Events Reimagined: How AI is Shaping the New Normal in Experiences

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Eileen Page Eileen spearheads envision communications, digital and technology innovation team, ensuring digital activations and experiences are executed to the highest standards. With 20 plus years of expertise crafting breakthrough digital solutions for Fortune 1000 brands. She fuses strategy, creativity and technical insight to create proprietary technology installations, virtual experiences and digital campaigns for brands like DuPont, Siemens, Amway, Dell Technologies, and Oracle. Welcome to revenue rehab. Eileen, your session begins now.

Eileen Page  01:28

Thank you so much Brandi, I'm happy to be here.

Brandi Starr  01:31

I am excited to talk to you. Events is something that I've always been passionate about in my career that I don't totally get to do as much anymore, but it's still a really, really hot topic. But before we jump into why we're here today, I always like to break the ice with a little Woosah moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever.

Eileen Page  02:01

I would like to get rid of the buzzword pivot. When COVID first started, we had to help our clients pivot their live experiences to digital, it was an incredibly chaotic, inspiring, crazy time. And now we are ready to move into essentially the new normal, we're not pivoting anymore, we are creating a whole new generation of experiences that fuses live in person as well as hybrid elements.

Brandi Starr  02:27

I love that anytime I hear the word pivot, I'm of the friends generation, I think about that episode of Friends with the couch where I use that gift quite often in different situations. But for today, we will definitely take pivot and put it in the box. And we won't be doing any pivoting in this conversation. Well, now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me what brings you to revenue rehab?

Eileen Page  03:04

Yes, so envision is an audience engagement agency, we have been doing live events for 30 plus years. In addition to that, we've grown our business to encompass more campaign, more of a campaign focus. So communication campaigns, ongoing websites, persistent experiences, things of that nature, live events are still an incredibly important touch point in our communication continuum. And so it shouldn't be any surprise that we have been harnessing the latest in artificial intelligence for the purposes of creating cutting edge events execution. So I want to talk about some of the use cases that we've been seeing and how people can leverage the power of artificial intelligence. It's probably the most transformative technology of our time. How can you use it to save time and tedium? When paired with critical human thought it can be incredibly powerful in really elevating that attendee experience.

Brandi Starr  03:58

Awesome. Yeah, AI has been such a hot topic. And we use a lot of generative AI to help with, you know, content and messaging and things like that. But I know that there are so many use cases that I have not even fathom at this point. So excited that we're going to talk about some of those. Before we really dive into the specifics. I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose and most important It gives our audience and understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. And so what is your intention, what's your best hope for what people will take away?

Eileen Page  04:36

I would like to cut through the clutter and buzz surrounding AI and give some very concrete applicable examples of how people can actually leverage it in their event planning and other communication needs.

Brandi Starr  04:49

Awesome. I love when we can, you know, cut through the mess and like really get to how do we actually do this thing. Okay, so I know when it comes to events, you've got kind of different components, you've got the planning process of like how you pull it together, you've got registration, you've got the live of how you're engaging people, you've got the follow up. And is there any place in the journey that AI plays the biggest role? Or is it really across the board,

Eileen Page  05:23

I would say it's across the board. We like to think of technology in terms of three key attributes, immersive, persistent, personalized, I would say artificial intelligence contributes the most heavily to the personalization, attribute. Personalization has been top of mind. For years now, people are used to going into their local Starbucks, for example, and their barista knows what their drink of choice is. Or when you get in your car, it automatically adjust your seat and mirror settings. And so consumers and event attendees in particular, are expecting that in the event context, as well in all areas of their life, but especially when they're receiving emails, for example, it's addressed to them, it's targeted to them, here are your needs, here are the event elements that would apply to that during the course of the event. Of course, you mentioned registration walking up and without even having to show your driver's license, for example, or give your name your badge is handed to you along with any other relevant materials. And then of course, the key follow ups are so important those post event follow up. So talking about, here's what you experienced at the event. And here's how you can really use it in an ongoing fashion to continue to achieve your business objectives.

