In this episode of the Event Experience podcast, industry experts discuss the trends that will shape events in 2025, focusing on experiential learning, immersive events, and networking opportunities. The panelists, including Bethany Murphy, Erica Spoor, and Brandon Wernli, share insights on how these trends can be integrated into event planning, emphasizing the importance of understanding audience preferences and leveraging technology to enhance attendee experiences.
The conversation also explores the role of AI in event planning, highlighting its potential to personalize and streamline event experiences. The panelists discuss the challenges and opportunities of adopting new technologies, stressing the need for careful planning and audience engagement. They also touch on the significance of micro-events and gamification, considering their long-term impact on the industry. Overall, the episode provides valuable insights for event planners looking to stay ahead of emerging trends.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
[00:00:09] Rachel Moore: Welcome to 2025 Trends That Will Transform Events: An Insiders Roundtable. This webinar will be available on demand for your convenience.
[00:01:21] We're going to explore together the trends ahead of us for 2025.
[00:01:26] First, we'll learn what you all voted as the top trend for the new year and dissect that a bit with our expert panel. Then we're going to double click into trends for unique personas of event agency, corporate planner and tech expert, represented by each of our panelists. Finally, we'll sync back up together to face the future with a final examination of trends and how we'll approach them before we send you off with the preparation you need to plan for success.
[00:01:56] It's my pleasure to introduce today's webinar speakers. First, we have Bethany Murphy. Bethany is the head of events at 6sense, where she leads the development of global event and trade show strategies, working closely with cross functional teams to align initiatives with business goals.
[00:02:14] With extensive expertise in event planning and marketing, she excels at creating comprehensive event strategies, managing budgets, and planning. Optimizing ROI and delivering impactful experiences while overseeing a team of event marketing professionals. Her go to event day shoes are golden goose sneakers.
[00:02:34] Bethany, welcome to the discussion today.
[00:02:36] Bethany Murphy: Thank you. Excited to be here.
[00:02:38] Rachel Moore: All of our panelists are super busy people, so I'm really excited you're joining us too. Next up we have Erica Spoor. Erica is the senior vice president of strategy for Sparks, a Freeman company, where she co leads a dynamic team dedicated to crafting data driven creative strategies for events, conferences, exhibits and brand activations with decades of experience and a passion for industry trends.
[00:03:04] She partners with Fortune 100 to 500 companies to amplify their brands, engage audiences and deliverable deliver measurable business results for clients like Cisco Systems, ServiceNow and Capital One. For those event days on the floor, she's wearing multiple pairs of shoes. The key is to switch it up often.
[00:03:23] Her current go tos are Nike Blazer Low Platform or P448 John Sneakers or Adolce Vita Mary Jane. Very nice selection there. Welcome, Erica. Thanks for joining us.
[00:03:35] Erica Spoor: Thanks. It's great to be here.
[00:03:37] Rachel Moore: All right. And everybody's getting shoe ideas as we're talking. This is great. Lastly, joining us, we have Brandon Wernli.
[00:03:43] Brandon is the CEO of BW Events Tech, where he is leveraging his extensive experience as a technology consultant to optimize event technology solutions for leading organizations with a strong background in sales, enterprise software and customer relationship management. He has guided the event tech strategies for major brands like Google, DocuSign, and Hilton delivering innovative solutions that drive operational excellence.
[00:04:12] His shoes of choice for 14 hour event days or well, anything that's comfortable. Brandon, pleasure to see you as always.
[00:04:19] Brandon Wernli: It's great to be here. And I'm taking notes also on the various shoe choices of foot. So anything comfortable, it sounds great right now.
[00:04:26] Rachel Moore: Hey, you know, we're always trying to give helpful information to our listeners and our audience.
[00:04:30] And I think shoe wear and events just kind of go hand in hand. Now as promised dear audience, you. are driving us into this trends event. We asked you what trend would take the focus for 2025. We're gonna go into this cold.
[00:04:44] Our panelists and I do not have any idea what we're about to see as the chosen trend. So it's gonna get exciting in here. Just to recap, the options were experiential learning, networking opportunities, immersive events, gamification, and micro events. Let's do the big reveal of what one is the top trend. Oh my gosh. Experiential learning. All right. That is your chosen trend for 2025. Now I'm going to take it to our panel. We have our trend as voted upon by today's attendees. Let's go around the room first to our tech expert, Brandon. Can you share with us briefly, if you agree or disagree that this, that experiential learning is going to be the biggest trend on the horizon and why or why not?
[00:05:28] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, you know, it's tough because a lot of these are really good options. I was wondering if networking was going to be right up there because, you know, as we were coming post COVID, a lot of people were looking forward to that face to face interaction, but you can still, I, as I took a step back I realized when people are sharing out things on social media and you're having memorable experiences, or when my colleagues are going to another event and they're sharing out with me what they enjoyed, that's it's something of an experiential nature. And if it checked the box of targeting how that attendee or that person consumes content in a way that's right for them you've nailed it at that point.
