The event industry, like many others, has officially evolved for the better. Again, all of these things were in motion to only now be fast-tracked into our broader social norm. This unprecedented pandemic allowed all of us to rethink and relearn everything from business models and partnerships to event technology and content delivery.

There’s a bonus side to hybrid functionality. Consider having sponsors with the opportunity to land in front of both sides of your audience. That comes out to double the exposure they’d typically have before. Hosting part of your event on a virtual stage creates new opportunities for avenues of lead gen and awareness.

By offering sponsors more value, your event has the ability to attract more partners. This could help offset the technical cost of running the event and allow you to grow your relationships with any given partner.

An awful lot of factors need to be considered when deciding the format of any event. Companies have begun auditing venues to further ensure events are hybrid-ready once live experiences are allowed to return. This can consist of a questionnaire for venues to fill in to ensure they have the basics in place to run hybrid events in the future. Chambers of Commerce are planning hybrid events, allowing options to attend in person or virtually. The capacity of the events to be tailored to the guidelines and regulations for each city.

There’s certainly a thirst in the business community for a modern middle ground. Digital is here to stay, and the future is very much a hybrid one.

How

Here’s what you need, and what we so happen to do.

Talent, both on and off-screen. A theme/direction for your event. A crew to provide the necessary platform for the event. Troubleshooting with the said crew, a few rooms for that talent, then wham you have your event. It can be a bit more complicated, but not by much.

Issues will occur, like anything you create. Plan to bring the two worlds together. Think ahead of time about the sure-to-be roadblocks along the way. Doing so will help bring together the best transitions built for the best event.

With What

Of course, it includes multi-view streaming setups, cameras, and crews running the show behind the scenes. All are supported by both off and on-site technical teams. They’ll manage the flow and be ready for a host of issues along the way, before and during the event in real-time.

Here’s another significant bit, the run of the show, the schedule, and too many terms to, well, term. This caters to both sides of your audience. Programing yourself to be both engaging and effective in the days to come. Think highly of timing when planning. This includes sessions, how many per day, community building, live polls, and Q&A moments.

Did we mention collaborative breakouts? Content rollout, content fallout, push notifications, analytics, design systems, deep breath, security and encryption teams? Don’t snub bandwidth issues, and having a backup plan at every turn, too.

Content is Everything

“I don’t have any one way to tell a story. I don’t have any rule book of how it’s supposed to be done. But I’ve always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told, beginning, middle, and end, I’ll tell it that way. I won’t jigsaw it, just to show what a clever boy I am. I don’t do anything in my script just to be clever.”
Quentin Tarantino

We should mention there is a beginning, middle, and end when it comes to events. That means connecting, sharing, and exchanging follow-ups and lead-ins with both parts of your audience.

Let’s call this your optimal content flow because in this world, content is king. Allow yourself time to plan attendee engagement and strategy by the tool effectively. Then there’s the translation, aiding design range as it moves from a still to a motion state for, at times, hours on end.

All of this setup to draw in more attendees and lower your carbon footprint. Your content is arguably the key here.

When

Now.

Let’s recap. The soft apocalypse changed some things around. People took a step back to think about things in a new light. They saw that it had some potential and efficiencies and leaned further into that good. The internet and tech ecosystems grew stronger and continue to do so. Multitasking event experiences became the new normal.

There are far too many experiences we thought of to link out to here. But here’s some encouragement for you to go out and seek these things yourself in planning for your next brand experience.

Or another blog post, in our case.

Things move fast, always have, and always will. We have a tremendous opportunity to leverage built-in audiences while exploring the possibilities of pushing boundaries outward in gaining new community members and tangible points for that audience to enter the fold. We find that exciting.

Keep an eye on tech. Watch as things grow as the world heals and begins to come together closer than ever before. As an industry full of leaders, we can continue to navigate and improve together.

The Plug

OVATION is a fully integrated virtual event platform and hybrid production partner. We support you with production teams or creative staff to compliment your internal teams. Get in touch for a discovery call to learn how we might help you change the game.

Event Production Matters Now More Than Ever

The time has come to rise above clunky virtual events and poorly run webinars. Bad virtual experiences can damage a brand and dismantle a professional image quicker than you can hit the pause button.

Yet companies are still attempting to take their message online without investing in the expertise of creative, technical and production support. As a result, audiences end up losing trust and confidence in the brand. A poorly executed event is no ones plan, but it happens when we don’t know what we don’t know.

Trust in Your Brand

How important is trust in your brand? According to Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer, 61 percent of Americans trust businesses, yet trust in brands is at an all time low.

We’re not saying lower than average trust in brands is anyones fault. Everyone has tried to do their best in using different event channels under current circumstances. We’re saying with the future of event delivery channels transforming into a completely new normal, taking a closer look at how to get better is critical. Through the use of experts driven to make you a success in events, it could make a significant difference in moving the needle and increasing ROI.

The Cutting Edge of Event Production

Whether you stay the course with virtual events or plan to introduce hybrid options for 2021, the expertise of technical event production and creative design producers are critical in your lineup. Do you have the team in place to get you the results you need?

Event production expertise is really the technological and creative execution of an event. Using sound, lighting, video, design and immersive elements, production controls the atmosphere, mood and emotion of attendees. This is true whether on the screen or in the room.

Don’t Believe the Hype

Sure, we hear the hype too … everything can feel the same in digital events as they did in person … we’re just not feeling it in most cases. However, an experienced, virtual event production team will know exactly how to make that actually happen. They work with your vision, and creatively stage it to draw audiences in closer to the screen, making them feel like a part of it all. With elements of color, lighting, sound and graphics, they can make breakout rooms, sponsor activations and pre-recorded videos into works of art.

Likewise, when no physical venue or stage exists, it’s easy to overlook production needs that arise with speaker support, bandwidth issues or platform streaming. Platforms that are self-service and have no production support can lead to epic fails if you aren’t technically trained to mitigate the trouble spots.

If You Hire, Hire For Both

How will you execute the pre-production, on-site, and run-of-show logistics to achieve your goals? The answer to this question will dictate if you need a full production team. Also ask yourself if your event can benefit from adding in experiential design. The lift here is that participants feel they are “in the room” interacting with the event and each other.

If you decide to explore hiring creative and production experts, we strongly recommend hiring a production company that can help you create, produce and design both virtual and in person events. The idea is to get more done with less mistakes, at a lower cost than hiring more staff, full-time. Look for a partner offering both virtual production experience (5+ years) and in person production experience. This will give you the option to pivot as needed so your virtual or hybrid event strategy runs smoothly.

Salesforce, Twitter, Samsung and many others are reimagining physical events for 2021. They regularly evaluate evaluate virtual and in person production roles in which they will outsource. Complimenting their internal staff of marketers, event specialists, IT and creatives when it comes to virtual events is a regular part of their business model.

Curtain Drop

In a recent blog post, we shared our take on the 5 virtual event roles necessary on your virtual event team. Keeping up with the ever changing event technology and audience engagement demands is not easy. It might help you further to know what triggers define the need to hire a production company.

While you’re deciding which of your event production needs to hire, virtual or hybrid, here’s a few vendors to consider that add value to almost any event.

Top 5 Event Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them