Predicting the trends with experts from 6sense, Sparks, and BW Events Tech

Predicting the trends with experts from 6sense, Sparks, and BW Events Tech

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[Music] welcome to event experience by bizbo the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories tips and Lessons Learned From creating some of the world's biggest events I'm Rachel Moore your podcast Host this episode features major plot points from our bizbo webinar 2025 trends that will transform events an insiders Round Table who are the Insiders Bethany Murphy from six cents Brandon Worley from BW events Tech and Erica spore from Sparks a Freeman company that's right we brought you an expert from the brand side the agency side and the tech side for this Trifecta of trend exploration and it's all to improve your future event experience let's get started [Music] welcome to 2025 trends that will transform events and insiders Round Table this webinar will be available on demand for your convenience we're going to explore together the trends ahead of us for 2025 first we'll learn what you all voted as the top trend for the new year and dissect that a bit with our expert panel then we're going to doubleclick into trends for Unique personas of event agency corporate planner and Tech expert represented by each of our panelists finally we'll sync back up together to face the future with a final examination of Trends and how we'll approach them before we send you off with the preparation you need to plan for Success it's my pleasure to introduce today's webinar speakers first we have Bethany Murphy Bethany is the head of events at six cense where she leads the development of global event and trade show strategies working closely with cross functional teams to align initiatives with business goals with extensive expertise in event planning and marketing she excels at creating comprehensive event strategies managing budgets optimizing Roi and delivering impactful experiences while overseeing a team of event marketing professionals her go-to event day shoes are Golden Goose sakers Bethany welcome to the discussion today thank you excited to be here all of our panelists are super busy people so I'm really excited you're joining us too next up we have Erica Spore Erica is the senior vice president of strategy for Sparks a Freeman company where she co-leads a dynamic team dedicated to crafting datadriven creative strategies for events conferences exhibits and brand activations with Decades of experience and a passion for industry Trends she partners with Fortune 100 to 500 companies to amplify their brands engage audiences and deliverable deliver measurable business results for clients like Cisco Systems service now and Capital One For Those event days on the floor she's wearing multiple pairs of shoes the key is to switch it up often her current go-to are Nike Blazer low platform or p448 John sneakers or adul Vita Mary Jane very nice selection there welcome Erica thanks for joining us thanks it's great to be here all right and everybody's shoe ideas as we're talking this is great lastly joining us we have Brandon Worley Brandon is the CEO of BW events Tech where he is leveraging his extensive experience as a technology consultant to optimize event technology solutions for leading organizations with a strong background in sales enterprise software and customer relationship management he has guided the event Tech strategies for Major Brands like Google docin and Hilton delivering innovative solutions that drive operational excellence his shoes of choice for 14-hour event days are well anything that's comfortable Brandon pleasure to see you as always it's great to be here and I'm taking notes also on the various shoe choices of foot so anything comfortable sounds great right now hey you know we're always trying to give helpful information to our listeners and our audience and I think shoewear and events just kind of go hand inand now as promised dear audience you are driving us into this Trends event we asked you what trend would take the focus for 2025 we're going to go into this cold our panelists and I do not have any idea what we're about to see as the chosen Trend so it's going to get exciting in here just to recap the options were experiential learning networking opportunities immersive events gamification and micro events let's do the big reveal of what one is the top Trend oh my gosh experiential learning all right that is your chosen trend for 2025 now I'm going to take it to our panel we have our Trend as voted upon by today's attendees let's go around the room first to our Tech expert Brandon can you share with us briefly if you agree or disagree that this that experiential learning is going to be the biggest trend on the horizon and why are why not yeah you know it's tough because a lot of these are really good options I was wondering if networking was going to be right up there because you know as we were coming postco a lot of people were looking forward to that face-to-face interaction but you can still I as I took a step back I realized when people are sharing out things on social media and you're having memorable experiences or when my colleagues are going to another event and they're sharing out with me what they enjoyed it's something of an experiential nature and if it checked the box of targeting how that attendee or that person consumes content in a way that's right for them you've you've nailed it at that point and so yeah in that regard I I obviously there's some high contenders on there AI has been a big topic I don't want to get ahead of ourselves on that front I think we're going to talk about that later uh the thing about AI is it's actually incorporated into all of these in some regards which is pretty exciting but at the end of the day I people are looking for fun experiential