How can we go back to live events together
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after being in the live events industry
for over 10 years i should be pretty
familiar with zoom calls by now
so about a day before we all went into
lockdown we threw my wife birthday party
and of course we had a whole bunch of
happy birthday balloons set up in the
house as a backdrop
so over the next few months we had about
10 different friends birthday parties
that we had to celebrate
so of course we set up our zoom camera
in front of our birthday balloons
backdrop
and of course we told every one of our
friends that we bought the balloons for
them after
every single virtual birthday call that
we had
each of the balloons started to deflate
little by little funny enough
so did our virtual birthday party
enthusiasm
by the end of the last birthday call i
don’t remember
which birthday belonged to who what if
every single one of our 21st birthdays
are celebrated over zoom
not that exciting i think that’s why the
subject is so important to me
we make this powerful human connection
that drives
each one of these memorable experiences
but they do we do them
with people we do them with our friends
we do them with our family members
for example i remember the time we
celebrated my friend’s birthday at an f1
race
not so much the zoom birthday parties
that’s kind of the funny thing about
live event experiences
ask anyone to name three of their most
memorable or favorite experiences
and they’ll pretty much tell you that at
least one of them happened at a live
event
usually with friends or family and i
think there’s a few reasons for that
the first of course is immersion or
distraction as i like to call it
we need to embrace it we need it to feel
normal we need to get away from our
normal lives every now and then
live events and experiences help us do
that second the human connection
these memories are created by the place
and the people together
not just one or the other we use
sometimes these experiences to create
some kind of a catalyst
for change and change maybe our day
maybe our week
and for some of us even our lives so
will life really feel normal if we can’t
go back to events together
probably not and so let’s talk a little
bit about some of these fears that i
think people are going to have
when it’s time to actually go back to
live events
first we have this fear of commitment
you know should i even buy this ticket
or registration will the event even
happen
will it happen next month or will it
happen in a year
next fear of deluded event experience is
this experience even going to be cool
is it going to be awesome is all these
restrictions that have been placed on it
going to impact my ability to even enjoy
it
for example do i really want to go to
the country music event or
my favorite football game and drink a
beer with a mask on
probably not doesn’t sound like that
much fun and of course
long lines we always hated lines to
begin with
and we definitely don’t like them now so
waiting in the cold or the hot weather
really sounds miserable to everybody
and that’s not going to change the
thought of someone sneezing on us now
on top of all those other conditions
makes us all cringe
and of course we also have the fear of
touching you know things like kiosks and
printed tickets
that have all been so present in live
events are kind of a thing in the past
touching credit cards and merchandise
and things like that
isn’t really something that we want to
deal with and of course
the elephant in the room which is the
fear of crowds these densely populated
areas that we have
we have people want to avoid congested
areas they want to avoid festivals of
pretty much all types
conventions and trade shows cons sports
games
uh sports venues and of course marathons
and races even
and then there’s the typical family park
or the beach
that may be overly congested this summer
so what’s the solution how do we
actually empower the industry to help
instill confidence again
in each other we’ve got to put people’s
commitment issues to rest
people aren’t just going to start buying
tickets again all of a sudden
we have to help convince them that it’s
going to be okay so how do we do that
one we have to adjust some refund
policies customers need to know that
they aren’t handcuffed
they want to make sure that we adjust
these policies and that’s just going to
be the first step
next we can offer things like event
insurance protect their purchases let
people
select whether or not they want to
protect them just like in the travel
industry
they can’t make it let them get a full
refund life is full of uncertainty and
we really need to be empathetic right
now
and last of course branding consistent
branding you know while we’re
registering or buying a ticket for
something
we need less distraction not more
keeping things put through a white label
experience or something that’s branded
for that
particular live experience or event is
going to help people from second
guessing
purchases that are getting distracted by
certain ads or other events or things
like that
next we need to reassure customers that
the event experience will be awesome
event organizers need to step up their
game we can’t just keep things the same
as they’ve always been
we need to have new ways to engage
customers on site
immersive augmented and virtual reality
tech for example
was one idea gamification tools at the
events and even online and mobile reward
systems to give
customers that are willing to actually
go a little bit louder voice
to invite their friends so how do we put
to bed
customers fears of waiting in these long
lines we were talking about earlier
customers have always wanted to avoid
lines it’s just worse now
so what we’ve seen is an adoption of
timed entry functionality plus virtual
cueing
that way we can satisfy those social
distancing guidelines
and also completely eliminate wait time
it’s pretty simple that way customers
can choose the date and time they want
to go
which eliminates essentially 99 of all
the wait time and virtual queuing just
sends us a text message when it’s time
for us to go in
so how do we reassure people that they
don’t have to actually touch everything
kiosks credit cards pens they’re just
dirty
we can pretty much do away with them
completely most of these companies are
migrating to contactless payment systems
accepting mobile wallet payments such as
apple pay or google pay
and other countries have been doing this
for a long long time so it’s
definitely time for us to hop on board
this also helps our carbon footprint
and our efficiency at the same time
companies like square have boosted their
contactless payment hardware as well
so it’s easy for us to get we can go to
the local best buy or wherever we want
and pick up these devices now
kind of seems archaic to go back to pen
and paper after all this
and next of course caches payments
they’re pretty much a must
we have to have cashless rfid solutions
these are nothing really new to the
festival space
but for a lot of other industries
adopting them for all transactions
is going to help visibility it’s going
to help safety
and it’s also going to help that
check-in process be completely seamless
and speeds up those entry times so what
are some of the best social distancing
solutions that we can use to combat
these densely populated areas we were
talking about earlier
there’s a bunch of different innovative
solutions in the industry starting with
augmented and virtual reality event
challenges
we’re seeing a lot of marathons runs
bike races
offer these virtual athletic experiences
that we can essentially all do together
i can challenge my friends
my friends can challenge their friends
and we’re all competing through that
competitive spirit we all have
but it’s actually having some fun while
we do it festival is converting to
drive-in festivals now with parking
selection
so that way people can select the spot
that they want to go sit and enjoy the
entire festival
still with their friends but socially
distance from everybody else
it’s kind of funny how history repeats
itself from the drive-in movie theater
days
almost like the 80s except for now we
have 4k and 8k
sports venues now use seat buffering
technology for example as well
this basically creates a layer of a
number of seats around
a group to make sure that their social
distance automatically
we have all these live experiences that
play such a vital role
in our memories we need them to survive
we need them to be happy
one thing this pandemic has taught us if
nothing else is that we have to value
each other’s company together
we need to work together to encourage
and innovate these new solutions
we need to make us feel like we can
enjoy this world the way we used to
no one wants to throw another virtual
zoom birthday party if we don’t have to