Organization of events - a niche for IT solutions

I decided to share the details of the work of a niche in which there is a good potential for IT. I'm talking about the organization of events or, as they call this type of activity, - events. I know this niche for several years already; in fact, at BIG, we are committed to providing all kinds of IT services in it. So I wanted to share with Habr some personal discoveries and observations, what to do there is an IT person and what is the potential.

Marketing is actively seeking new solutions.

It is necessary to understand that for a business an event is marketing. And marketing is an extremely versatile sphere in the breadth of its interests. Its members are constantly looking for new solutions and are doing it very actively. Large budgets are concentrated here, so there is a reason for activity.
The crisis, which affected most sectors of the economy and forced to strict restrictions, did not reduce the capacity of the marketing communications market. Data on its real values ​​are highly fragmented. Generalized statistics from open sources are presented in the form of a diagram.
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Dynamics of the marketing communications market in Russia, incl. BTL segment (according to data from RAMU)

BTL-event-marketing is the most attractive segment for our company. Therefore, the dynamics of total budgets in this area received special attention. If you look at the volume of project financing, then the crisis has only benefited this type of marketing. Because no one will dare to save on the fact that in the conditions of a falling market has proved its effectiveness.

So, the ongoing search for new solutions and big money, which determine the atmosphere of the marketing communications market in Russia, is a significant reason for IT-ingenious guys to come here and take their toll. Enriching inventors with new solutions.

Why BTL-Event Marketing is Promising

Having voluntarily stuck my head in the dragon's mouth. Having decided to implement my IT interests in BTL-event marketing, I began to delve into the kitchen of event friends. And I discovered two terms that are promising because of their proximity to IT, these are “event mechanics” and “gamification” (game-fication). In both cases, IT specialists have a reason to be directly involved.

Game fiction has become a general hobby of society. This involves a lot of areas, from the creators of services and applications to business models, which are increasingly being gamified. Mechanics from computer games fill the familiar life of not only ordinary people, but also events. The latter, by virtue of their functionality, before others grab the trends of society and actively use game-fication in the mechanics of their events.

For the sake of attracting attention, the eventors are ready for anything

About the "WOW-effect" and the fact that he ousted and replaced a lot in our mind, you can’t say more precisely Pelevin: “Man is not a wolf for a long time. Man to man is not even an image maker, not a dealer, not a killer and not an exclusive distributor, as modern sociologists assume. Everything is much worse and easier. Man is man to wow - and not to man, but to exactly the same wow. ”

Since the days of “Generation P” in the advertising kitchen, in essence, nothing has changed. All participants in this market are looking for technology that will provide a “WOW effect” to people, in general, and visitors to their event, in particular. The “WOW effect” is a real veil-morgana event, because customers want just that from them - WOW.

From time to time there are technologies that can provide a similar effect. Eventors continuously monitor the markets for the emergence of such technologies, gather at annual conferences to see and discuss the potential of new products. Statistics from international studies shows that 87% of the events favor the use of digital technologies at events. Because they understand that including them in the mechanics of an event automatically means shifting the customer's wow-mood to their reputation. This is the second goal for which the inventors are making their titanic efforts. The first - the banal and eternal - money!

Revolving in the BTL-event-marketing market since 2011, I managed to summarize my personal observations.

Observation 1. Everyone is trying to invent something new, but few succeed.
Therefore, in practice, the "WOW-effect" inventors try to bring to life rather monotonously - due to the ever-increasing scope of the show. For example, the number of plasma recently involved in projects is amazing. But it turns out boring.

Speaking at events, for example, in Crocus Expo, where there are many participants, super-brands - Nissan, Toyota, Infiniti, etc. I watch the next competition of the number of TVs and the showiness of auto-show-girls. But I have not yet seen technologies similar to the “WOW effect”. The audience of auto-girls and huge plasmas have not been impressive for a long time, people indifferently pass by.