Brandi Starr  06:31

Okay, so I want to start by diving into the personalization. Because it sounds like that is where there's a key place. And so you know, email is our jam. So I'm very familiar with how you personalize communications, you know, whether it's the invite, or the follow ups, post registration. I mean, with any of the marketing automation tools, there's lots of different ways that you can do that. And I think that in general, most people are fairly aware of how to personalize like email communications, however, the in person experience that you're talking about, you know, I'm thinking about the thought of like walking up, and then just handing me my badge. And I'm like, how is that even possible? That almost feels a little freaky? So help me understand, how does AI play a role in the in person experience and really actually personalizing that for people?

Eileen Page  07:29

Sure, I think it's a broad question. There's lots of different ways to achieve it. I'll give an example from Delta Airlines at the Detroit airport, they initiated a pilot program, people had to opt into it. But I believe it's up to 100 people, it might even be more than that can walk up to a special monitor, but you only see your flight information. So it says Eileen page, you're flying from Detroit to Chicago, the times, etc. So there is there's ways to apply that to the event context as well. Again, privacy is always a concern, making sure that people have the opportunity to opt in. So that creepy Big Brother factor isn't preventing them from appreciating the personalization elements. But everything from delivering that information to allowing people to build their own agenda. So giving them tools walking up to a touchscreen kiosk, for example, I scan my badge, it tells me great, we know, these are your interests, these are the courses that we would recommend taking or these are the sessions we recommend you attend. These are the people that we recommend that you network with, if there's an expo floor component actually mapping a path through that floor for me. So we recommend you visit these booths in this order. There's a lot of great tools out there, there's some proprietary technology that actually we've created. And the benefit, especially of that last part is that I'm getting a targeted recommendation to go talk with certain people to go visit certain booths to gather certain information. But on the other side, if there's a booth owner, for example, they know that it's been recommended to me to visit their booth. And so it sets them up for a much more targeted conversation, ideally, resulting in more lead generation from their site. So there's this mutually beneficial ecosystem that can be created. Yes, you're personalizing the experience for your attendees. But there can also be incredible benefits for your sponsors for your exhibitors and beyond.

Brandi Starr  09:21

I love that and I'm just thinking about so I have not I'm a big Delta Airlines, you know, customer, that's the only airline I fly. I did not get to experience the board myself. But I had a friend of mine who did and she was able to like take a picture of it. And I still don't understand how that happens. Because it's like how are you only able to see it but your phone is also able to see it but anywho I won't go down that rabbit hole because I could try to dive into that forever. But I can think about you know, conferences that I've gone to especially some of the big ones that have you know, hundreds of sessions available. Being able to identify, which are aligned to your interests and challenges is something that is key. And then even you know what you're talking about thinking about how you get event sponsors to actually exhibit in those tradeshow booths. If I know that you're going to recommend X people come see me, you know, that helps me not only know that I'm going to have the ROI, it helps me plan how many people do we need to have in the booth when they need to be there? You know, all these sorts of things. And so is that, um, is that something that you see at this point is becoming the norm? Like, are most event organizers leveraging this? Or is it really something that's still only, you know, the Chrome Developer, I'm the, you know, the those that are ahead of the curve, like, you know, it's where are we in the evolution of leveraging this technology for this level of personalization is my question.

Eileen Page  11:03

Sure, I think the question of demonstrating sponsor values, so you have event organizers have sponsors who pay considerable amounts of money for the different sponsorship tiers, I think justifying that value has been an ongoing challenge one that some brands solve for better than others. I do think using AI is probably a bit in the cutting edge realm, there's different ways to do it, there's sending qualified leads to the booth, letting them know ahead of time, there's also a lot of creative ways that we can leverage other immersive technologies. Augmented reality, for example, where we're creating scavenger hunts or ways for people to move around an expo floor. So they're not just visiting a booth because they want the free T shirt or free pen, but that they've been teased something ahead of time. Here's a bit of information, seek it out at the booth, perhaps there's an augmented reality badge, they can scan, for example. So you're bringing in that gamification element that drives the incentivize behaviors that you want. With adding a little bit of fun to it as well, the expo floor can be a little bit overwhelming. I know, I walk onto an expo floor, and it's like, oh, my gosh, where should I go? First, this is a lot. You know, if there's a cocktail setup, that's where I usually our food, that's where I usually had first, but that's not necessarily my best, best destination, right? So giving people reasons to move about the floor. The other fascinating part of AI, and this applies to an expo floor, or an event venue altogether. There's a lot of really great technologies coming out in terms of crowd management and flow optimization. So using spatial AI algorithms, there are platforms that actually analyze crowd movement patterns, to show, hey, sponsor, you're a platinum level sponsor, we have our such analyzed traffic patterns, and you're in a very high traffic area. So we're guaranteeing that you're gonna get a volume of people. So it's kind of the getting the right people there. But also the volume sort of balancing that out between sending relevant leads to you, but also making sure you're getting a lot of visibility as well. Yeah, so