[00:06:14] And so, yeah, in that regard I obviously there's some high contenders on there. AI has been a big topic. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves on that front. I think we're going to talk about that later. The thing about AI is it's actually incorporated into all of these in some regards, which is exciting, but at the end of the day, people are looking for fun, experiential opportunities when they go to events, and that's what they're going to talk about.
[00:06:41] And so, for me, it wasn't a terrible surprise that it was towards the very top, if not the top of the list.
[00:06:48] Rachel Moore: Yeah, exactly. It's super interesting. Bethany, I'm going to take it over to you. Same questions. Can you please share your reaction to our audience's trend of choice as experiential learning?
[00:06:58] Do you agree? And why or why not?
[00:07:00] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with what Brandon said. I do think at the end of the day, it's about the experience. I was a little surprised that micro events are kind of lower because I feel like I've just been hearing that term a ton recently. But you know, I think experiential learning, it actively engages participants. It fosters connection. I think you can get a lot of content online, right? And webinars like this. And so I think when you go to an in person event and you take that time, you do want that interaction, right? Enabling attendees to apply concepts in real time, gain practical skills and really create those memorable personalized experiences.
[00:07:39] Because I think at the end of the day, that's what events are about the experience.
[00:07:43] Rachel Moore: That's right. Well, and you know, it's all in the name experiential learning, right? You're getting that anyway. Erica, I'm gonna bring it back over to you.
[00:07:51] Agree or disagree. Experiential learning. Why? Why was that the number one? And why do you think it was or shouldn't be or should be?
[00:07:57] Erica Spoor: Yeah, I think, well, I agree with what's been said previously and with what Bethany said, especially that, you know, in this era, I think folks want things now that they can't get online.
[00:08:07] So, I think coming to an event, a conference, a trade show experience where you can actually explore, touch, see products, you know, get solutions, meet with experts, participate, is really what we're seeing attendees want. I do think there's still a big disconnect with what organizers and kind of producers are thinking, though.
[00:08:26] I think that there still is, and our latest research shows that, a lot of organizers still highly value the classroom based education. So I think we're at a little bit of a tension point here where we, as the event producers are going to have to pave the path forward for what this experiential learning is going to look like because attendees definitely want it.
[00:08:45] Rachel Moore: Yeah. And what could be interesting to you know, if there's accreditation that could happen around that, like if you go to a particular event and they have experiential learning and that can somehow be demonstrated in your credentials as an event planner and say, well, yeah, I attended that. And I like, I think even IMEX had something a little bit like that too.
[00:09:01] They had like a leadership breakout or something like that or a track. So, certainly true. Sometimes there's some crossover. Yeah. Around these trends where, as you're doing experiential learning, you are also networking.
[00:09:11] You may not be doing that by yourself. You know, you're having to interact with another attendee or attendees near you. So it's a whole lot of blending, right? Great reactions by everybody and great reactions to our panel.
[00:09:24] I'm going to go ahead and send Brandon and Bethany back into the green room and we'll have them up a little bit later because right now we're going to dive in, double click, if you will, into some very specific discussions with each of our panelists, and that's where we're going to keep Bethany on the screen with us.
[00:09:40] Bethany, this next segment is our opportunity to zero in on how corporate event planners like yourself are approaching a new year of events and the trends they're in and folks, even if you aren't in Bethany's exact type of role, chances are you either work with or invite people similar to her to your events.
[00:09:59] So what we're about to learn is going to all fall into the good to know realm. Right. So Bethany I'm gonna ask this first question working on events for a brand probably means you have some pretty specific guardrails around what you can plan and how you plan it. So, we're wondering how do you approach trends, which those don't seem to care about things like guardrails or limits when trends come around.
[00:10:23] So how do you approach trends when you're working within the brand on events? ?
[00:10:28] Bethany Murphy: Yeah that's a great question. I think you know, working within a brand's guidelines, while integrating trends can certainly be a balancing act. But I think above all, it's always essential to really understand your brand.
[00:10:41] Because events do provide a really unique opportunity to bring a brand to life. And I think it's really as crucial to ensure that this is done authentically and accurately. And I would say here at 6sense, we are fortunate to be a cool what we consider like a cool brand and so therefore we have that flexibility to push the creative boundaries within reason.
[00:11:03] But for instance, each year we take over a space adjacent to a trade show, and we transform it with super cool designs and florals and furniture that reflect our brand in a non traditional way. But at the same time, the exterior of the venue remains really closely aligned with the corporate brand guidelines.