Observation 2. When the event is planned in the basic version, communication, entertainment and interactivity lay down minimal budgets. And if before the organizers there is a choice to invest 300 thousand rubles. In the Internet on the site to enhance communications and interactive or to purchase the entire amount of additional alcohol, it happens that the event does not choose the Internet. Because it believes that good whiskey can provide communication, entertainment, and interactivity.

Event, digital and internet have a lot in common

There are different motivations for using digital.

1. Digital-effective way to promote the brand of the customer, using a variety of technical solutions.
The specificity of marketing budgets is that these are always significant amounts. From simply impressive to frankly indecent. Therefore, the effectiveness of their use to measure is not just interesting, but also instructive. Those who focus on accurate calculation of the effectiveness of spending money on marketing, there is a pronounced craving for Internet marketing. After all, it allows you to measure almost everything with a maximum degree of accuracy. Digital technologies are able to provide similar data for any event in reality.

2. Eventors are well aware that today all the trends of communications are in the field of digital. Be it instant messengers or soc. network. It is digital that gives the coolest interactivity at the event - push-technologies, games and mobile applications.

Recently, most technological innovations in the event-market appear precisely in digital. Therefore, inventors look at new technologies in this market as a panacea. And they set their goal to find and quickly integrate into the mechanics of their activities, achieving with them the desired "WOW-effect".

The advantages of digital technology in the mechanics of the event

When we discuss event-digital-marketing with our customer in our WiFi service, we promise this:

1. "Glue" with the help of digital-technology abstract audience of guests of the event with their profiles in the social. networks. And get at their disposal a huge amount of various information.
2. Involve the entire audience in communication with each other.
3. To stick the audience to yourself, so that at the end of the event you can have an opportunity to reach them with your promo. Because today it is considered to be professional in the trend to build communication with a person not with the help of intrusive mailings and SMS, but through a specific profile in the social. networks.
4. Involve an additional audience in marketing a brand: online friends of event visitors.

I will tell about it on specific examples.

Case TNT

My experience in using digital technologies began with the promotion of the TNT channel at the Space Moscow club in October 2014. In the mechanics of the event was sewn advanced game-fikatsiya.

At that time, a screensaver with a red sofa, sitting on which various characters of show business uttered the phrase: “TNT - Feel Our Love” was considered to be a TV channel chip. At its event, the channel made a bid for the popularity of the sofa and came up with the following. Imitating the mood of advertising, this piece of furniture and a recognizable backdrop were installed on the dance floor. Guests had the opportunity to appear in the role of TNT media faces and take selfies on mobile devices. Further, the photo was proposed to be placed on Instagram, providing # TNT_pouchuvstvuy_nash_lyubov.

A special script parsil Instagram and took the necessary photos to him on our server hosted in the same club. With him, and was organized by the automatic display on the big screen. Each photographed on the brand-sofa, laid out in the social. network photos with a specified hashtag, got the opportunity to immediately see themselves on a huge panel. The publication of the picture was accompanied by the text, which the guest of the event provided it in the social. network. Practice has shown that the calculation of the game-faction was justified - the visitors made a large number of their photos and awaited with interest their appearance on the screen. For many guests this became an incentive to post their photos on Instagram. There they appeared hundreds.

What was left behind the scenes for visitors, on the contrary, turned into an object of close attention for the organizers - more than a thousand photos with the TNT brand hashtag were noticed by friends of the guests of the event. The game-fication built into the mechanics made it possible to involve in the TNT promo brand not only 600 declared guests, but also several thousand of their friends in the social. networks.

Selected # Feel_Our_Love also additionally promotes the slogan of the TNT channel.

At the planning stage, the event was attended by fears that laying out photos on the air could be fraught with unpredictable photos and even provocations. In this respect, moderation was made by the invited administrator of the TV channel. Therefore, between the post in the social. the network and the appearance of the photo on the screen was a slight pause.

The use of game elements in the event mechanics introduced a distinct WOW effect. This did not require special financial investments, and the guests' enthusiasm turned out to be genuine.