Brandi Starr  13:13

what I'm hearing is like, by putting a focus on this level of personalization for your attendees, you're creating that great event experience on that side. But then on the other side, you're then able to show more of that value to your event sponsors and participants, which I know just especially coming on the heels of the pandemic, there's been a lot of a lot more scrutiny, as you said, Exactly. What is the return of in person events, you know, is hybrid or digital only the way to go? Like, where are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck. So being able to analyze and optimize that crowd movement, I think is also really helpful. And you know, not just sending people straight to the food because I'm like you like, wherever there are snacks, or cocktails, or any of that, like, that's where I'm slapping like To hell with a T shirt give me like, but I think it's probably because I'm always hungry. But that's either, neither here nor there. So does that. So going back to the tailor made agendas in that sort of personalization? Does that also then help with logistics planning, in terms of like rooms? Because I know I've been to events where a session was way more popular than they expected. And it's like hot and standing room only, or the opposite where you've got a speaker in this huge room, and they've got like 10 people spread out. And so it seems like they're, you know, talking to no one does is that a place where having that personalization for the customer also helps on the back end for the event organizer.

Eileen Page  15:06

Absolutely. And something that we've been seeing is for larger sessions that we suspect or are able to predict will be incredibly popular, we can set up overflow areas. So maybe there's a large general session room that we know 2000 People want to go to, but only 1000 People are going to actually fit into the room. So tearing it out, maybe there's a special. Again, bringing in gamification, maybe the folks who are actually in the session room have earned that somehow, or it's gated, and they have gotten that as a reward. But then the overflow, whether it's 1000, people less more, there are other spaces for them to watch that content. And maybe again, it's on the expo floor, maybe it's in a smaller sort of couch area where they can get comfortable. Discuss with their fellow attendees, maybe it's even remote location, or we've had folks who maybe aren't comfortable attending these large 1000 person sessions because of health concerns or other and they actually asked to attend the smaller sessions in person, but maybe for a larger session, they're watching it from their hotel room. So understanding who the audience is where they want to watch it from, what the numbers are, it allows us to plan as you're saying for the room requiring requirements. But also if there's a streaming requirement, or it's going, it's being projected into another space, we can account for that as well. The other interesting point, there's these huge conferences South by Southwest, for example, that we make a point to attend, because it's such a prolific event, there's tons of trends and innovations that kept presented there, those sessions can tend to get filled up quickly the popular ones. And so given that it spans such a broad footprint, it basically encompasses, you know, all of Austin's downtown, something that we found is that you go to a session at school, okay, no big deal. There's probably 10 Other ones at the same time that I would like to go to, using artificial intelligence and agenda planning, I can actually delve into, okay, well, I want to attend this, you know, there's two sessions I want to attend wasn't able to get into my first choice, my second choice is a mile and a half away, I'm not going to make it. My other choice is, you know, a quarter of a mile late, so I'm going to target that one. So there's all these different kinds of components that go into which sessions you're attending, there's the interest level, the availability, but also, going back to your question about logistics, if I'm going to, you know, if I want to go to a session that's a mile away, and I'm gonna miss the first 15 minutes of a 30 minute session, there's likely a better alternative that I can get to more quickly. So thinking about Wayfinding, and applying artificial intelligence to guide people throughout an entire experience can be incredibly valuable.

Brandi Starr  17:45

Okay, and so I'm hearing that a lot of these benefits really apply to larger events or their applications for AI? When we're, you know, when we're not putting on the big conferences?

Eileen Page  18:02

Absolutely. There's some really interesting, you can actually get into a higher level of personalization, I would argue, so interactive chatbots. For example, if I'm asked if it's a smaller audience, we have a much better idea of what their specific care abouts are, who the audience demographics are, if it's a smaller event, it might be just a leadership team, for example, that's going to have much different care about much different questions than maybe a broader audience would. And so we can really tailor our recommendations, our informational gathering, and follow up elements around who that audience is. So absolutely, it's got these large scale applications for larger events, but can definitely be honed in and pinpointed on the smaller ones as well. Okay.

