How we keep our audience engaged in such unusual times.
It's been a year and half since Covid-19 reached our shores in Malaysia. Much has changed but life goes on. There is a saying, no matter where we are today, the one thing that we can do is to ‘move forward’. This has been our motto in Aavii since the first nationwide lockdown on March 18th, 2020 when we were all confused and new to the current all-time-norm jargon “PKP” (Movement Control Order) and the array of alphabet variances that comes with it. Let’s just address the elephant in the room - the pandemic is not quite over for Malaysians and developing news on newer strands of Covid-19 coupled with higher death tolls are not exactly helping the Conference & Event industry. With more PKPs, PKPPs etc. in the offing, many have asked “How is the event industry doing?” and our answer is almost always: “We are extremely blessed to have stayed relevant to our clients and have migrated to become an end-to-end event production & content company in the form of live-streams, remote webinars – both fully virtual and hybrid. Here is how we’ve been keeping up with the industry:
ATTENDEE ENGAGEMENT will continue to be the single most important component of any event. In the expanded event planning world of Aavii – fully virtual or hybrid events, the possibilities for a year-round engagement are even greater. When attendees are not limited by location, the door opens to new ways for content sharing, mini campaigns, unique podcasts and creative networking opportunities 365 days a year.
One of the unique aspects of virtual events is that content can be easily recorded and made available on-demand post event. Some of our clients use a somewhat spacing-out model when sharing such content with their audience with the actual recording done over a fixed period of time. Let’s face it, when you share a post-event content, it somehow reminds audience of the value of an event and this keeps them talking long after the event is over, keeping them invested. Whilst many see this as an option, we also view it as a strategic marketing move for content hungry and homebound target audience. We do foresee back & forth lockdowns at least for the remaining of 2021.
CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION can be the next powerful tool when done right. Identifying a website, virtual platform or an existing internal channel to share crafted content is on the rise and getting huge traction. Some of our clients engage us with a year-round content development strategy to serve as a 365-day community hub for stakeholders. Our aim is to help blend their event experience with a full year of virtual strategies to optimize audience engagement. Campaigns go a long way with continuous communication that encourages early adoption of new products and ideas. Our dedicated team of Stargazers (Creative) customizes content to suit a targeted audience, allowing audiences to engage with a brand and to draw awareness on a particular subject. This way, audiences become involved in the brand long before a product or solution is launched.
CHANGING THE WAY PEOPLE MEET has been in Aavii’s DNA since the very beginning. With our recent experience in rolling out what would have been a traditional townhall is today, into a podcast event streamed live from our studio with multiple built-up scenes. Many gatherings are using the extended reach of virtual platforms to generate excitement through smaller events periodically. We’ve taken this concept virtual now by hosting a quarterly webinar series. We give attendees the opportunity to submit questions ahead of time, so the guest speaker can answer them during the webinar. The events are livestreamed on your choice of platform – whether it’s your company’s privately owned Zoom account or an open-public YouTube or Facebook Live channel. Concocting the right event strategy will ensure your virtual experience is a resounding success and the key to successful execution is to keep evolving and tweaking the format to meet the changing needs of our customers.
AVA (Aavii Virtual Artistry) our Virtual Conference & Events Platform has been gaining traction with associations, non-profit & corporate as part of their 2021 outreach strategy for its unique website experience in a branded environment. Experienced in managing conferences from 60 to 2,300 log-in delegates, our experienced team of people are imperative to running single or multi-track events on our virtual platform. Engagement options for networking, team building, one-to-one chats, drop name cards or online polling are just a few to mention. The meeting community is craving for personal connection (even only virtually) now more than ever. It is ever so important to keep up this tradition of interaction and event networking – where new acquaintances and meaningful conversations happen and to ultimately make an impact in many more people's lives through our virtual event options. Built with stunning visuals, AVA features a grand lobby, a main auditorium with up to 15 break-out rooms option, text Q&A, backend administration with auto or manual registrations, and many more.
VIRTUAL INTERACTIVE (VI) is our newly rolled out concept inspired by Tony Robbin’s virtual mega event. Not only does the speaker get to see all attendees, Virtual Interactive (VI) allows speakers to interact with your live audience. The experience connects people on a deeper level where attendees get to see themselves on their own screen from home while attending the actual event. We recently set this up for our own townhall in our Sunway Office - Gadget Lab. This unique setup allows 200 attendees to appear on a large panoramic screen. This addresses 2 major issues for presenters and attendees alike. The first is the issue of engagement whilst the latter is the issue of inclusion. We noticed that whenever we run virtual events, it tends to skew towards a predominantly one-way communication & a one way interaction. By using this setup, the presenters feel a sense of connectivity and better engagement with the audience they are presenting to, whilst the audience end up feeling as though they are there during the show. A higher level of engagement equals a more successful show. We have noticed attention spans running at 80 to 90% levels even shows that go on for as long as 3 hours.
OUR TEAM has been the source of energy with or without the pandemic. When we look back, it’s amazing how 30 of us still religiously show up in front of our laptops every Monday to get ourselves updated on issues, challenges and successes day after day, week after week and year on year, going into our 2nd year in 2021. Armed with event expertise in both physical and virtual conferences & events, our dynamic yet versatile team has been with us through thick and thin. They have inspired the “move forward” spirit in our quest to change the way people meet and our true source of inspiration.
Where will we go from here, you may ask? We will continue to craft events experiences and continue to add massive value to our clients bringing them the utmost engagement be it physically or virtually. Let us all move forward together and with more vaccinations on its way, we pray for the Meetings and Conferences industry to go back to some form of normalcy in whatever optimum form for us to continue to lead the way in “Changing The Way People Meet”.
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