A little over a year ago, Filene’s marketing and events teams had to rapidly pivot to a novel method for engaging industry professionals in a learning and experiencing environment, instigated by the novel coronavirus. Today, nothing feels novel about where we are in this, and quite frankly, as we sit on the precipice of the next normal, we’re collectively feeling the urge to jump head first into whatever’s next.
It is widely agreed upon that there is no going back to the way things were. Still, many things from the past are hard-wired into who we are as humans, like our powers of resiliency and adaptation. If we’re not going back and we’re not staying here, where are we going? Where we’re headed is ours to decide – what we build on from what always was, what we keep from this interim phase and what we want to invent in the next phase.
In the context of credit union industry events, we’re laying a film of in person atop a structure of virtual built on the foundation of in person. To clarify what this means, we’ll break down the key considerations for planning, promoting and executing next-normal events.
Building and Executing Event Experiences in the Next Normal
Over the past six months, we’ve witnessed the return of in-person meetings on both a regional and national scale. As an events manager on the board of the local Meeting Professionals International chapter (Beth) and a marketing leader adamant on centering our audience in everything we do (Holly), we’ve been paying a lot of attention to all that’s evolving from a planning and executing perspective.
Beth ventured out of the workfrom- home bubble for an in-person event, and while scanning the massive room big enough for a group four times the size, realized there was something that hadn’t changed: The buzz of connections and conversations. And in that buzz, a list of 2021’s new buzzwords could be heard – hybrid, new-normal, COVID-friendly. Now, a new set of buzzwords are helping us down the path to rebuild our events at Filene.
Focus: Planners have a new set of priorities to focus on when it comes to executing events, the most important of which is health and safety of attendees. The amount of planning needed to ensure every attendee feels comfortable and safe attending your event cannot be stressed enough. There are plenty of online resources, like the recently published whitepaper from Emergency Concierge International (ECI) titled “How to Develop a COVID-19 Safety Plan.”
The second priority focus for events is the hybrid experience. Offering a virtual opportunity in the past was seen as risky; a deterrent from attending in-person that could impact the meeting’s ROI. While some risks remain, not offering a virtual element is riskier to engagement with your stakeholders in the post-COVID environment. With reduced or restricted travel budgets, health concerns for themselves or family, and the ongoing battle for time on their calendar, attendees have more to weigh when deciding what to attend. Ensuring there is an opportunity to engage virtually will continue to be key to your event’s success.
Flexibility: Meetings can happen in person in 2021, but they’ll require a lot of flexibility from everyone involved. It’s hard to plan a year or even a month in advance when local policies are updated week by week. Having a plan in place with the proper check-ins to allow flexibility as the environment changes is essential. Start by planning for what is happening right now but be ready to adjust as needed and make sure there are open lines between you and your event partners throughout. This will reduce the surprises and allow you to be proactive with your stakeholders throughout the planning process.
Flexibility will be a key variable for attendees as they return to in-person meetings as well. Ensuring you have a reasonable and easy- to-understand cancellation policy will help attendees feel safe and confident in registering for your event in advance. The early-bird registration financial incentive won’t be effective with so many uncertainties hanging around. Similarly, if you find yourself rebooking a previous program, you may find your contracted space is no longer large enough for social-distancing requirements. Being creative with layouts, locations and clearly communicating with your attendees will help ensure everyone feels comfortable with the flexibility needed.
Forgiveness: This may be the hardest for any planner to implement into their planning. We are perfectionists by nature and love nothing more than having everything run smoothly. But we need to be forgiving of ourselves as we start over to build and innovate in this new environment. We have a lot more questions than answers right now, and nothing but time and testing will answer those. Connect with a peer or mentor at your organization and identify resources that will help you feel confident in your planning and understand that you are not the only one who is uncertain about what the future of events will look like.
Attention: Event attendance is the gold standard in “call-toaction” engagement. If you can get your audience to come to your event, you’ve likely created a loyal fan. Here’s the let-down of the hybrid environment: You’ll never have a less captive audience than now. Let that sink in a moment – with one foot in and one foot out of this pandemic, with some people vaccinated and some not, with some sessions virtual and some in person, the hybrid phase invites distraction. Gone are the days of a captive audience sitting in a closed room with all eyes on you.
Work with your audience’s propensity to be distracted, not against it: Keep their attention by making your content personally relevant to their current situations, keep your concepts hyper-tangible, use emotion and empathy to connect quickly, and keep it simple so attendees will remember what they learned and what they gained. Check out “The Persuasion Code” by Christophe Morin and Patrick Renvoisé for more on how to engage your audiences’ primal brains.
Storytelling: Effective storytelling creates an emotional connection and avid interest in a world of seven-second attention spans. Facts, stats and ideas alone don’t carry meaning, while stories help us communicate, and reflect on how we’re similar and appreciate how we’re different. They give us a sense of belonging, and through the act of telling a story, both the storyteller and listener are changed.
Carrying the new rules for flexibility and forgiveness into our events also requires more sophisticated and savvy promotion to get your audience to attend, be it virtually or in person. Think of it as combining a journalist’s efficient “who, what, why, where, when, how” style with the speed and efficacy of a venture capital pitch. You have less time than you think to connect with your audience, show them you share their passions, and prove your ideas will get them where they need to go better than anyone else’s. Don’t think your job ends at getting folks in the door either – you’ll need to infuse the through-line of your story in every element of the content of your event. Learn to tell effective and compelling stories with our guide.
At Filene, we can pinpoint the heartbreaking moment we knew our beloved events would never be the same again. But it’s our job to absorb, react and come up with a new plan quickly and that’s what we did. We’ve grown our virtual delivery toolkits over the past year and now find ourselves with the unique opportunity of building the meeting experience of the next normal. We turned the last challenge into an opportunity for growth and value, and we’re confident we’ll do it again. We hope you’ll take the leap with us!
Beth Schnabel
Holly FearingBeth Schnabel (left), Events Manager and Holly Fearing, Senior Director of Marketing & Communications Filene Research Institute Madison, Wis.
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April 13, 2021 at 03:44AM
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Less Captive Hybrid Events Require Better Storytelling - Credit Union Times
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