[00:11:21] So the interior is like our creative interpretation, but the exterior where like passerbys would see is really super aligned to our corporate branding. And I think again, events offer a sandbox for experimentation, right? Experiment test and pilot and try to, you know, gather feedback and understand what resonates with your audience.
[00:11:40] And you can always refine your approach for future activations, but it's cool to be able to try.
[00:11:45] Rachel Moore: Well, and you bring up a great point there to having a very solid, not only internally a grasp of your brand, knowing what is on brand and what's not, but then having historically made sure that was abundantly clear through all of your branding externally to your audiences.
[00:12:02] So as they're encountering, maybe you trying out that trend, everything seems to make sense. How do you assess or how do you evaluate which trends do align best with your brand's values, the goals, and then the attendee expectations?
[00:12:17] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to evaluate the relevance of your trend like to your brand, make sure they complement your brand values. They resonate with your audience. They align strategically with your goals. You know, as an example, at 6sense we've been trying to really embrace the AI trend.
[00:12:35] At one event, we featured these AI powered sketchbots that kind of captured attendees photos and created these sketches. And then we paired those with a branded frame as a takeaway, right? So that highlighted our focus on innovation and created memorable and shareable experience for attendees.
[00:12:52] And here at 6sense, we use AI in our product portfolio. So again, reinforcing our brand identity in a fun and engaging way.
[00:13:01] Rachel Moore: Well, and, you know, AI being its own trend, which I don't know if it's a trend. Y'all think it's kind of here. It's like websites, right? Like, they're not going away.
[00:13:09] It's not going away. It's going to be here and how we have to figure out how we're going to be, you know, incorporating and handling it. Do you ever struggle? And you brought up like how you do activations that are kind of sidebar to some larger events that are happening. Do you ever struggle with ensuring that your company's events are relevant in the landscape of competing events?
[00:13:30] Like, how do you stay innovative and relevant so that your audience is like, yes, you're, you know, you're still in the conversation. You're still somewhere I want to spend time.
[00:13:38] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, I mean, I think that's hard, right? Like we operate in a really competitive B2B tech space. And I think that requires a strong focus on again, creating exceptional experiences.
[00:13:50] So my team and the broader marketing team, we dedicate a lot of time to designing the attendee journey, incorporating surprise and delight moments throughout the event. And our goal is always to bring the brand to life through that immersive on site creativity also delivering that valuable content, right?
[00:14:06] So we're always looking for innovative activations to craft those experiences and keep attendees excited. And I would say like staying innovative and pushing boundaries isn't easy, but it's what makes our work fun and challenging and rewarding at the end of the day. So, you know, I think for me, like I'm a huge proponent of industry education and going to events and seeing what other events are doing and experiencing that.
[00:14:29] And like, I'm going to CES in January just to do a back of the house kind of tour. And I think doing things like that, again, it's, it allows us to see what else what else is out there and put our own twist on it.
[00:14:42] Rachel Moore: Do you have a real world example of how jumping on a trend increased you know, success for 6sense or helped achieve goals that you were trying to try to go for?
[00:14:51] Bethany Murphy: Yeah. I have another of course, AI example, but
[00:14:55] Rachel Moore: of course,
[00:14:55] Bethany Murphy: yes,
[00:14:57] Rachel Moore: exactly. You know, we're going to talk about it a little bit.
[00:14:59] So,
[00:15:01] Bethany Murphy: You know, I think we I just talked about the sketchbots, but at our user conference in October we incorporated an AI powered photo booth in our user conferences final party. So it was this super cool, fun party. That was like a 70s, 80s, 90s theme. And the photo booth used AI to transform attendees hair, makeup, clothing into like, retro styles and created a fun and engaging experience.
[00:15:24] And so I think again, it aligned not only to our brand's focus on AI but resonated with the audience and became a shareable takeaway, right? Like the photos became a huge hit. People put them on social. Our own team took them and put them as their slack profile pictures for some fun. Which actually was really funny and entertaining.
[00:15:44] But I think it allowed us to extend the events impact beyond the event itself, right? Like events are only a moment in time. And so I think anyway, you can create lasting experiences and memories. Really goes a long way to kind of extend your brand and the impact that the event can have.
[00:16:01] Rachel Moore: Absolutely and actually I'd like to ask the audience really quickly how many of you have done an AI generated image? Like whether you got to do it like at a event activation, there was a photo booth or maybe you were playing around online with AI and like, Hey, let me generate my own image.
[00:16:16] I'll just share. I one time tried like one of those, like, Hey, here's headshots that you can get generate. It was hilarious. Cause I like went up getting a bunch and some of the last ones I'm like, Oh, that doesn't even look like me. Did you get people, were they trying to kind of get ones as close to what they look like as possible, or were people kind of getting
[00:16:31] Bethany Murphy: fantastical about it?
