Delivering a Dreamforce-Quality Virtual Keynote on a Startup Budget

This year, I had the opportunity to host our annual Invoca Summit conference and watch a numerous industry events, including the 2020 edition of Dreamforce. COVID-19 has completely changed the nature of business events this year, and it’s been a steep learning curve for everyone. But over the past 6-9 months, some best practices on how to deliver a compelling virtual keynote have become clear. And for startups that don’t have the multi-million dollar event budgets of Adobe and Salesforce, there are practical and cost-effective ways to deliver a great experience. So I wanted to share five tips — along with specific video snippets — for creating engaging virtual keynotes, with examples from industry leaders like Salesforce, Twilio, HubSpot, Gainsight, and, of course, Invoca!

Tip #1: Chop Your Keynote and Breakouts in Half

At events like Adobe Summit and Dreamforce, companies have traditionally staged 2-3 hour keynotes in front of live audiences of tens of thousands of people. At Invoca, our main keynote has historically been 90 minutes, combining customer stories, product announcements, and company strategy. That approach works when you have a “locked in” audience, sitting in chairs, with nothing else to do. But in the virtual world, endless distractions are merely a click away.

For Invoca Summit 2020, we reduced the length of our content by nearly half, cutting the 90 minute keynote to 50 minutes and 45 minute breakout sessions to 20-25 minutes. You saw something similar at Dreamforce — the main keynote, which runs notoriously long (to the tune of 2? - 3 hours), was 90 minutes in length, and started only 2 minutes late! HubSpot, at their Inbound 2020 event, clocked their keynote in at a nifty 47 minutes.

Tip #2: Blend Recorded and Live Content, and Focus on Transitions to Make It Sing

During the early days of COVID, I saw many companies delivering keynotes 100% live. As a purist, I love the authenticity of doing that, but there were a lot of issues with quality. (I remember one session where an industry analyst opened by spending 60-90 seconds confirming “can you hear me, am I on mute?” — like we all do in virtual meetings every day.) Entering the fall, companies shifted more of the content to higher quality, pre-produced material that delivered a better viewing experience — with the real “go getters” combining live interaction and recorded content. 

We adopted this hybrid approach for Invoca Summit, where we pre-recorded the main keynotes, customer interviews, and demos - but interspersed live Q&A with prominent speakers, like Seth Godin. One critical element to blending different blocks of content is paying attention to details. Subtle cues, like maintaining consistency in clothing and "time of day" lighting across multiple days of shooting, can make your sessions feel seamless. Here’s an example of how we transitioned between standalone keynote content, a branded company video, and an interview with our customer, Aspen Dental. 

By being cognizant of background settings, lighting and attire, and with the help of some nifty editing by production partner Thinkmojo, we were able to make this transition feel pretty smooth — despite the fact that the keynote and the interview were actually recorded five days apart, by different sets of people, in the living room at my house.

Salesforce uses a similar approach in blending a live feed of Marc Benioff in Salesforce Park, pre-recorded video with Denise Dresser, and footage of AT&T stores and Salesforce products.

Tip #3: Maintain Visual Movement to Avoid the "Feels Like Another Zoom" Vibe 

Don’t get me wrong - I love Zoom as a technology - but everyone is tired of sitting through hours of virtual meetings each day. If your audience gets a “virtual meeting” vibe from your event, you’re going to lose them — and lose them quickly. To combat this, we made an explicit rule with our internal team and production company to change visuals every 20-30 seconds during the keynote. We shot the keynote from two camera angles and used post-production zoom ins and animations to maintain movement, and interspersed some other types of recorded video as well.

In this segment, we spliced in videos from past customer interviews to create a "video board" format that feels distinctly different than the "talking head" part of the keynote.

There are an indefinite number of ways to make your event feel distinct and different. Leave it to Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, who is far braver than I am, to kick off the Pulse 2020 customer conference with a sing-a-long, joined by customers. After this open, no one in the audience was going to think “here I am on another Zoom call!”

Tip #4: Use Videos to Introduce Customers

A great way to mix up content flow and maintain engagement is using customer videos. During my time at Salesforce, John Zissimos, the former Chief Creative Officer, made amazing films that set the narrative for customer interviews and product demos at Dreamforce. (This Nestle Waters video is a great example.)

John had the team and budget to shoot purpose-made films, but many startups don’t have those kind of resources. There is a cheaper, directionally similar option that we employ at Invoca. We ask customers to provide brief videos that describe the mission of their company, which we edit down to 45-60 seconds. This approach conveys the brand story in a compelling way, rather than asking each speaker to deliver a dry “this is what our company does” explanation. It is also more time-efficient than having a speaker explain their corporate mission live, so you get a threefold benefit: a more compelling narrative, a more efficient use of time, and another visual change that mixes up content types (see tip #3) and makes your event more engaging.

Here is the introduction of customer AutoNation — you can see the transition between previewing the customer case study, introducing the company via video, and welcoming the individual speaker.

We also used this approach with another customer, Aspen Dental (see the video in tip #2 above). The Aspen Dental video is a perfect example of how a 60-second clip can create an instant emotional connection with a brand and get your audience more engaged, right as you start a key customer testimonial.

Tip #5: Even If You Pre-Record Content, Your Audience Wants It to “Feel” Live

Let’s be honest — if you ask an audience member, all other things being equal, whether she prefers a live performance or pre-recorded video, most will enthusiastically respond “live!” It’s human nature to want that real-time interaction. The reason to opt for recorded content is to deliver higher quality, but don’t be lazy about it and "flaunt" that your content is pre-recorded in front of your audience. Everyone wants to believe that you are that good, that you can pull off such a flawless delivery while being live — so don’t give them an easy excuse to think otherwise!

Deliver your content as if it were live, and refer to time as if you were in the moment (rather than acknowledging that it is days or weeks before the audience sees your content.) Here’s our keynote open, where I emphasize things the audience can do “this week” and highlight “speakers you’ll hear from today” — despite the fact this was recorded a week in advance. Do everything you can to maintain that illusion of live, real-time delivery.

My 2020 favorite in this regard is Twilio, who did an amazing job of helping their audience maintain "suspension of disbelief" in their Twilio Signal keynote. They used recorded video enriched by virtual reality (VR) — but they didn't make it completely obvious and thus maintained a sense of intrigue. Check out this transition to introduce John Donahue, the CEO of Nike (one of the instances in the keynote where it was obvious some virtual reality technology / post production editing was being used.)

During the entire 60 minute keynote, I was constantly trying to figure out, “which parts of this are real versus VR?” The hidden Easter egg came at the very end — the camera zooms out as CEO Jeff Lawson wraps up his talk, you see and hear the production crew, and the VR background vanishes to expose how the set looked in reality. It was like the final reveal of a magician’s trick in “pulling the rabbit out of the hat” — which I as an audience member loved!

Pulling It All Together

With these tips, you will have a clear path to deliver a compelling virtual keynote experience — even while everyone is stuck working from home. Here's our end to end keynote from Invoca Summit as an example.

As we enter 2021, it will be interesting to see what the future of business events holds — whether that remains virtual events only, a return to physical events, or what I’m particularly excited about — hybrid options that leverage the reach of digital and the personalization of in-person interactions. I look forward to seeing the continued innovations from all of the great event marketing teams out there!