opport unities when they go to events and that's what they're going to talk about and so for me uh it wasn't a terrible surprise that it was towards the very top if not the top of the list yeah exactly it's super interesting Bethany I'm gonna take it over to you same questions can you please share your reaction to our audience's trend of choice as experiential learning do you agree and why are why not yeah I mean I definitely agree with what Brandon said I do think at the end of the day it's about the experience I was a little surprised that micro events are kind of lower because I feel like I've been just been hearing that term um a ton recently but you know I think experiential learning it actively engages participants it Fosters connection I think you can get a lot of content online right and webinars like this and so I think when you go to an in-person event and you take that time you do want that interaction right enabling attendees to apply Concepts in real time gain practical skills and really create those memorable personalized experiences I think at the end of the day that's what events are about the experience that's right well and you know that it's all in the name experiential learning right you're you're getting that anyway Erica I'm going to bring it back over to you uh agree or disagree experiential learning why why was that the number one or why do you think it was or shouldn't be or should be yeah I think well I agree with what's been said previously and with what Bethany said especially that you know in this era I think folks want things now that they can't get online so I think coming to an event a conference a trade show experience where you can actually explore touch see products you know get Solutions meet with experts participate is really what we're seeing attendees want I do think there's still a big disconnect with what organizers and kind of producers are are thinking though I think that there's still is and our latest research shows that a lot of organizers are still highly value the classroom based education so I think we're at a little bit of a tension Point here where we as the event producers are going to have to pave the path forward for what this experiential learning is going to look like um because attendees definitely want it yeah and what could be interesting too you know if there's accreditation that could happen around that like if you go to a particular event and they have experiential learning and that can somehow be demonstrated in your credentials as an event planner and say well yeah I attended that and I like I think even IMX had something a little bit like that too they had like a leadership breakout or something like that or a track so certainly sometimes there's some crossover around these trends where as you're doing experiential learning you are also networking you may not be doing that by yourself you know you're having to interact with another attendee or attendees near you so whole lot of blending right great reactions by everybody and great reactions to our panel I'm going to go ahead and send Brandon and Bethany back into the green room and we'll have them up a little bit later because right now we're going to dive in double click if you will into some very specific discussions with each of our panelists and that's where we're going to keep Bethany on the screen with us Bethany this next segment is our opportunity to zero in on how corporate event planners like yourself are approaching a new year of events and the trends they're in and folks even if you aren't in Bethany's exact type of role chances are you either work with or invite people similar to her to your events so what we're about to learn is going to all fall into the good to know realm right so Bethany I'm gonna ask this first question working on events for a br brand uh probably means you have some pretty specific guard rails around what you can plan and how you plan it so we're all wondering how do you approach Trends which those don't seem to care about things like guard rails or limits when Trends come around so how do you approach trends when you're working within the brand on events yeah that's a great question I think you know working within a Brand's guidelines while integrating Trends can certainly be a balancing act but I think above all it's always always essential to really understand your brand because events do provide a really unique opportunity to bring a brand to life and I think it's really is crucial to ensure that this is done authentically and accurately and I would say here at sixense we are fortunate to be a cool what we consider like a cool brand and so therefore we have that flexibility to push the creative boundaries within reason uh but for instance each year we take over a space adjacent to a a trade show and we transform super cool designs and florals and furniture that reflect our brand in a non-traditional way but at the same time the in exterior of the venue remains really closely aligned with the corporate brand guidelines so the interior is like our creative interpretation but the exterior where like passerbys would see is really super aligned to our corporate branding and I think again events offer a Sandbox for experimentation right experiment test and pilot and try to you know gather feedback and understand and what resonates with your audience and you can always refine your approach for future activations but it's cool to be able to try well and you bring up a great point there too having a very solid not only internally a grasp of your brand knowing what is on brand and what's not but then having historically made sure that was abundantly clear through all of your branding externally to your audiences so as they're encountering maybe you trying out that Trend everything seems to make sense how do you assess or how do you evaluate which Trends do