[00:16:33] I mean, you really, like, I almost actually put mine next to my desk so I could hold it up because it doesn't look anything like me but it is hilarious. I've got like some crazy 80s hair and makeup and a crazy no, but the booth basically made you select like the look and feel that you wanted.
[00:16:47] And then it kind of took your face and created an image. But again, it was just a fun way to just you know, bring that experience. And again, people were sharing and laughing about it. And it was like relatively inexpensive at the end of the day. So,
[00:17:00] Rachel Moore: well, and brilliant too, because later, that's such a visible way for people to say, like, if you are putting that up, like even on your LinkedIn profile, your Slack and everybody's like, Oh my God, that's so cool.
[00:17:09] Where did you get that done? And then they're talking about, well, I went to the 6sense activation and got this done. And then people know to come back to ask you more. And of course, as we already mentioned, you incorporated AI into an activation so that you won already check the boxes, right?
[00:17:26] Excellent. I have one last impromptu question for you. What do you tell, like, what would be your advice? And you may have worked for brands like this too. You mentioned 6sense is a very fun brand. What if you're working for a brand that maybe fun is not the identifying word for your personality as a brand?
[00:17:44] What's your advice for someone who is working for maybe more of a straight laced kind of, you know, buttoned up brand and they need to still be innovative with trends?
[00:17:52] Bethany Murphy: I think there's always again like events are a great avenue to test things right to different things out and really do and really push those boundaries.
[00:18:04] Right. And so I think you can still do that. Kind of start small, right? And again, my example of like, do it inside and you know, not outside kind of thing I think could be a tip, but, everyone wants their events to be memorable. And I really do think now you have to bring that innovation, that fun those experiences, because otherwise like people probably aren't going to want to come to your event.
[00:18:25] That's true.
[00:18:26] Rachel Moore: No, that's true. And look, business people want to have fun too. Okay. You know, it's not just like, let me whip out my briefcase. Let's compare business cards and things like that. Come on. They probably had a lot of those business people like, yes, let me line up for another AI generated image.
[00:18:41] I know we only had a short time, but we'll have you back in a minute, but quick primer on how you and our fellow corporate event planners can stay successful as trends sweep through the landscape as they are wont to do. For now, Bethany, we'll say goodbye to you and send you back to the green room.
[00:18:55] Next, I'm going to welcome back Erica to take us into the realms of agency planning and how trends impact your world and thus the worlds of your clients. It's probably safe to say that event planning as an agency is different from being in house for the very obvious reason that you're working with multiple brands and their unique approaches.
[00:19:18] We were just talking with Bethany about 6sense has a very distinctive their own brand, but that's one company and you're having to work with multiple and their approaches and their different audiences and their unique goals. So let's dive into this. How do you, Erica, assess and prioritize trends based on client demand, industry relevance, and then the emerging technologies?
[00:19:39] Erica Spoor: Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and I would say perhaps more than like prioritizing trends. I think what our job, what I feel like our job really is to really be observing across industries and seeing what's happening. And that's the opportunity. I think we have as an agency partner, right?
[00:19:56] We're not just working within, you know, tech or pharma or, you know, one or the other. We can actually look at what's happening across. So I think we really see our job is to be observing those analyzing them and then helping our clients make it relevant to their brand and their audiences. And I think the hardest thing is trying to get from like the macro trend down to like what it could look like for a brand.
[00:20:16] So I think that's where my team tries to kind of step in and help with concepting out ideas so that. They could be brought to life because a lot of times I think you hear about a trend like we're talking about here, experiential content or immersive events. And you think, well, what does that actually mean for me?
[00:20:31] So, we spend a lot of time bringing data and insights to our clients concepting ideas for what it could look like, partnering with them and in getting it off the ground. And then you know, from there, letting them take it away. So finding what's relevant, making sure it's on brand and that it ties to audience care about, I think, are three key things for us as well.
[00:20:50] Rachel Moore: I so appreciate you brought up data there, too, because you're showing it's not just a gut instinct, right? You're able to actually say pointing to the receipts that this should be an educated guess as to like, let's try this out and giving some actual substantial reasoning why they might want to go there.
[00:21:05] Can you share your insights on trends that have real staying power versus those that might be a bit more short lived?
[00:21:12] We just talked about how AI pretty much, it's not just a fad anymore. It's going to be here, but yeah. What are your insights on those that are going to be with us versus ones that are like just kind of a breath in the wind, if you will. .
[00:21:23] Erica Spoor: Yeah. Well, I actually think the poll was really revealing. Because I think it actually showed us some of the ones that do have a staying power. I mean, content has always been the priority for most of most event professionals. Right? It's kind of the core of what we do is how do we get folks to interact with our product, our brand, our experience, so.
