The future of virtual events: Passing fad, or the Next Big Thing?

Hands up if your inbox is full of invites to virtual events? They’re suddenly the hottest ticket in Marketing Town, and everyone wants to visit. 

But here’s the problem: anyone working at home is stuck in a video vortex that looks like this:

1. The working day is full of Zoom/GotoMeeting/Skype/MS Teams/Bluejeans meetings.
2. We’re being invited to virtual events on the same platforms.
3. Meanwhile, someone in the business (or you) had the bright idea that, hey, we should host a virtual event for our customers!

The cynical reactions are to be expected. Is this just a passing fad? Is the event worth my time? And isn’t Zoom insecure anyway? 

All valid feelings and the reaction many of us have to ‘new’ things. Change is hard, particularly given the enduring uncertainty of COVID-19. 

That said, I believe these reflexive negative responses can obscure our vision. No, virtual events are not a fad. In fact, all the signs point to the fact we’re witnessing the birth of an exciting new era in marketing and events - a Next Big Thing, if you like. 

Is that an exaggeration? In this article I’ll unpack why I believe it’s not. 

Also, two big caveats. I’m personally invested in virtual events. 

My brand storytelling agency, Filtered Media, produces live events and webinars for a growing number of clients across a variety of platforms. We’re testing the tech and refining our approach every day. I’ve also been a professional speaker, podcast and event host for many years. 

Yet, because I’m so tightly connected to this world, it’s given me a unique insight that I’m choosing to share (here’s to the rising tide!). 

The second caveat is virtual events still have a long way to go. They’re not perfect and in fact there are many, many pitfalls. Technology breaks, people fail to deliver, or these virtual events are simply not up to scratch. Just because you can deliver a virtual event doesn’t mean you can do it well.

Ok, onwards. For fun, let’s invert the comedic storytelling structure and I’ll give you the punchline before the setup. 

What's this new era, Mark? 

You know this story: live streaming is all the rage. Virtual events are live, real-time and highly interactive. However, have you stopped to realise we’re heading in a direction that’s surprisingly familiar?

It’s time to start thinking about virtual events as live shows, not live events. 

The new era is here: Live shows are the future of virtual events. 

Think about breakfast TV shows, daytime TV panels or late night TV entertainment. They’re host-driven, panel-centric, highly interactive - and brand-sponsored. 

They’re TV shows, part content and part entertainment. 

The difference between events and shows isn’t just semantics, or wordplay. Most virtual events we experience today in the business world are typically formal and structured. We’re on our best professional behaviour.

Like the real-world conferences we’ve attended in pre-COVID-19 days, virtual events can also feel a little one-way. A keynote presenter delivers the content. We listen, perhaps ask a few questions, but otherwise remain passive. Meanwhile, the Twitter backchannel may, or may not be active. 

This analogy is instructive as I’ll discuss below. I believe we’re on a high-speed train to real-time conversations and brand-sponsored shows that build community and add incredible value.

It’s exciting, but also an obvious challenge for brands and marketers. Are we ready to drop the corporate speak and faceless marketing to create truly engaging virtual experiences for customers?

Ok. That was the punchline, here’s the setup to prove my point. 

The first era: Webinars 

1980s-90s onwards 

Believe it or not, the humble webinar - “web seminar” - was born back in the 1980s and evolved through the 1990s. 

You can read a nice chronology in Wikipedia which tells the story of various companies including PictureTel, Microsoft, WebEx developing the technologies we now take for granted. I actually have a suspicion this era inspired the phrase, death by PowerPoint! 

I’m old enough to have been there as a technology journalist in the 1990s, so here’s my take on the defining characteristics of the webinar era: 

1. Heavily driven by PowerPoint, webinar hosts were heard, not seen. Audio commentary accompanied slideware, and yes, it was deathly boring. 
2. Much of that boredom was related to a focus on technical and product-related content. You attended a webinar for training, education seminars or product demos. You joined because it was a professional necessity. 
3. Audience interaction was limited to chat, or non-existent. 
4. These old school webinars were great for novice presenters: you were judged on your content, not a theatrical performance or ability to maintain audience attention. 
5. As marketers latched onto webinar in the 1990s they became a good lead capture tool. Sales teams were handed spreadsheets of attendees to chase (and in truth, this practice hasn’t changed!) 