align best with your Brand's values goals and then the attendee expectations yeah I mean I think it's really important to evaluate the relevance of your Trend like to your brand make sure they complement your brand values they resonate with your audience they align strategically with your goals you know as an example at sixense we've been trying to really embrace the AI Trend at one event we featured these AI powered sketch Bots that kind of captured attendees photos and created these sketches and then we paired those with a branded frame as a takeaway right so that highlighted our focus on Innovation and created memorable and sharable experience for attendees and here at sixense we use AI in our product portfolio so again reinforcing our brand identity in a fun and engaging way well and you know AI being its own Trend which I don't know if it's a trend y'all I think it's kind of here it's like websites right like they're not going away it's not going away it's going to be here and how we have to figure out how we're going to be you know incorporating handling it um do you ever struggle and you brought up like how you know you do activations that are kind of a sidebar um to some larger events that are happening do you ever struggle um with ensuring that your company's events are relevant in the landscape of competing events like how do you stay Innovative and relevant so that your audience is like yes you're you know you're still in the conversation you're still somewhere I want to spend time yeah I mean I think that's hard right like we operate in a really competitive B2B Tech space and I think that requires a strong focus on again creating exceptional experiences so my team and the broader marketing team we dedicate a lot of time to designing the attendee Journey incorporating surprise and Delight moments throughout the event and our goal is always to bring the brand to life through that immersive on-site creativity while also delivering that valuable content right so we're always looking for Innovative activations to craft those experiences and keep attendees excited and I would say like staying Innovative and pushing boundaries isn't easy uh but it's what makes our work fun and challenging and rewarding at the end of the day so you know I think for me like I'm a huge proponent of Industry education and going to events and seeing what other events are doing and and experiencing that and like I'm going to CES in January just to do a back of the house kind of tour and I think doing things like that again it's it allows us to see what else what else is out there and put our own twist on it do you have a real world example of how jumping on a trend increased success for six cents or helped achieve goals that you were trying to trying to go for yeah I have another of course AI example but of course really leaning into the yes exactly you know we were gonna talk about it a little bit so yeah you know I think we I I just talked about the sketch Bots but at our user conference in October we incorporated an AI uh powered photo booth in our user conference's final party so it was this super cool fun party that was like a 70s 80s 90s theme and the photo booth used AI to transform attendee's hair makeup clothing into like retro Styles and created a fun and engaging experience and so I think again it aligned not only to our Brand's focus on AI but res resonated with the audience and became a sharable takeaway right like the photos became a huge hit people put them on social our own team took them and put them as slack profile um pictures for some fun which actually was really funny and entertaining but I think it allowed us to extend the events impact beyond the event itself right like events are only a moment in time and so I think any way you can create lasting experiences and memories really goes a long way to kind of extend your brand and the impact that the event can have absolutely and actually I'd like to ask the audience really quickly how many of you have done an AI generated image like whether you got to do it like at a event activation there was a photo booth or maybe you were playing around online with AI and like hey let me generate my own image I'll just share I one time tried like one of those like hey here's head shot that you can get generate it was hilarious because I like wind up getting a bunch and some of the last ones I'm like oh that doesn't even look like me did you get people were they trying to kind of get ones as close to what they look like as possible or were people kind of getting Fantastical about it I mean you really like I almost actually put mine next to my desk so I could hold it up because it doesn't look anything like me but it is hilarious I've got like some crazy 80s hair and makeup and no but the boot it basically made you select like the look and feel that you wanted and then it kind of took your face and created an image but again it was just a fun way to just you know bring that experience and and again people were sharing and laughing about it and it was like relatively inexpensive at the end of the day so well and Brilliant too because later that's such a visible way for people to say like if you are putting that up like even on your LinkedIn profile you're slacking everybody's like oh my God that's so cool where did you get that done and then they're talking about well I went to the six sense activation and got this done and then people know to come back to ask you more and of course as we already mentioned you Incorporated AI into an activation so that you won already check the boxes right excellent I have one last impromptu question for you what do you tell like what would be your advice and you may have worked for Brands like this too you mentioned six sense is a very fun brand what if you're working for a brand that maybe fun is not the identifying word for your