[00:21:40] I think the three that bubbled up on the poll are somewhat what I consider evergreen big trends that we need to be keeping our eyes on. When I think about things like gamification that I wonder, is that a little bit more of a, does it apply to only specific audiences? Is it a little more of a flash in the pan?
[00:21:56] You know, is it going to be replaced? Once personalization starts to happen at scale? You know, are we really going to need so many gimmicks to get people in. I think those are the things that I think of being more temporary potentially, or maybe they will be integrated into another way that we kind of plan our experiences.
[00:22:14] So I think technology, anytime you're using technology, kind of for technology sake, that feels a little bit like a flash in the pan as opposed to figuring out the way that we can use AI to make the experience more meaningful. And I think that Bethany shared a couple examples, but we're playing with it right now.
[00:22:29] I think in ways that's a little more like, you know, I guess it's easy access. We're trying to show folks what it can do by giving you a headshot. I think the next layer of AI integration into events will be to help us tackle personalization. And also, you know, so you really can curate an agenda at a big conference that meets your needs without having to have, you know, spend a lot of time doing it and having organizers curated a lot.
[00:22:51] So those are the things that, you know, I think AI is really going to come out big in a big way for us as it matures.
[00:22:58] Rachel Moore: Yeah.
[00:22:59] Are you seeing how are trends kind of impacting, like, how's generational reception really impacting how these trends are received?
[00:23:06] Erica Spoor: Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. So I don't know if any of you have seen Freeman or Sparks reports from Q4. We've done some research recently and one of the most fascinating findings was the fact that we are really undergoing a massive generational shift. So by 2030, 70 percent of the workforce is going to be Gen Z and millennials. And with them, they're bringing completely different value set into the event experience, right? They want things that are completely different than what generations have wanted before, or.
[00:23:33] Not maybe completely different, but more of what we've been hearing. So, you know, they're very tech savvy. Flexibility is important. Shorter, shorter events are important. They don't necessarily want to be away from their lives for five days straight. You know, they prioritize experience. And sustainability over possessions and wealth, at least right now, that might change as everybody gets older, but um, really need to be thinking about that and how we're designing experiences because you know, we've been doing it for an older generation, honestly, for the last 30 years, and we've been doing it kind of the same way.
[00:24:03] So really being thoughtful about that now, what are the generational preferences and collecting your data on that to inform experience design is. It's something that we're thinking a lot about.
[00:24:14] Rachel Moore: On one of the podcast episodes for Bizzabo, the Event Experience podcast, I remember someone brought up how a Gen Zer they wanted to contribute to some kind of event activation, but they were just like, what value can I offer?
[00:24:28] And they wound up being the winning, like the most sought after piece of content in it, you know, in that activation, because everybody was like, we want to know how you think. These just really good insights that are fundamental to, you know, to how generational attendees are looking at these events differently. I would love to ask, is there an example that you have of a specific client experience where a trend adoption led to unexpected challenges or maybe eyeopening success?
[00:24:58] Erica Spoor: Yeah, there's a few. We do have a client that we've worked with to really play around with an experiment with their presenter led content formats.
[00:25:06] So this is a little, it's a little tactical, but I think it was important. A lot of times we find that our clients struggle with how to, again, apply these trends at scale. If I'm producing a conference and it has a thousand sessions, you're asking me to completely rethink that and make that experimental when all I have is a breakout room that's set up like a theater. So, you know, so that's where they're starting. So we went in and worked with one of our clients to curate a standard format and agenda that we could then train their speakers to facilitate. So that wasn't a presentation and a sit and get instead.
[00:25:34] It was a facilitated interactive session for an hour. Those sessions have really taken off. They're the most popular and the highest rated on their agenda. And now they're working on expanding that program. So that's an example of you know, ways that you can kind of take a bite sized chunk out of a trend.
[00:25:48] So we took 40 sessions and just started there, reinvented the format, and now they're able to scale it. So, that was a, I think, a data driven you know, recommendation that came from our research that we were able to work with a client on successfully.
[00:26:01] Rachel Moore: Wow. Way to anticipate the experiential learning too, because it is way different when you just have a talking head, you know, talking at you versus when they're facilitating an actual, it's almost workshoppy at that point.
[00:26:12] And feels way different.
[00:26:14] Erica Spoor: Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, again, I think that's what people want. I know it's what I want sometimes. And sometimes I want to sit and hear an expert inspire me and give me some great, you know, tidbits and tips, but sometimes I also, you know, want to actually hear from my peers and that's what we were going for is like a little bit of education mixed in with like, what are you, what are your peers doing?
[00:26:32] Have a conversation about it, do some problem solving. So, so yeah.
[00:26:36] Rachel Moore: One aspect I like of that too, is you actually too, for the people who normally are just presenters, you skilled them up, you gave them some things that they can make their future workshops and presentations more Insightful, more compelling more memorable.
