What is the Future of Live Events?
That was the question posed to a group of twenty attendees recently at a discreetly curated gathering held by Intellitix and Gilbert’s LLP, at private wine club The Vintage Conservatory.
To stimulate the discussion, four unique speakers were asked to share insights and ideas, while literally being grilled, challenged, endorsed, mocked, cheered, and even heckled by the attendees. The triangulation of twenty Type-H (hyper) guests, the event being held on a Friday evening, and a kept promise of an endless supply of remarkable wines, produced a combustible conversation. The speakers were brave and grateful to be engaged with an audience that included the CEO of one Canada’s most successful homegrown businesses. Senior VPs from pro sports properties, venues, and media. Music festival founders. Brand partnership gurus. Major brand marketers. You get the point.
So what did the speakers have to say, and what is the Future of Live Events?
First, you should meet them. Leading off was Alan Smithson. Beyond his incredible tech background, he is also the CMO of his eleven-year-old daughter’s company Love Sandal. Yes, eleven! Smithson is also known for patenting the Emulator DJ system, and he’s now launching a new VR/AR company called MetaVRse. At the same time he and his wife are creating a legacy project to engage youth through entrepreneurship.
One of those youths could have been speaker number two, Derrick Fung. He’s only twenty-eight, so I hate him already. At twelve he was running the largest online music sheet business in the world. Built another company called Tunezy which he sold to SFX Entertainment. Was named a Top 30 under 30 by Forbes and is now running Drop Loyalty, an experience-based loyalty idea targeting millennials.
Super smart is the only way to describe Rafael Nicolas Fermin Cota. He’s the founder of Left Brain and a professor at Western University. More importantly he’s a mathematical whiz who can take any data dump you can imagine and output a logic path that can drive better decision making.
The final speaker was the charismatic Devon Wright who founded Turnstyle Solutions. Wright is the leading proximity marketing innovator in North America and is building a platform that has reached 25,000 stores and wants millions more. But consider this. If you are a sponsor of an event and want to connect with a consumer who attended that event when they walk into your store, Turnstyle can help you do that. Read that sentence over again very very slowly. My customer was at a festival that I sponsored and five days later they walk into my store, and I know immediately? Flip that around. My customer is in my store and I want to tell them about my event in five days? Read that one again as well.
Debate in the workplace is a healthy construct. Too often, however, people take debate personally and can’t separate themselves from the discussion. The beauty of a room full of mostly strangers – everyone seemed to know no more than two other people prior to the evening – and bottles of truth serum, means the mandate to be candid actually happens. There was an abundant supply.
Back and forth the room collegially thrashed.
Would Virtual Reality eventually put an end to live events?
How do you promote a live event, when the in-home experience can be technologically superior?
Is there consumer loyalty in the festival industry?
Is there a different level of loyalty based on event type? Audience type?
Why are consumers?
What data do you need to successfully program and promote a live event?
How do you acquire it?
Who do you have on-board to analyze it?
Do you know who your core influencers are? Your most profitable customers?
Who should you market your event to…the masses or the leaders?
Why will millennials give you data no baby boomer would ever part with?
Maybe it was the laughter or the room energy, but it wasn’t until a day later I realized the answer to the question. The question of The Future of Live Events is not will there be a live event industry or will live events be replaced by virtual or artificial or augmented events. Now the question is what will live events look like and what will differentiate the good from the bad. The answer is painfully obvious. Data.
Data will be the big differentiator. What data can you provide your bosses, your clients, your sponsors, your sponsees? How will you use that data to enhance the consumer experience? How will you use it to refine your value proposition? How will you utilize data to generate higher sponsor ROI?
The tricky part will be blending the art with the science. Balancing the left and the right side of your brain. Your eyes versus your gut.
But without the data – the right data, timely data, clean data – the event industry will languish in the land of the nice to do, feel good, and vanity project. While other forms of marketing and commerce will receive the priority resources in your organization.
Live is a powerful medium, and soon you will have the data to prove it.