personality as a brand what's your advice for someone who is working for maybe more of a straight laced kind of you know buttoned up brand and they need to still be Innovative with Trends I think there's always again like events are a great Avenue to test things right to test different things out and really do and really push those boundaries right and so I think you can kind of start small right and again my example of like do it inside and you know not outside kind of thing I think could be a tip but everyone wants their events to be memorable and I really do think now you have to bring that Innovation that fun those experiences because otherwise like people probably aren't gonna want to come to your event anymore that's true no that's true and look business people want to have fun too okay you know it's not just like Let Me Whip out my briefcase let's compare business cards and things like that come on they probably had a lot of those business people like yes let me line up for another AI generated image I know we only had a short time but we'll have you back in a minute but a quick primer on how you and our fellow corporate event planners can stay successful as Trends sweep through the landscape as they are want to do for now Bethany we'll say goodbye to you and send you back to the Green Room next I'm going to welcome back Erica to take us into the Realms of agency planning and how Trends impact your world and thus the worlds of your clients it's probably safe to say that event planning as an agency is different from being inhouse for the very obvious reason that you're working with multiple Brands and their unique approaches you were just talking with Bethany about six sense has a very distinctive their own brand but that's one company and you're having to work with multiple uh and their approaches and their different audiences and their unique goals so let's dive into this how do you Erica assess and prioritize Trends based on client demand industry relevance and and then the emerging Technologies yeah it's it's a really interesting question and I would say perhaps more than like prioritizing Trends I think what our job what I feel like our job really is to um really be observing across Industries and seeing what's happening and that's the opportunity I think we have as an agency partner right we're not just working within you know Tech or Pharma or you know one or the other we can actually look at what's happening across so I think we really see our job is to be observing those analyzing them and then helping our clients make it relevant to their brand and their audiences and I think the hardest thing is trying to get from like the macro Trend down to like what it could look like for a brand so I think that's where my team tries to kind of step in and and help with concepting out ideas so that they could be brought to life because a lot of times I think you hear about a trend like we're talking about here experiential content or immersive events and you think what does that actually mean for me so we spend a lot of time bringing data and insights to our clients concepting ideas for what it could look like partnering with them in in getting it off the ground and then you know from there letting them take it away so finding what's relevant making sure it's on brand and that it ties to audience careabout I think are three key things for us as well I so appreciate you brought up data there too because you're showing it's not just a gut instinct right you're able to actually say pointing to the receipts that this should be an educated guess as to like let's try this out and giving some actual substantial reasoning why they might want to go there can you share your insights on trends that have real staying power versus those that might be a bit more shortlived we just talked about how AI pretty much it's not just a fat anymore it's going to be here but yeah what are your insights on those that are going to be with us versus ones that are like just kind of a breath in the wind if you will yeah well I actually think the poll was really revealing because I think it actually showed us some of the ones that do have the staying power I mean content has always been the priority for most of most event professionals right it's kind of the core of what we do is how do we get folks to interact with our product our brand our experience so I think the three that bubbled up um on the poll are somewhat what I consider Evergreen big trends that we need to be keeping our eyes on when I think about things like gamification that I wonder is that a little bit more of a does it apply to only specific audiences is it a little more of a flash in the pan you know is it going to be replaced once personalization starts to happen at scale you know are we really going to need so many gimmicks to get people in I think those are the things that I I think of being more temporary potentially or maybe they will be integrated into another way that we kind of plan our experiences so I think technology anytime you're using technology kind of for technology sake that feels a little bit like a flash in the pan as opposed to figuring out the way that we can use AI to make the mean the experience more meaningful and I think that ban shared a couple examples but we're playing with it right now I think in ways that's a little more like you know I guess it's easy access we're trying to show folks what it can do by giving you a head shot I think the next layer of AI integration into events will be to help us tackle personalization and also you know so you really can create an agenda at a big conference that meets your needs without having to have you know spend a lot of time doing it and having organizers curate a lot so those are the things that you know I think AI is really gonna come out big in a big way for us as it matures yeah are you seeing