[00:26:50] Erica I know time goes quick. This has been very insightful as we've been able to talk to you more in depth on this. Thank you for sharing your experience from the agency side which we can all learn from in whatever role we fill you know, we all have some takeaways from this little bit segment we had with you here.
[00:27:04] We will have you back on shortly.
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[00:27:54] Rachel Moore: Brandon, welcome back. We wouldn't be a leader in event technology if we didn't include tech in our discussion about event trends. So glad to have you here. Thanks for joining us and for infusing your expertise about technology in today's discussion.
[00:28:08] All right, let's get into it. Obviously we've got the poll questions. We've got experiential learning is the top trend. We have all these other trends. I want to ask you, how does tech impact the exploration and adoption of an event trend into how events are designed by agencies or brands? We just talked to an agency person and a brand person.
[00:28:30] Is there, and is there a difference there with how tech is impacting that?
[00:28:34] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, there is. And that's a really good question. I, you know, here's the thing. And a lot of people know this technology has a way of either being your best friend or your worst enemy and completely messing up an event very quickly if it's not carefully thought through.
[00:28:49] And so, you know, it's helpful to have an event technologist as part of that planning committee, because then as the great creative juices are flowing on, how do we push our brand forward? And how do we You know, how do we address this challenge and how do we leverage the technology to do it is you've got someone there who's looking over the entire event technology stack that you're using and saying, oh, I've we've got a bit of an issue.
[00:29:14] I don't think our current technology is going to be able to do what you think it's going to do, or they can flag that before it becomes a major issue. And so that kind of trickles over into some of the work back planning. What is the technology that you need to bring forward?
[00:29:28] Thinking through the data privacy reviews and getting through the info security and all that goes into it. That's not to say that it's a barrier for it, but it's a consideration and you can leverage that information, that knowledge, that know how in order to truly drive your strategy for your event, it's just knowing that plays a part and you can really use technology to make your life easier and to create some amazing experiences.
[00:29:56] But if these things aren't thought through, obviously you're going to have some challenges. So there is that dynamic. We highly recommend having that event technologist at the table.
[00:30:05] Rachel Moore: I was going to say earlier is better than later, probably too, to have them at the table.
[00:30:11] Brandon Wernli: Absolutely.
[00:30:12] Rachel Moore: Exactly. What are things event planners and the tech experts who support them, as you just mentioned, should consider when selecting tools for trend implementation?
[00:30:21] Like, what are some of those deciding factors there?
[00:30:24] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, it's been mentioned a little bit, well, a lot of it before, but knowing your audience is very critical. You know, when you know what your audience's behaviors are for adoption and otherwise, it will dictate a lot of what you're gonna bring to the table.
[00:30:38] And is it gonna do anything? Are they gonna even use it? So that's an important part. Often on our team, what we do is we visit with our clients and we ask, Okay, what is your strategy? What are you trying to get out of this experience? And then we note down what are your non negotiables? What do you have to have with this experience?
[00:30:58] Because what'll happen is you'll get a bunch of demos of new technologies and something will look flashy and you'll lose sight of your North Star. And you don't end up executing on what you were trying to accomplish the whole time. Some other things that are very important is the technologies or the platforms that you're using should be flexible enough to be able to have some give.
[00:31:19] Cause as you're doing, especially in pilot experiences, it's helpful that they have flexible APIs that they connect well with the data stream, especially if there's personalization involved. And so that you can get the most out of it. What you don't want to do is corner yourself with platforms or solutions that aren't very flexible.
[00:31:39] You get what you get. And then you try to break the boundaries and you're breaking everything at the same time. And then two more things on the subject is and Erica alluded to it as well as, what are you trying to measure out of this? What are your goals? What are your success metrics plan?
[00:31:55] Those events are in advance so that when you do execute on the technologies or the solutions, you know, if it's actually been a success and therefore whether or not your stakeholders are going to want to invest in, in the future. And then I would say in one of the, our fortés at BW Events Tech is we have backend and front end developers that can take current tools and solutions.
[00:32:18] And actually customize them and augment them. And so if you've got a partner that can come in and say, Yes, I know that your platform only does these things natively. But we can come in as a Swiss Army knife and unlock it a bit and make it more flexible. That gives you a little bit of wiggle room when the surprises tend to come.
[00:32:38] Rachel Moore: I so appreciate what you said about you know, kind of bringing people down to earth.
[00:32:41] I'm one of those people where I'm like, Oh my God, shiny tool. Let me just have that. And I'm not considering this actually might not be what you need because it's, it does have limits, you know, or it's freemium, right. Where it's like, Oh, but you have to pay that extra to get that additional capability that you thought you were going to get.
[00:32:58] Super important to be able to know all that. Right.
