04.24.20
By Lisa Major
Last year, Oracle announced that its tech conference, Openworld, would be relocating from their hometown of San Francisco to Las Vegas. That left many conference organizers wondering if hosting in the same city year-after-year was the right option, or if they should explore spicing things up a bit. In the week’s Happy Hour, we’ll examine the advantages and disadvantages of switching up the location of your conference. We also look at the future of experiential retail in a post-pandemic world; and branded in-home experiences. We close out with a Rolling Stone article that highlights the extraordinary effort of the Live for Life coalition.
Photo: Walmart
Choosing a prime location for a conference is no easy task. There are multiple elements to consider from logistics and costs, ease of access, lodging, staffing, and so forth. And for companies that host a flagship conference, the burning question is should we stay or should we go? While hometowns certainly have a lot to offer, rotating cities can also be beneficial for companies and attendees. Here, Event Marketer explores the pros and cons of moving a flagship conference.
Pre-pandemic, experiential retail was all the buzz. Retailers of all shapes and sizes, from small boutiques to e-commerce stores, were adding experiences into the mix to create brand awareness, win over customers, and establish loyalty. But like many businesses, retailers are facing temporary closures of brick-and-mortar stores due to the coronavirus pandemic. And unfortunately, in-store experiences will just have to wait. In this article, we take a look at how some retailers have successfully taken their experiences to an online format, and what the future of experiential retail will look like when stores reopen.
Photo: Jeff Golden
The warmer spring and summer months typically have people craving outdoor activities. Community festivals, concerts, and baseball games are something that we look forward to every year (and looking back, have always taken for granted). But with no live entertainment events in the foreseeable future, and people spending all of their time at home, brands are trying to keep the spirit of live entertainment alive during the pandemic. From streaming concerts to virtual family events, see how these three brands are delivering branded entertainment experiences to fans around the world.
In early March, conferences began canceling, then SXSW canceled, sporting events were put on hold, and the live events industry unraveled from there. As event companies scrambled to figure out how to navigate through this catastrophe, they also realized that their expertise in producing live events could benefit the struggling healthcare system. So, instead of playing the waiting game, three event agencies formed Live for Life, a coalition of competitors turned collaborators, to assist in the fight against COVID-19. Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at the coalition and hear from some of the founding partners.
Thanks for joining us for this week’s Happy Hour. Join us again next week as we deliver some of the latest news in the experiential and event marketing industry, and be sure to subscribe to our monthly blog while you’re here!