how are Trends kind of impacting like how's generational reception really impacting how these Trends are received yeah really glad you brought that up so I don't know if any of you have seen the Freeman or Sparks reports from Q4 we've done some research recently and one of the most fascinating findings was the fact that we are really undergoing a massive generational shift so by 2030 70% of the workforce is going to be gen C and Millennials and with them they're bringing a completely different value set into the event experience right they want things that are completely different than what um Generations have wanted before or not maybe completely different but more of what we've been hearing so you know they're very techsavvy flexibility is important shorter shorter events are important they don't necessarily want to be away from their lives for five days straight you know they prioritize experience and sustainability over possessions and wealth at least right now that might change as everybody gets older but um really need to be thinking about that in how we're designing experiences because you know we've been doing it for an older generation honestly for the last 30 years and we've been doing it kind of the same way so really being thoughtful about that now what are the generational preferences and collecting your data on that to inform experience design is is something that we're um thinking a lot about on one of the podcast episodes uh for bizbo the event Experience Podcast I remember someone brought up how um a genzer they wanted to contribute to some kind of event activation but they were just like what value can I offer and they wound up being the winning like the most sought-after piece of content and it you know in that activation because everybody was like we want to know how you think these just really good insights that are are fundamental to you know to how generational attendees are looking at these events differently I would love to ask is there an example that you have of a specific client experience where a trend adoption led to unexpected challenges or maybe eye openening success yeah there's a few we do have a client that we've worked with to really play around with and experiment with their presenter Le content formats so this is a little it's a little tactical but I think it was important a lot of times we find that our clients struggle with how to again apply these trends at scale if I'm producing a conference and it has a thousand sessions you're asking me to completely rethink that and make that experimental when all I have is a breakout room that's set up like a theater so you know so that's the where they're starting so we went in and worked with one of our clients to curate a standard format and agenda that we could then train their speakers to facilitate so there wasn't a presentation and a sit and get instead it was a facilitated interactive session for an hour hour those sessions have really taken off they're the most popular and the highest rated on their agenda and now they're working on expanding that program so that's an example of you know ways that you can kind of take a bite-sized chunk out of a trend so we took 40 sessions and just started there reinvented the format and now they're able to scale it so that was I think a data driven you know recommendation that came from our research that that we were able to work with a client on successfully Wow way to anticipate the experiential learning too because it it is way different when you just have a talking head you know talking at you versus when they're facilitating an actual it's almost workshy at that point and feels way different yeah and I think that's I mean again I think that's what people want I know it's what I want sometimes sometimes I want to sit and hear an expert inspire me and give me some great you know tidbits and tips but sometimes I also you know want to actually hear from my peers and that's what we were going for it's like a little bit of Education mixed in with like what are you what are your peers doing have a conversation about it do some problem solving so so yeah one aspect I like that too is you actually too for the people who normally are just presenters you skilled them up you gave them some things that they can make their future workshops and presentations more insightful more compelling more memorable Erica I know time goes quick this has been very insightful as we've been able to talk to you more in depth on this thank you for sharing your experience from the agency side which we can all learn from in whatever role we fill you know we all have some takeaways from this little bit segment we had with you here we will have you back on shortly we'll be be right back with more event experience after the break ever wished your event badge did more than just display your name whether you're an event organizer exhibitor or attendee bisbo's click smart badge transforms the event experience from interactive networking to realtime attendee insights and lead capture the smart badge is the Ultimate Game Changer visit bobo.com click that's B izz ao.com for /k to learn more about the next generation of wearable event technology babo your partner for building conferences that Captivate we're back as we bring on the tech aspect of event Trends with expert panelist Brandon Worley Brandon welcome back we wouldn't be a leader in event technology if we didn't include Tech in our discussion about event Trends so glad to have you here thanks for joining us and for infusing your expertise about techn ology in today's discussion all right let's get into it obviously we've got the poll questions we've got experiential learning is the top Trend we have all these other Trends um I want to ask you how does Tech impact the exploration and Adoption of an event Trend into how events are designed by agencies or Brands