[00:33:01] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, and you know, even on the flip side, too, is having an event technologist there can not only give you the red flags, but they can also say, I don't know if we've even thought about these other opportunities we haven't discussed because we can pull data out of Salesforce and do this and your marketing automation platform and actually expand the offering beyond where the team is currently going.
[00:33:22] Because maybe the team didn't know even to ask the question, but that event technologist can bring it to the table and make it possible.
[00:33:29] Rachel Moore: Absolutely. Well, this leads to my next question. Is there ever a situation or scenario from a tech perspective where event planners should just say no to trying to run with a trend?
[00:33:41] Brandon Wernli: Yeah and some of the answers might be a little bit obvious, but they do include things like, Are my attendees going to adopt this? Does it align with our strategy? At the end of the day, is it a complete distraction? Are we wasting a lot of money because we haven't aligned with our core objectives and our attendees aren't going to resonate with it?
[00:33:59] Time management and budget management are often key players in this whole experience. And there are occasions where like the most cutting edge technologies will on the onset be more expensive. And so the early adopters are going to pay a price on occasion. And one of the ways in which we've gotten around that is it's kind of a clever approach is where whenever you're trying something new.
[00:34:25] You're going to have potentially some trepidation anyway, with some of your internal stakeholders. They're not sure if you want to blow things up in front of everybody and be so visible. And so, creating a pilot experience. Let's pilot this thing. Let's make this much investment. We're going to be in line with the trend.
[00:34:42] It aligns with our overall strategy and KPIs. And let's go a step further and actually pick out a special group of VIP attendees that would be flattered to take part in this. And we've done this with facial recognition where we're like, okay, I don't know how this is going to go, but let's reach out to a 200 people at the event.
[00:35:02] Say, you are a special user of this. Can you give us feedback? And then they are very forgiving. If things don't go perfectly, it allows you to cut your teeth on it, but you get fantastic feedback and they're flattered at the same time. And so they start saying, can I scale this? And you get a lot of learnings from it.
[00:35:23] Rachel Moore: You bring up such a great point there too. I mean, this kind of drives back to what both Bethany and Erica brought up where it's like, you know, you know your brand, you know your audience you can play, you can test and try, but you're at, you're saying to using that mix of audience with the technology to say let's test this out.
[00:35:40] You can be one of the first, it's very exclusive feeling. And like you said, they're more than happy to help because it was like, yes, but I'm first, not everybody's getting this opportunity. And so I love that you're playing into that exclusivity of that feeling, you know, tapping into the audience feels and having them actually help you.
[00:35:56] And then that's informing if you can execute that trend or not. It's brilliant.
[00:36:01] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, it's fantastic. It plays to their desire to also want to help and give you really good, candid feedback rather than the extremes where you're like, I really hated this, or I really love this. You get really good stuff as a result.
[00:36:14] Rachel Moore: Yeah, well, I'm going to wrap up with this question with you we've already danced around it or dance right up to it in this discussion today. AI trends. What are you seeing? What are your red flags? And what do you recommend around how event planners should navigate them going forward?
[00:36:32] Brandon Wernli: So AI is popping up in a lot of different places. Some of the red flags is not all that profess to be AI is AI. That is something that we see every now and then. I foresee that AI is going to be a game changer for the event industry. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be too many years down the road, if at all, where in a manner of speaking, we'll be able to speak things into existence.
[00:36:55] I need a web page that has a reg form that essentially targets this audience created. We're already seeing this with the chat GPTs of the world. We're not far from that. And so, essentially, what's going to play out is there's going to be a lot of early to the market businesses that will come to the table and we'll offer a lot of these and it becomes a matter of where do I put my risk at as far as who am I going to adopt, where am I going to try this out?
[00:37:23] Again, this is another area we're having an event technologist on hand that can help you vet. Okay, this is legitimate. This is really solid stuff. And we're taking a look at under the hood, making sure this is built under a solid foundation. But overall, it's a very exciting time. I think we're on the cusp of some very cutting edge exciting solutions that are about to come to the table. That'll make a lot of our lives easier as a result.
[00:37:49] Rachel Moore: You're right.
[00:37:49] I just think we're always seeing new things from it. And fortunately, you know, Brandon, like yourself, and then also with Erica and Bethany, y'all are realizing it's got to figure into any of these trends we're talking about and and really going in with eyes wide open into it. So appreciate those insights and thank you for your overall crucial insights about how tech does figure into these event trends.
[00:38:09] So I'm going to ask this question and I'm going to ask all of our speakers to unmute, and if you are like, Ooh, I want to answer this one, please jump right in. Just generally, we've talked about a bunch of trends and obviously from your different perspectives when we do think about experiential learning or immersive events or networking how do you think these trends will vary between small scale versus large scale events. Would love to hear any of your, anyone's insights on those who's got them.
