After face-to-face meetings ground to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies pivoted to virtual events. According to a weekly meeting planner survey conducted by i-Meet, as of August 9, 84 percent of respondents indicated in-person meetings would not resume until 2021. Further, the vast majority said some or all of their future live meetings would include a virtual component. BTN editorial director Elizabeth West in late June moderated a webinar on these meeting types with Bondurant Consulting president Betsy Bondurant, Anthem director of travel and events Cindy Heston, American Express Meetings & Events VP global operations and shared services Linda McNairy, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals head of global meetings and events strategy and solutions Rawya Tullgren as panelists.
BTN: Hybrid and virtual meetings are not new. Why hadn't they been fully embraced before?
Betsy Bondurant: I have painful memories of doing clunky satellite feeds into nine ballrooms for a product launch about a month after 9/11. Now we have wonderful technologies out there. As an industry, we [previously] didn't embrace anything other than face-to-face. But the last couple of months we've had to do virtual or nothing, so virtual has really come into its own. And we're finding it's a great way to amplify attendance. Event marketers are finding that their events are attracting two to three times [the audience] they had anticipated. Some of the benchmarking I've been doing with many different companies has [shown] that without a doubt, hybrid meetings will be here to stay.
BTN: Linda, regarding the i-Meet data, does it match what you are seeing among groups?
Linda McNairy: We've been following the i-Meet survey since it first launched, and it really has tracked fairly closely with what we've heard from customers. As the magnitude of the pandemic has been fully felt, the meetings are pushing out further.
BTN: What are your clients' key considerations as they start to move toward virtual or hybrid events that can drive their strategies?
McNairy: The biggest message is, “One size does not fit all.” You really need to look at virtual and hybrid events just as any other meeting type. What are you trying to accomplish from the meeting? What is the scope? Carefully think through those elements and make sure you're not just saying, “Let's grab some technology and throw people out onto it.” It's really important to do a technology assessment. A lot of companies have Microsoft Teams, Webex or Zoom, and that may work for your internal meetings, but when doing a more produced event, you need to make sure you have a platform that can support that. Think about your attendee engagement journey. You may want a video. You may want some gamification. Do rehearsals [with speakers]. Then make sure you are maximizing your results around the meeting. Also, you have to track. I talked to a customer who is running [a strategic meetings management] program, and their marketing team has shifted to virtual, but they are not registering the meetings. If you don't track the data for these virtual meetings, a year from now you have a big gap in your data in terms of understanding your metrics and continuing to build upon the strength of your SMMP.
BTN: Rawya, at Takeda, how have you been looking at different platforms and even microtechnologies to help you deliver on specific needs for your events?
Rawya Tullgren: Today, with advanced technology, there is this explosion of platforms and solutions. We need to reinvent ourselves and learn that new language. We've worked with our IT and procurement departments and created a global preferred supplier partner list. As Linda said, one size does not fit all. We look at the type of meeting, the complexity of the meeting … and then we can go to our preferred vendor list and properly match our suppliers to the different virtual meetings type and design requirements. We also created a playbook as a core resource for our team and other stakeholders to help build out virtual capabilities.
BTN: Cindy, is this similar to the strategy you've taken at Anthem?
Cindy Heston: Our experience with virtual and hybrid is pretty limited, and not because the team didn't consider looking into it. In our business, the demand was very much in-person. When this hit, it was a big shift. It became even more important for us as a company to have effective communication, the ability to get messaging out in different channels rather than just email or video. We started to dive into hybrid meetings … but didn't think that would happen until the second half [of the year]. So we looked at virtual, and that's where we started with the internal team, and with what was currently approved within Anthem. … [Consider the] materials in the meetings; you're digitally streaming very confidential information. Apps that have different [add-on] features—we cannot do that. Just because it's part of the suite of the product [your company uses] doesn't mean [the add-ons are] approved from the IT security standpoint.
BTN: What types of meetings may be easier or harder to switch to virtual or hybrid?