we just talked to an agency person and a brand person is there and is there a difference there with how Tech is impacting that yeah there is and that's a really good question I you know here's the thing and a lot of people know this technology has a way of either being your best friend or your worst enemy and completely messing up an event uh very quickly if it's not carefully thought through and so you know it's helpful to have an event technologist as part of that planning committee because then as the great creative juices are flowing on how do we push our brand forward and you know how do we address this Challenge and how do we leverage the technology to do it is you've got someone there who's looking over over the entire event technology stack that you're using and saying oh I've we've got a bit of an issue I don't think our current technolog is going to be able to do what you think it's going to do or they can flag that be before it becomes a major issue and so that kind of trickles over into some of the workb planning what is the technology that you need to bring forward thinking through the data privacy reviews and getting through the info security and all that goes into it that's not to say that it's a barrier for it but it's a consideration and you can leverage that information that knowledge that knowhow in order to truly drive your strategy for your event it's just knowing that plays a part and you can really use technology to make your life easier and to create some amazing experiences but if these things aren't thought through obviously you're going to have some challenges so there is that Dynamic we highly recommend having that event technologist at the table I was going to say earlier better than later probably too to have them at the table absolutely exactly what are things event planners and the tech experts who support them as you just mentioned should consider When selecting tools for Trend implementation like what are some of those deciding factors there yeah I and it's been mentioned a little bit well a lot of bit before but knowing your audience is very critical you know when you know what your audience's behaviors are for adoption and otherwise it will dictate a lot of what you're going to bring to the table and is it going to do anything are they going to even use it so that's an important part often on our team what we do is we visit with our client and we ask okay what is your strategy what are you trying to get out of this experience and then we note down what are your non-negotiables what do you have to have with this experience because what'll happen is you'll get a bunch of demos of new technologies and something will look flashy and you'll lose sight of your North Star and you don't end up executing on what you were trying to accomplish the whole time some other things that are very important is the Technologies or the platforms that you're using should be flexible enough to be able to have some give because as you're doing especially in Pilot experiences it's helpful that they have flexible apis that they connect well with the data stream especially if there's personalization involved and so that you can get the most out of it what you don't want to do is Corner yourself with platforms or solutions that aren't very flexible you get what you get and then you try to break the boundaries and you're you're breaking everything at the same time and then two more things on the subject is and Erica alluded to it as well is what are you trying to measure out of this what are your goals what are your success metrics plan those Advent or in advance so that when you do execute on the Technologies or the solutions you know if it's actually been a success and therefore whether or not your stakeholders are going to want to invest in in the future and then I I would say in uh one of our fores at BW events Tech is we have backend and front end developers that can take current tools and solutions and actually customize them and augment them and so if you've got a partner that can come in and say yes I know that your platform only does these things natively but we can come in as a Swiss army knife and unlock it a bit and make it more flexible that gives you a little bit of wiggle room when the surprises tend come I so appreciate what you said about you know kind of bringing people down to Earth I'm one of those people where I'm like oh my God shiny tool let me just have that and I'm not considering this actually might not be what you need because it's it does have limits you know or it's freemium right where it's like oh but you have to pay that extra to get that additional capability that you thought you were going to get super important to be able to know all that right yeah and you know even on the flip side too is having an event technologist there can not only give you the red flags but they can also say I don't know if we've even thought about these other opportunities we haven't discussed because we could pull data out of Salesforce and do this and your marketing automation platform and actually expand the offering Beyond where the team is currently going because maybe the team didn't know even to ask the question but that event technologist can bring it to the table and make it possible absolutely well that this leads to my next question is there ever a situation or scenario from a tech perspective where event planner should just say no to trying to run with a trend yeah and some of the answers might be a little bit obvious but they do include things like are my attendees going to adopt this does it align with our strategy at the end of the day is it a complete distraction are we wasting a lot of money because we haven't aligned with our core objectives and our attendees aren't going to resonate with it time management and budget management are often key players uh in this whole