Brandi Starr  18:53

And then one of the things that I know just from doing a little research on you guys, predicting event attendance with, you know, some solid precision is one of those things that AI is able to help with, and I know like even for digital events, it's still a challenge, like being able you have so many register. And there's all sorts of statistics around if this percent register, you know, if this number register, this percent will actually show up. How does AI actually help that?

Eileen Page  19:27

Yes, so we have our event base. We have national sales meetings, for example, where the attendance is mandatory, so people might not always be thrilled to be there, but they it is part of their job. But then there's other events where it is voluntary, and we do see that drop off of X number of registrations, X number of percentage of folks actually come The fascinating part of using AI for predicting that attendance and audience audience acquisition. AI can comb through historical data to estimate attendance for different sessions. If we can better enable resource allocation and planning, using data from previous events mobile app, for example, registration is certainly key, we can really delve into again, pairing artificial intelligence with some critical thought from our strategy team, for example, or other experts, other data analyst experts, we can, you know, measure current attendee sentiment, determine where a brand might want to take their event, and then automatically suggest new attendee segments to go after. So continuously expanding the attendee base and making sure that we're targeting appropriate segments who are really going to respond well to any given events, content and messaging.

Brandi Starr  20:43

Okay, so that is really helpful as well. And then one of the other points that I learned from researching you guys, is that you have the ability to do AI driven emotional recognition, and real time content generation. And, you know, content creation is where I spend a lot of my time both for Tegra, as well as for my clients. So I'm always curious about content generation. But what is AI driven emotional recognition, and real time content? Like, what does that really mean?

Eileen Page  21:18

Sure. So we have partners who actually have technology where we can record a session, upload it to these artificial intelligence, video platforms. And within minutes, we get an analysis of, here's how the crowd was responding to a given mention, if there are different brands being thrown out, they responded positively, positively to this one, negatively to this one, it can talk about the audience demographics in terms of where the audience might be located, what their background is, it can also generate session abstracts on the fly. So if there are people who are maybe interested in watching an on demand session, this platform can actually generate the description in real again in real time, and spit that back out. So for one session, okay, it doesn't take all that long to write up a summary. But if you think about a large scale event with hundreds 1000s of breakout sessions, the power of that and the reach that the content can have in terms of generating these artificially intelligence based session abstracts. It's huge people can find what they're interested in, watch it on demand, send it to their colleagues, send it to others. And then the other real value of that is that the content can be atomized. So parsed out in different ways across different channels. So if there's a relevant session, say it's 45 minutes, what are the key insights that we can pull out of that 45 minute session, and perhaps we're recording a podcast now, maybe there's key points that turn into, instead of a 45 minute session, it's a 10 minute podcast, it's a quick post on LinkedIn. So lots of different possibilities in terms of analyzing the response to the session itself, but then parsing that content out across different channels and allowing it to live beyond an event context.

Brandi Starr  23:09

Okay, I was gonna say, really, really interesting. And I think one of the big takeaways that I'm having from this is just really idea generation of you know, how to really enhance, like the the events experience. One thing that always comes with, you know, anytime you're adding personalization to anything, there is, you know, there's additional thought process and strategy that has to go behind that, like, you know, something as simple as real personalization in email, we have to think about what matters, you know, how can we personalize it? How can we do this at scale, which is another buzzword? I think that's been banished a few times. So what is the level of effort implication? Like what, you know, what sorts of things if I'm not leveraging AI for my events today? And I start leveraging AI, you know, in the future? What are some of the other considerations, tasks conversations that we need to be having internally, in order to actually leverage this effectively? Sure. It's a

Eileen Page  24:17

great question. I think there's a lot of fear out there around artificial intelligence, and is this going to take away jobs and there are predictions that no, it's actually going to create X number of new jobs. So we like to say artificial intelligence isn't necessarily going to take your job but someone who's using AI tools might. So thinking about going back to what I said in the beginning, saving that time and tedium, whereas before I may have spent hours analyzing survey results and other data streams to create an effective communication campaign, AI can take some of that legwork out of it for you. So say an eight hour eight hours worth of research and combing through data can be shortened to as little as say 30 minutes I'm generalizing here. But using AI engines to scan through massive amounts of data and spit out key insights, those still need to be analyzed. So ultimately, I may still be spending eight hours. But it's a much more valuable eight hours where I'm not manually going through tons and tons of survey answers, some of which may be about how good or bad The lunch was, for example, but really allowing AI to pull out what are the key insights? What are those key nuggets? And how can we expand upon those to make really actionable recommendations for events for communication campaigns moving forward?