The second era: Live Events

2008 onwards

As the global internet gathered speed, dot-coms looked for new opportunities to acquire customers. Event organisers also looked for bigger audiences, giving rise to live events and live streaming. 

YouTube can be credited with bringing live streaming to the masses in 2008 with YouTube Live ‘08, the first annual YouTube Awards (if you’re up for it, watch Katy Perry here). As The Verge notes, it wasn’t a brilliant experience and YouTube eventually closed YouTube Live as a channel, folding it back into the main site.  

Yet for all its awkwardness, this was one of the first times we started to think about the internet as a channel for real-time entertainment - you know, like TV. 

The webinar industry, vendors and event organisers caught wind of things. Streaming and interactive tech pushed webinars forward:

1. Video began to dominate webinars as audiences expected to see the presenter. 
2. The focus shifted to interactivity and an awareness that attendee experience mattered. 
3. We typically saw just one camera, usually a webcam, focused on the speaker. Yet improving technologies and broadband speeds meant greater visual and audio quality. 
4. Brands realised the opportunity to move beyond product demos. Thought leadership content, sophisticated education and mentoring programs evolved, and live events such as conferences and workshops were streamed across the world. 
5. Then in the last five years, things really exploded. eSports, live video games and livestreaming on social media have fuelled multi-billion dollar industries that simply didn’t exist 10 years ago. 

The third era: Live shows

2020 onwards

What’s a live show and why is it different? As I’ve said above with the TV analogy, the key word here is show and it makes all the difference. 

Live shows are what happens when brands fully realise the ability to combine virtual events with live streaming to reach target audiences at scale. 

Three things matter: high quality content, entertaining presenters and guests, and the ‘x factor’ - a unique angle or personality that keeps people hooked. 

Here’s where we’re headed:

1. Virtual events branded ‘live shows,’ featuring a seamless conversation between host/s and guests.
2. Multiple cameras with frequent shot changes (just like TV), excellent audio, well-crafted slide decks to support (not anchor) the content. 
3. One core platform used to simultaneously broadcast out to multiple channels in real-time.
4. Registered (free or paid) attendees plus a spontaneous live audience who may, or may not, get the full experience (eg. chat or Q&A functions) based on factors like membership status or paid attendance. 
5. Brands will borrow from their experience with content marketing and develop content brands to give this new event channel a name and identity. 

Early examples in the Live Show era

1. LinkedIn Live 

LinkedIn News Australia recently kicked off its Together In Business show. Pitched as a live show, it’s delivered in a conversational, friendly and professional tone by host and LinkedIn Australia News Editor, Natalie MacDonald. 

The production qualities are still low-fi, but don’t limit the experience. LinkedIn is clearly testing its technical chops with shows like this, giving the audience an ability to interact in real-time via comments and emoticons. Guests seamlessly transition in and out of the show over a 60 minute period, and the comments are overwhelming positive.

According to Social Media Today, we should expect to see more from the LinkedIn platform as virtual shows evolve. It says the LinkedIn Events option is now made available to all Pages and it’s adding more capacity for hosting professional events by adding LinkedIn Live into the events stream.

Practically speaking, I suspect this means we’ll discover more relevant live events via our LinkedIn notifications. More detail from LinkedIn here. 

2. Tribe and Facebook’s Marketers in Pyjamas

Influencer agency Tribe is making waves in the Australian marketing community with its live show, Marketers in Pyjamas. 

Supported by Facebook and hosted by former radio DJ and Tribe boss, Jules Lund, it’s a deliberately unpolished chat on Zoom between high-profile marketers. As Jules told Mumbrella, it was born when he wondered what marketers were doing at home, right now. Wouldn’t it be cool if we just had a chat from our kitchens?  