experience and there are occasions where like the most cuttingedge technologies will on the onset be more expensive and so the early adopters are going to pay a price on occasion and one of the ways in which we've gotten around that is uh it's kind of a clever approach is where whenever you're trying something new you're going to have potentially some trepidation anyway with some of your internal stakeholders they're not sure if you want to blow things up in front of everybody and be so visible and so creating a pilot experience let's pilot this thing let's uh make this much investment we're going to be in line with the trend it aligns with our overall strategy and kpis and let's go a step further and actually pick out a special group of VIP attendees that would be flattered to take part in this this pilot and we've done this with facial recognition we're like okay I don't know how this is going to go but let's reach out to 200 people at the event say you are a special user of this can you give us feedback and then they are very forgiving if things don't go perfectly it allows you to cut your teeth on it but you get fantastic feedback and they're flattered at the same time yeah and so then start saying can I scale this and you get a lot of learnings from it that I you bring up such a great point there too I mean this kind of drives back to what both Bethany and Erica brought up where it's like you know you know your brand you know your audience you can play you can test and try but you're you're saying too using that mix of audience with the technology to say Let's test this out you can be one of the first it's very exclusive feeling and like you said they're more than happy to help because it's like yes but I'm first not everybody's getting this opportunity and so I love that you're playing into that exclusivity of that feeling you know tapping into the audience feels and having them actually help you and then that's informing if you can execute that Trend or not it's brilliant yeah yeah it's fantastic it plays to their desire to also want to help and give you really really good candid feedback rather than the extremes where you're like I really hated this or I really love this you get really good stuff as a result yeah well I'm going to wrap up with this question with you we've already danced around it or danced right up to it in this discussion today AI Trends what are you seeing what are your red flags and what do you recommend around how event plannner should navigate them going forward so AI is popping up in a lot of different places some of the red is not all that profess to be AI is AI that is something that we see every now and then I foresee that AI is going to be a GameChanger for the event industry I don't think it's going to be too many years down the road if at all where in a manner of speaking will be able to speak things into existence I need a web page that has a regge form that essentially Targets this audience create it we're already seeing this with the chat gpts of the world yeah uh we're not far from that and so essentially what's going to play out is there's going to be a lot of early to the market businesses that will come to the table and we'll offer a lot of these and it becomes a matter of where do I put my risk at as far as who am I going to adopt wh where am I going to try this out again this is another area where having an event technologist on hand that can help you vet okay this is legitimate this is really solid stuff and we're taking a look at under the hood making sure this is built under a solid foundation but but overall it's a very exciting time I think we're on the cusp of some very Cutting Edge exciting solutions that are about to come to the table that'll make a lot of Our Lives easier as a result you're right I just think we're always seeing new things from it and fortunately you know Brandon like yourself and then also with Erica and Bethany y'all are realizing it's got to figure into any of these Trends we're talking about and and really going in with eyes wide open into it so appreciate those insights and thank you for o your over all crucial insights about how Tech does figure into these event Trends so I'm going to ask this question and I'm going to ask all of our speakers to unmute and if you are like o I want to answer this one please Jump Right In just generally we've talked about a bunch of Trends and obviously from your different perspectives when we do think about experiential learning or immersive events or networking how do you think these Trends will vary between small scale versus large scale events would love to hear any of your anyone insights on those who's got them I mean well I'll jump in I I think one thing we didn't talk much about today was the immersive events piece so I thought it might be interesting to get my thoughts others thoughts on that I was thinking about the agency you know our purview and I was thinking about some of the other Industries and the way we work and I you know in the area of media and entertainment we obviously do have Brands like Netflix that do a lot more experimentation and when I think immersive I really think of the work that Sparks has done with Netflix where they have like a early release of the next season's you know shows that are coming out and they do an actual invite only experience that's fully immersive they build out a complete studio and come in and we bring guests through and they experience like five different activations completely targeted at the shows they're going to be releasing and it's it is this really fully immersive environment you are in the feeling of the show you're interacting with the characters you're doing something physically like the characters are doing on the show and I think that's what I think of as the difference between immersive versus like experiential learning like the more