Case "Svyaznoy"

In contrast to the promotion of the TNT event, Svyaznoy defined its format as internal. That is, the promotion of the brand was not needed. The task was to surprise the guests with the richness of the interactive.

All invited to the event were leaders of a certain level. They were warned in advance about the need to install on the smartphone a special mobile application. The notification was carried out by e-mail. Who did not have time to do it on time, several specialists helped at the entrance.

The application was created by our partners and, in fact, was a mini soc. network with the following features:

• see the other participants of the event;
• add photos and videos;
• exchange messages and other materials;
• participate in surveys;
• ask a question to the speaker.

The latter feature has proven particularly useful. The question addressed to the lecturer by the participants of the event fell on a separate server and was reflected on the big screen. Therefore, it was possible to adjust the report in the light of incoming questions.

Additionally, guests could vote for a specific speaker, after which a diagram with the actual distribution of votes appeared in the access. The voting system could be rented, and usually this happens on events, but not this time.

In general, for the interactive at the event answered:

• mini soc. network;
• voting system;
• information boards;
• QR codes located in the form of video clips on local servers in order to prevent the Internet channel from subsiding.

The result of using digital technologies at the Svyaznoy closed event is the fully authorized 600 guests whose activity we could observe and analyze.

The cost of such technologies is slightly higher than those involved in the event of the TNT channel. However, the customer's top management appreciated the application at its true worth, so it worked even after the event, becoming a corporate mini social service. network.

Trend: everyone is looking for something new, but how to find it

Today on the BTL-event-market there is a steady trend - to find something interesting from digital. In practice, it often looks like this: a large brand or customer announces a tender to find a performer who can develop digital-360 to promote the brand at events throughout the year. But in the conditions of the tender there is no specifics - what exactly the customer wants. There are only basic vectors or common words. It is proposed to propose a strategy within the framework of the budget set by the brand; the main hopes are placed on the creativity of eventors.

In the case examples above, we tried to show how with the help of digital technology we managed to achieve a confident WOW effect.

In the sense of the event'ora, digital trends are the following.

1. Different ways to engage the audience in virtual reality. The most traditional of them are websites, hashtags, etc., including the creation of special computer games for events. Then part of the event takes place offline, and the other in a computer game, digital space.
2. The use of soc. networks - still in trend. Although the "WOW-effect" there is hardly possible, soc. networks early to write off event-market.
3. VR is one of the undisputed leaders among the trends under discussion. The hitch is in the small number of ideas for their use in BTL-event-marketing.
4. The gamification trend is 100% mainstream. It is very promising, but is not yet in demand. Anyone who is able to offer the event-market different scenarios for embedding into the mechanics of the event will ride the wave.
5. Visualization of the audience, chat bots instead of applications and a smart bracelet that analyzes the emotions of visitors.

What to do here IT-shnik: predictions

We hope that we were convincing in an attempt to show that BTL-event-marketing is a successful area of ​​application of the efforts of an IT specialist. Today, truly cool solutions lie at the intersection of technologies, areas and professions. In particular, the application of IT-knowledge and IT-technologies can be taken out of the framework of only IT-sphere and “shared” in the event-area. The attractiveness and perspectivity of the latter is not only in attractive budgets - here it is really very positive, inventive and fun.

Practically all technologies covered on habr'e can be successfully applied in event'ah. I urge the participants of the IT-sphere to attentively look at them regarding the feasibility of implementation. Only it is necessary to take into account - in order for an IT-decision to be made in the event-market, it is necessary to propose the mechanics of the event itself in which this could be used.

At the beginning of the article I gave the dynamics of changes in the capacity of the BTL-event market, as well as the forecast for the current year - they are encouraging. Therefore, all IT-ingenious is not the time to frown in front of the screens of their monitors, let's think about how to use in the events similar to us trends and technologies.

PS I will be glad to your comments. And in the near future plans to continue on existing technical practices. I will also tell you about what rakes I did not pass by and what kind of know-how I had to use to provide events with technical solutions.