When the pandemic struck, everybody was forced to adapt too quickly and carry on ‘business as usual’. This is despite the setbacks in the market and the emergence of an entirely different lifestyle under the new normal. Among the badly hit during the period is the events industry.
We see virtual events overtake in-person interactions overnight, but in the middle of this, there hasn’t been much attention afforded to the people who actually had to deal with the transition – the event organizers – and their struggles.
In an interview with MARKETECH APAC Founder Joven Barceñas, Cathy Song Novelli, senior vice president for marketing and communications of virtual event platform Hubilo, shares how it has been a “real challenge” for event organizers and event marketers at this time who were thrust to deal with “a different sort of technological DNA.”
Novelli, who has been in the marketing industry for over 2 decades now, likens the challenge to when Google first came to the forefront.
“When Google came on to the forefront, when social media came, it changed the way that marketers market. And that is exactly what event professionals and event marketers are going through right now,” said Novelli.
Novelli points to virtual events platforms themselves as the culprit, which are not particularly designed to help brands “activate a bigger vision,” which she believes resulted in “pretty boring events over the last two years.”
“I think it is not enough for the industry to just say, hey, here’s a platform, go do it virtually,” said Novelli.
According to Novelli, upon choosing which virtual platform to mount an event, an event marketer’s next top concern is finding ways “to do a lot more.” For the latter, many event professionals just don’t know where to start to create ‘wow’ immersive experiences – which serves as the ideal window for platforms to offer them real value.
Novelli said that it is about giving holistic support and bringing event marketers everything they need into the table at once – an ecosystem of certified partners – from the most basic plugins to green screen technology, 3D partners, AR/VR, and also gaming apps.
“If you look at all of the virtual event platforms, or even the meeting platforms, they all speak to their technology and their ease of use. And to me, that’s sort of table stakes, that is very much assumed that you have to have that,” said Novelli.
And so this becomes the problem to be solved.
“What none of those guys is really speaking to are the real pain points of in this space, event professionals who, as I mentioned, have been forced to become technologists overnight,” concludes Novelli.