interactive participatory learning model so I just wanted to throw that out there and see if our panelists or any of the other folks in that you know had have thoughts on it that are with us here today yeah I I you know I think as it relates to the experiential side of the house this is going to have a lot of longevity I think attendees are going to find that AI is going to be incorporated with the overall experiential aspects of an event it's going to get further and further personalized costs are going to go down as the technology continues to be enhanced and innovated and it it's something that we on our side are continuing to look at to try to see what we can do to implement on scale and in a personalized way so it's kind of a to be continued on our side as well I have a follow-up question which kind of dovetails off of this so for events in Industries such as Finance or Pharma where having a more traditional booth and being professional remember we talked about kind of be more straight lace maybe less fun more busy that's common do y'all have any ideas for ways that they can make that experience more immersive as a vendor at their Booth again thinking finance and Pharma where yeah all the regulations I know we're all just like oh my gosh so many regulations but any ideas there for for how they could tackle that you know part of it is assuming that the audience itself is of the personality or trait that they would be inclined to leverage it um often what the bottleneck becomes or the challenge or the barrier becomes is opting in making sure my privacy is acknowledged and so forth one of the suggestions that I've seen that has worked in this regard is making sure that we are educating the audience to know that by opting in and being okay with the data needed for the personalization that facilitates the experience it it it unlocks everything so we had an experience once where we were working with a client and we had to get opt-ins in order to utilize data for an immersive experience and our initial approach only succeeded to the tune of 30% of the audience saying yes I'm willing to participate once they saw on site what was actually happening and the benefits that they gained we then made it available for them to change their mind and it shot up to about 85% Just like that and so you've got to have that ability to opt in you've got to educate and make it as simple and as seamless as possible so that they know why and they know it's not a threatening thing it's going to benefit them and make it simple for them to turn that dial the opposite way and participate so that in general is what I've seen kind of help the experience in one of the Dynamics that play out here you know and I would just add we do have a life sciences practice at Sparks and you know it is hard in Pharma and it's hard in in life sciences when you can't actually sometimes show your product or the in advancement that you're making as a company and in finance when you have kind of government regulations preventing you so we've been leaning in on more experiential engagement with experts in the industry so that's one way to do it coffee chats meetings meeting spaces in activations where you can come in and have a substantial conversation or just a dialogue amongst the audience themselves and things that allow advancement of Engagement but not necessarily you know but can also kind of manage around the the compliance issues that some of those Industries have so making it interactive having experts there that can speak to things using digital content in that situation we've done a lot of that digital storytelling um in order to in order to kind of get around the fact that we don't have a product to show so those are some of the tactics that that we've been using in those Industries Rachel excellent I'm going to squeeze in one last uh question Bethany I'm actually taking this to you do you consider gamification and micro events as Trends do you see them more lasting longterm or they permanent event fixtures versus being shortterm and and Bethany would love to hear your perspective since we got a bit of that from Erica already on this particular question yeah I mean I think micro events look they're just small personalized events and experiences they've been around for a long time I think this term was coined and it's catchy right and so it's become a big thing but I I don't really think micro events in themselves are really new so I would say yes I mean in here at sixense we use our own technology and are able to Target buyers that are lower in the funnel right and we personalize amazing experiences for those people and then the top of the funnel folks we send to our webinars and our trade shows right so there's definitely ways to use technology to Target the right buyers and spend your money in the right ways and create those amazing experiences as far as gamification I mean I don't really think it's a trend I mean I think with the rise of event technology and then during covid we saw it become huge with virtual events and you know people are competitive people like to win things so I don't think that's going away anytime soon thanks again to Bethany Murphy Brandon Worley and Erica Spore for joining us on another great bizo industry webinar and thank you for listening to this special version for the event Experience Podcast if you're enjoying the show we'd love to hear it connect with us on social And subscribe rate and review us wherever you're listening also don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends you can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bobo.com SLP podcast you can also partake of the full webinar experience available on demand on behalf of the team thank you we'll gather again soon for new episode of event experience [Music]

2025-01-29 12:13

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