Let's Get Social

Consumers have more power than ever now because of social media—they are able to control the conversation. But the brands that interact with their audience through social media enable a two-way communication that allows them to better connect with their audience. So we found a tool to help manage that conversation.

Using a tool like HootSuite allows you to schedule posts, monitor conversations and hashtags, and communicate individually with attendees.

During the event, live tweeting helps the audience (near and far) follow along with the event’s highlights. When done correctly, it tells the audience to “look here!” “follow us!” and “see what we’re up to!”, leading to more engagement and a wider reach.

Benefits of Using HootSuite

HootSuite, specifically, is easily adapted to an event’s needs and can monitor multiple social platforms in one place.

After the event, HootSuite has a fantastic analytics report that can show the social ROI. It clearly shows how the hashtags performed, who was interacting with your tweets, and how many retweets and mentions a tweet received.

Most importantly, with all this information in one place, it can provide insights on the attendees’ feelings of the show—insights that could not be attained elsewhere. These insights can help brand managers form new strategies to further connect with their audience, or inform them of what worked or didn’t work according to their objectives.

So what’s your social plan? Don’t know? HootSuite can help you figure it out. Venture into the vast world of social media and refine its strengths to make it work best for your company’s needs.

When Failure Leads to Success

Five minutes into the CEO’s presentation, one of the projectors on a two-screen widescreen blend went out. Half of a 60-foot wide and 20-foot high screen went black, and somehow this event was still a success.

The elapsed time from the moment the projector failed to the point that the entire back-up scenario was in place was 15 seconds. Let me say that again—a partial black screen turned into a fully blended, perfectly functioning, back-up image. In 15 seconds.

Back-Up Plan to the Rescue

The point of this post is not to point out how great we are, but rather to draw attention to the need for backup plans. It is helpful to have backups for key pieces of equipment and procedures that are assigned and understood by the crew. We take ten minutes before every show to meet with the show leads and discuss each back-up option and the roles and responsibilities that each crewmember has in successfully implementing the plan.

For the last 10 years, through the countless shows we have put on, we have not needed to use a back-up plan. But when that screen went black, our team was able to successfully implement our backup plan, getting the screen working again in just 15 seconds. This moment of panic ended up being a victory for us. And it is all thanks to that pre-show crew meeting. 

Add it to the Job Description

While having and reviewing back-up scenarios are clearly not in the job description of an event planner (the hundreds of things that planners juggle on a typical show is more than enough), a good tip is to ask your production team “What will we do if a projector fails?” or “Not that it will, but what is your procedure if the wireless mic on stage fails?”

There is no way to guarantee that a piece of equipment will work flawlessly. What we can guarantee is that we have a backup plan in place that quickly and seamlessly gets the show back on track, and a fantastic team that knows what they are doing.

Brand the Elevators

An event’s theme and brand play a vital role in its success. Countless hours are spent developing and refining an event’s brand and tagline, then more time is spent adding visual life to that tagline. Maximizing opportunities to expand that tagline or brand outside of the meeting space can be an effective way to add value to an event. 

At recent three-day user conference, I counted the number of times that I stood in the lobby elevator bank waiting for an open elevator. It was 17 times! However, as with most events, I spend the majority of my time in the general session ballroom, but it occurred to me that most attendees would spend considerably more time waiting in an elevator bank.

Branding the Elevators

This is where the idea of elevator clings popped into my head. Elevator clings are an interesting and relatively inexpensive way to extend an events theme beyond the general session space. And I have to admit I much prefer elevator clings to window clings… 

When you are on an event site, you jump in and help where ever you are needed, even if that means the director, graphics producer and audio lead get the job of helping the meeting planner hang window clings in Mexico City. It is a fun story, ask me sometime and I will gladly share it with you—just hopefully not while we are hanging window clings.

The Roosevelt Hotel

New Orleans, LA

Overview: The Roosevelt is a Waldorf Astoria property in the heart of the French Quarter. The lobby, guest rooms and restaurants are what you would expect from a Waldorf hotel: historic, expensive and a little small.

Ballroom: The main ballroom, The Roosevelt Ballroom, is around 18,000 square feet and it can be divided into sections. For the conference that we were working, the ballroom was split to create a pre-function area that wrapped around the general session space. The layout was a little strange but worked for this conference.

AV Staff and Equipment: The in-house AV staff members were nice and attentive, but I would say they are more suited for small events and breakouts. The in-house company is willing to bring in freelance leads for events, which is helpful. The equipment available from in-house had some wear, and again is more suited for breakouts or small events.

Producer’s Notes: The hotel comes with everything you would expect from a Waldorf. The ballrooms and AV staff are also what you would expect from a Waldorf. They are kind and helpful, but the star of the property is the hotel—not the event space. The attendees always love the property but it is a space where we (the production side) have to get a little creative with stage design and layout.

Brian Beaulieu

Type of Speaker: Economist, ITR Economics

Pros: I have the opportunity to see a lot of economists speak, as they are popular at corporate events. Often we will see the same economist “flavor of the month” at many conferences, but Brian Beaulieu was a new name to me, and I was very impressed with his presentation.

He spoke for 90 minutes, which included Q&A. Brian’s presentation included a lot of forecasting and tracking of key economic indicators and contained his company’s historical tracking of those indicators as well. There were a lot of charts and graphs—like usual—but he moved through them fairly quickly. He even included a little humor into the presentation (not something you see often from an economist).

During Brian’s presentation, the audience stayed engaged and interactive. I always think that you can tell that an audience is engaged when two things happen: very few people get up and leave the room and there are a lot of questions during the Q&A session.

Cons: The only concern I have is whether Brian’s presentation would resonate with a wide variety of audiences. The session I saw was targeted at executives at an association.

Producer’s Notes: I have only seen Brian once, but have already recommended him to a couple of clients.

For more information:  Brian's ITR Economics Page

Update

We worked with Brian again in April 2016 and he was just as good the second time. His humor is still sharp and engaging and his economic presentation was again thorough and easy to understand.