McNairy: Some meetings are really easy to flip, like team meetings, all-hands meetings, town halls, keynote-type presentations where there is more one-directional sharing of information. For me, what is exciting is how hybrid is really going to come to life. All data shows and everything we are seeing is that as we return to live meetings, they will be smaller. Rather than bringing your 800 salespeople in for a kickoff meeting, you may be looking at regionalizing folks into smaller groups, and then having certain elements brought together through the hybrid element. We successfully executed an annual meeting for our employees [where] we co-located general sessions and had emcees and hosts at each of the locations. Then, for the time where everybody is logging on and you're sorting out the technical difficulties, a colleague and I had sort of a talk show, where we were interviewing people and filling the time so that as people got onto the line, they weren't just experiencing dead air. … There are some other types that require more thought, like how do you do fundraisers, or galas? For me, the challenge is let's think through what the important elements of that meeting or event are, and how can you try best to bring that forward.
BTN: I love the talk show idea as people are logging in. Are there any best practices that may already be emerging?
Bondurant: If you are not looking at virtual or hybrid—or, using the example Linda had of people circumventing the SMM program and doing their own virtual work in marketing—you really need to be pulling all that together so you can have a comprehensive, holistic view of all the meetings that are taking place, then be able to provide the playbooks and recommendations for folks. You're not going to take a three-day sales meeting and lift it into a virtual platform. But what we are finding is that people don't have the skill sets. They need to upskill and work with suppliers to do that. Looking at best practices, the past few months [of virtual meetings], people have been forgiving if the technology wasn't working properly or if there wasn't much engagement. But people will have a lower tolerance for things that don't go right. Take the time to understand how to produce these meetings and events … so there is a lot more engagement and people find it to be fun and educational.
BTN: What are some of the additional complexities hybrid meetings bring?
Heston: If you look at the three [meeting type] options, hybrid really is the most complex. It also can be more costly because you have your production and the digital streaming aspect of it. One thing we've noticed is content. We would change content in a live meeting on the fly. In virtual, depending on the platform, your production company may not [be able] to make those changes within the same day. … It [also] is important in hybrid meetings to talk to your audience. There is polling, we have banners that are streaming, ‘this is up next,' things like that. [The live event] will be a lot smaller. Let your in-person attendees know your cues are going to wake up the virtual attendees and keep them engaged. Rehearsal is important, and so is your Wi-Fi bandwidth.
BTN: In virtual and hybrid, there's a capability to offer prerecorded and additional content that you can't produce live. What are some options that you can bring only to virtual?
Tullgren: For global, you have to think about the prerecorded aspect because if you're having a meeting in the United States and the main speaker is in Japan, it could be 3 a.m. for them. Before, sometimes they would have to wake up [in the middle of the night] to be there, and we literally saw people closing their eyes on the screen. But now with the virtual benefit, we can prerecord them, and it looks exactly as if they are part of the meeting. The time zone is also a big challenge for hybrid [panels], so we use what is called a studio platform, where you can have a panel, but it's more interactive [and includes pre-recorded content], and it overcomes the time zone challenges.
BTN: What opportunities does hybrid offer to track engagement and understand what attendees are doing in the meeting or conference?
Heston: One of the benefits is more data points. When did attendees actually check in to the meeting? When did they leave the meeting? Did they check in 10 minutes late and leave 10 minutes early? What was their engagement? Every once in a while, ask a question of the audience, like what are your thoughts on the speaker, do you agree, yes or no. Use the metrics and intermix it in your own database to present a really broad picture of the meeting. And tie it into [your] CRM tool to measure the productivity and value of the event.
BTN: Will the proliferation of virtual and hybrid meetings force us to get better data from our in-person meetings?
Bondurant: We've all struggled with proving the return on investment of our meetings and events. Now, with the hybrid and virtual opportunity, there is wonderful data. What we can do is identify if we are delivering information in the right method. And we also [can] determine if we should not be doing some of the meetings we've always done in the past. I'm finding people who are doing a rubric for face-to-face versus virtual versus what is the quality of life for our people. [Companies] also are looking at sustainability. We see some of the data now that the carbon footprint for meetings has dropped 95 percent because no one is on airplanes. [Also] there are still some people who cannot travel to a meeting because of illness or what have you. Now we can be more inclusive. … You can still participate 100 percent because of the virtual environments involved. To be able to take all that great information and integrate that with CRM tools on the back end is rich information for people who are on the front end, [who can] put all the dots together and come out with some great metrics.