What’s interesting about this live show is that it perfectly suits the tone, style and level of informal creativity and intelligence of Australia’s marketing community. Jules is clearly in his element as host, as are the marketers who are happy to throw up a few slides to underscore their points. 

Leisa Bacon (top left), Adam Ferrier (bottom left) and host, Jules Lund.

Side note: Can’t resist a plug. Check out my own marketing podcast, The CMO Show. We don’t wear PJ’s but there are plenty of smiles here too :) 

3. Ticker TV

At the other end of the spectrum, Ticker TV is live television for the web. It’s Sky News meets ABC Insiders and professional YouTubers. 

It’s still early days, but a lineup of daily shows hosted by a variety of business professionals from industries such as property, finance, marketing, technology gives you an insight into the company’s ambitions. 

No, it’s not technically a virtual event platform, but it’s a sign of where we’re headed. Live streaming is normal, everyone has a story to tell and entrepreneurs are pushing the boundaries.

Ticker TV will give plenty of marketers inspiration, pause for thought, and first hand experience on camera as guests, facilitators of CEO interviews, or hosts themselves. 

Here’s a mugshot of yours truly enjoying an interview cameo. 

4. Space&Co. Comm.Unity

My agency recently kicked off a live show for our client Space&Co., called Comm.Unity. The vision is to bring Space&Co. members together through an interactive live show that offers equal parts inspiration, new ideas and real-time audience feedback to connect with members. 

Co-hosted by yours truly and Space&Co. national director Shey Hooper (pictured below), we broadcast from the studio and switch between either in-studio or virtual guests. 

We’ve deliberately focused on audience engagement through multiple cameras, high-value inspirational content and a format that threads real-time audience feedback and questions into the presentation. 

Like other virtual shows, it’s early days, but what we’re learning from audience feedback is they’re loving the experience and the majority of attendees stay for the full 60 minutes. You can watch our most recently full-length shows on YouTube here. 

5. IBM Think Digital Event Experience

IBM took its Think conference digital this year on May 5 and 6, pitching it as the ‘Think Digital Event Experience.’

IBM is a century-old company that I fondly think of as the Madonna of technology. It’s constantly reinventing itself, adapting to change, and developing marketing campaigns that smartly reflect the corporate zeitgeist - eCommerce, eBusiness, Smarter Planet and THINK are all slogans that have served it well over the years. 

So what is the IBM Think Digital Event Experience? In short, it was a conference hosted by IBM within a gated platform for customers and partners. You can create an IBM ID to log in for free, but it takes a few minutes.

The event itself offered live streams of the content, and today you can watch that content on demand. 

Here’s a screenshot from the platform of a great interview between IBM Executive Chairman, Ginni Rometty, and the musician, entrepreneur and philanthropist, will.i.am.

Now, will Think become an ongoing live show? I don’t know, but it’s likely to return next year as a conference and I think it’s a great step forward in terms of developing rich, brand-funded event experiences. 

?Wrapping it up: what next?

If the tech world is any indication, we can expect virtual event services to improve quickly throughout the rest of this year and beyond. 

Platforms worth watching include all the usual: YouTube Live, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Also, service providers including On24, Zoom, Livestream (now owned by Vimeo), Livestorm and BigMarker have caught my attention. 

The point is this: we’re going to see people using one core broadcast platform, then amplify that live steam out to multiple social channels. Done well, savvy brands with the support of experienced show hosts and great guests will begin to engage and build customer audiences in new ways. 

From anecdotal observations and first hand experience, we can expect greater reach, higher levels of engagement and lower costs when compared to traditional in-person events. 

If that leads to greater, measurable impact such as sales engagements and online sales, you can expect live events and live shows to be around for a very long time.

What’s your experience with virtual events and live shows?

Mark Jones believes those who tell the stories change the world. For more information on virtual events, check out Filtered Media. For more on his professional speaking and his new book, Beliefonomics: Realise the true value of your brand story, visit his website.