What Creative Agencies Can Teach Us About The Future Of Connected Events

Branded events have indelibly changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. The conferences and trade shows of 2019 which were generally relegated to physical spaces like ballrooms and convention centers have now expanded into digital and hybrid channels. Emerging technologies like augmented and virtual realities are making events all the more immersive and our very thinking about events has changed. They are no longer contingent upon physical environments and the people that occupy a respective space at a moment in time. Events have evolved into shared experiences across geographies and contexts, and the opportunities for touchpoints and connection with audiences are limited only by the imagination of their facilitators.

Here’s how innovative creative agencies are using events to tap into shared experiences across channels.

An Opportunity For Live Marketing

“Live marketing is our term for tapping into a collective experience across contexts,” says Mike White, Founder and CEO of Lively Worldwide, one of the first companies to develop the home studio streaming kit to direct and produce global virtual events from home.

White’s agency has worked with clients like Spotify, Virgin, Twitter and Mazda to create events that are unbounded by space and time. “It used to be that a keynote speaker or music headliner was the center of attention at events. Now it’s about the real-time communication and connection of the broader community. The best brand experiences put humans at the center and allow brands to reach and engage them authentically.”

White points to formats that establish communities of engaged brand advocates who become an integral part of the brand’s marketing efforts. Whether brands use a social media channel, or custom build an activation in the metaverse, the key is to build an ecosystem where fans can engage and build relationships with the brand and with each other.

Integration With Technology

Technology has always facilitated connection and fostered creativity, but the shifting behavioral norms after the pandemic have allowed longstanding technologies to be deployed in new ways.

“Madonna did one of the first live streams with MSN in the 90's and reached over a million people,” says White. “Zoom has been a virtual meeting tool since its inception in 2011 and the first metaverse was created at scale by Second Fest in 2007. So when the world stopped for the pandemic and we all brought these technologies to the forefront they transformed in-person events.”

Technology has come of age and now allows experiences to live past the events themselves and reach target audiences that marketing had never been able to do, until now. Emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual and augmented reality have the potential to be particularly impactful for early adopters, similar to Madonna’s use of streaming in the 90s.

Harness The Marketing Power Of Lived Experiences

Events are one of the last marketing frontiers that are not plagued with advertising fraud. Estimated to have cost advertisers $81 billion in the US alone in 2022, ad fraud is rampant in the rest of the digital ecosystem. Since it’s unlikely that a bot would purchase a ticket to attend an event, they are relatively impervious to this kind of waste.

Meanwhile, digital targeting is getting tougher as consumers are more aware and interested in data privacy concerns. The impending deprecation of the third party cookie on Chrome means that advertisers will have a harder time tracking consumer behavior outside of the walled data gardens of Google and Facebook. Advertisers are looking for new ways to spend media budgets, and events are a great opportunity to connect with real consumers and strengthen the quality of contextual, first party data.

Event marketing can become part of an integrated advertising strategy, as well. For example, Lively created live content for Twitter at Cannes Lions that went onto become a Webby award-winning ad during the Oscars.

Rethinking the power of events for community-building and adopting immersive technologies will help brands connect with consumers in rich new ways. Understanding events as part of a media strategy and harnessing the power of first party data can help advertisers stay competitive. Using creativity to put community and strategy together can leave a lasting impression on audiences and culture.