Hundreds of public and private events cancelled or postponed because of coronavirus: what can be done to avoid blocking everything?
Copyright Moovs We are living in unprecedented times: we were used to travelling to attend fairs, conferences and specialist events and all of a sudden we have found ourselves having to deal with cancellations that nullified months of organisational work in a short period of time, revolutionised companies, hit budgets and endangered the entire sector of event and fair organisers .
The Geneva Motor Show or the Milan Furniture Fair are two very high-profile examples, but cancellations and postponements have involved hundreds of events, with participant numbers ranging from the dozens to the hundreds of thousands. It’s going to be difficult or outright impossible to make up for this lost time, and the solutions that have been put in place to “virtualise” events only go so far: a video published on YouTube can be a good promo or offer brief insights but cannot be a substitute to actually attending a fair; similarly, it’s difficult to think that the programme of a two day conference can be absorbed through an online video streaming platform.
There are obviously many generalist platforms offering broadcasting, chat and video conferencing services, but they have not been designed to create an immersive, engaging and rewarding experience that is equivalent to real events. Are there any alternatives? We believe that an interesting option could be Virtual Event, which is part of the integrated digital platform Leaplines, that is commercialised by Moovs and GoodGoing! (in Italy).
Whether the requirement involves presenting a new strategy to all employees of a large company, launching a product, hosting a pre-event before a congress, the congress itself or follow-up events (or any other event with a large volume of participants), Virtual Event can cater to the needs of organisers through a customer experience with a high visual and emotional impact.
You can choose between footage, animations, content generated by users or even an exciting escape room. For a fixed period of time invitees will have access to a URL and a personal hostess will greet them to explain the options and the programme or schedule.
With Virtual Event you can:
reach employees or invitees across borders and time zones without employees or trainers having to travel;
avoid cascading information and facilitate direct contact with the organisation on all levels, without the risk of messages being twisted (and misunderstood).
Virtual Room has “rooms” dedicated to the various issues being handled that will allow for different types of content: plenary chambers for content of general interest (e.g. welcome by the CEO) and secondary rooms for specialist interventions (videos), rooms with “inspirational” content featuring interventions by guests (videos) as well as documents and presentations, Social Rooms for interaction with other participants or for Q&A sessions, tests, quizzes, check-lists or questionnaires for assessing participants’ knowledge and understanding of content or for increasing the level of interaction or conducting surveys to hear their impressions on a subject. Moreover, there are blackboards with animations to present concepts or for entertaining participants with the use of games that generate their own awards and rankings.
As you can see, this is a much more versatile and complete solution than a generalist platform. The benefits in terms of time savings, costs (no travel and accommodation expenses for guests, less costs for speakers or trainers) and the possibility for users to access content when they want means moving from a single event to a process, which thereby justifies the investment.
From a global leader in professional services (that has used Virtual Event to create a virtual environment to recruit candidates for their organisation) to a holding company for major Fashion brands (which used it as a training platform for the visual order systems in their showrooms) to a household appliance multinational (that created a virtual showroom for vendors, technicians and dealers), there have been plenty of cases of success and the economic returns that have been generated and measured have been significant.
But the best way to fully appreciate the value of the solutions available with Virtual Event is through a demonstration. If you are interested, contact us by email on info@goodgoing.it. We’ll be more than happy to organise a session for you.