Brandi Starr  25:36

Okay, so it sounds like we're spending about the same amount of time, we're just spending our time on the more meaningful pieces, and letting technology do the rest. Exactly. Okay. And so, you know, sometimes I like to ask this question, because whenever I'm talking about something new, I don't know what I don't know. And so I'm wondering, is there anything that I have not thought to ask about that, you know, for the heads of marketing, listening, that is a key consideration, or thought that we should be thinking about in how we are able to transform what our live events look like in the future? Sure, I would

Eileen Page  26:15

say the power of artificial intelligence is incredible, the technology is evolving more quickly than our ability to necessarily govern or comply with it. So I think taking into account that there are bias challenges, you know, AI is analyzing existing data, it's giving you an answer of what it's giving you what the answer looks like, not necessarily what the answer should be. So making sure as we're using AI, as we're applying it in the event context, thinking about our audiences, not just taking the output from these different artificial intelligence engines, but really challenging it right, making sure that does this apply to my audience? Are there segments of the audience that maybe aren't represented as fully in the data? And how can we sort of correct for those blind spots? So again, I said this, in the beginning, artificial intelligence is not enough on its own, I would argue that we never necessarily want it to be because that element of human critical thought is still so incredibly important. So certainly using artificial intelligence to save time to save TDM to glean more valuable insights, but also applying that level of critical thinking to say, is there something missing? Is there something that needs to be finessed here? And ultimately, what's in the best service of our attendees and our key audiences?

Brandi Starr  27:37

Awesome. Well, I yeah, that that definitely gives me something to think about. Because I do think that that's the biggest challenge with AI is some of the biasness and lack of emotion. And that is where we are able to come in and you know, take what it gives us as a starting point. Talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So for those that are listening, and you know, what you're saying is resonating with them, they run events, they're thinking about how to better personalize how to show that return for their event sponsors, how to take out some of that tediousness of some of the work. What's the first step? Like if we're trying to figure out where we go from here? I always like there to be a key takeaway, something that we can each do, you know, what would be your one thing that you would recommend as a first step?

Eileen Page  28:42

I would say artificial intelligence and its many applications can be incredibly overwhelming. So honing in on what are your two to three challenges that you have with your event that you want your attendees to better respond to, and think about how AI could be applied to solve them. So not just using AI for the sake of it, because it is such a huge, huge buzzword, but really thinking about how can AI actually elevate the attendee experience? And what are the practical applications of that versus trying to solve for using AI across every aspect of your event being very targeted about it?

Brandi Starr  29:19

I like that because it is, you know, where I mean, unless it's your first event, you are going to have some sort of data around what worked, what challenges existed. And I really like starting with, you know, what did your attendees tell you were the challenges and let's see how we can apply AI to move the needle there first. You know, and then, because this is one of those things, you can incrementally improve over time. Exactly. So we've all got our marching orders. And Eileen, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go tell our audience How they can connect with you. And of course, give us the shameless plug. Because if anybody is interested in, you know, starting to apply some of these AI technologies, we only scratched the surface. So also tell us what envision does as well.

Eileen Page  30:15

Envision, as I said earlier, we're an audience engagement solutions solutions agency. And what that means is we analyze your audience's current state and we move them through to their ideal state by various behavioral change elements. So that encompasses everything from communication campaigns, to digital activations, to live events and beyond. If you do want to get in touch with us to learn further, please email info@iv.com. That's IV as in victor.com. And thank you so much, Brandi. I've enjoyed our time together as well.

Brandi Starr  30:49

Well, awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me. And thanks, everyone, for joining us. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with Eileen, I can't believe we're already at the end. We'll see you next time.

Outro VO  31:05

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenuerehab.live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.