[00:38:39] Erica Spoor: I mean, well, I'll jump in. I think one thing we didn't talk much about today was the immersive events piece. So I thought it might be interesting to get my thoughts, others thoughts on that. I was thinking about the agency, you know, our purview, and I was thinking about some of the other industries and the way we work in it, you know, in the area of media and entertainment, we obviously, Do you have brands like Netflix that do a lot more experimentation?
[00:39:02] And when I think immersive, I really think of the work that Sparks has done with Netflix, where they have like a early release of the next season's you know, shows that are coming out and they do an actual invite only experience that's fully immersive. They build out a complete, studio and come in and we bring guests through and they experience like five different activations, completely targeted at the shows that are going to be releasing. And it's, it is this really fully immersive environment. You are in the feeling of the show, you're interacting with the characters, you're doing something physically like the characters are doing on the show.
[00:39:34] And I think that's what I think of as the difference between immersive versus like experiential learning, like the more Interactive participatory learning model. So I just wanted to throw that out there and see if our panelists or any of the other folks in the you know, had have thoughts on it that are with us here today.
[00:39:49] Brandon Wernli: Yeah, I, you know, I think As it relates to the experiential side of the house, this is gonna have a lot of longevity. I think attendees are gonna find that AI is gonna be incorporated with the overall experiential aspects of an event. It's gonna get further and further personalized, costs are gonna go down as the technology continues to be enhanced and innovated.
[00:40:13] And it's something that we on our side are continuing to look at to try to see what we can do to implement on scale and in a personalized way. So it's kind of a, to be continued on our side as well.
[00:40:26] Rachel Moore: I have a follow up question, which kind of dovetails off of this. So for events in industries, such as finance or pharma we're having a more traditional booth and being professional. Remember we talked about kind of being more straight laced, maybe less fun, more businessy, that's common.
[00:40:41] Do y'all have any ideas for ways that they can make that experience more immersive as a vendor at their booth? Again, thinking finance and pharma where, yeah, all the regulations. I know we're all just like, oh my gosh, so many regulations, but any ideas there for how they could tackle that.
[00:40:58] Brandon Wernli: You know, part of it is assuming that the audience itself is of the personality or trait that they would be inclined to leverage it often what the bottleneck becomes or the challenge or the barrier becomes is opting in, making sure my privacy is acknowledged and so forth. One of the suggestions that I've seen that has worked in this regard is making sure that we are educating the audience to know that by opting in and being okay with the data needed for the personalization that facilitates the experience, it locks everything.
[00:41:34] So we had an experience once where we were working with a client and we had to get opt ins in order to utilize data for an immersive experience. And our initial approach only succeeded to the tune of 30% of the audience saying, yes, I'm willing to participate. Once they saw on site what was actually happening and the benefits that they gained, we then made it available for them to change their mind, and it shot up to about 85% just like that.
[00:42:01] And so you've gotta have that ability to opt in, you've gotta educate and make it as simple and as seamless as possible so that they know why and they know it's not. a threatening thing, it's going to benefit them and make it simple for them to turn that dial the opposite way and participate. So that in general is what I've seen kind of helped the experience in one of the dynamics that play out here.
[00:42:24] Erica Spoor: You know, and I would just add we do have a life sciences practice at Sparks and you know, it is hard in pharma and it's hard in, in life sciences when you can't actually sometimes show your product or the advancements that you're making as a company and in finance, when you have kind of government regulations preventing you.
[00:42:40] So we've been leaning in on more experiential engagement with experts in the industry. So that's one way to do it. Coffee chats, meetings, meeting spaces in activations, where you can come in and have a substantial conversation or just a dialogue amongst the audience themselves and things that allow advancement of engagement, but not necessarily, you know, but can also kind of manage around the compliance issues that some of those industries have.
[00:43:06] So, making it interactive, having experts there that can speak to things using digital content in that situation. We've done a lot of that digital storytelling. In order to in order to kind of get around the fact that we don't have a product to show. So those are some of the tactics that, that we've been using in those industries, Rachel.
[00:43:23] Rachel Moore: Excellent. I'm going to squeeze in one last question. Bethany. I'm actually taking this to you. Do you consider gamification and micro events as trends? Do you see them more lasting long term or they permanent event fixtures versus being short term?
[00:43:38] And Bethany would love to hear your perspective since we got a bit of that from Erica already on this particular question.
[00:43:43] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, I mean, I think micro events, Look, they're just small personalized events and experiences. They've been around for a long time. I think this term was coined and it's catchy, right?
[00:43:54] And so it's become a big thing, but I don't really think micro events in themselves are really new. So I would say yes. I mean, in here at 6sense, we use our own technology and are able to target buyers that are lower in the funnel, right? And we personalize amazing experiences for those people.
[00:44:12] And then the top of the funnel, folks, we send to our webinars and our trade shows, right? So there's definitely ways to use technology to target the right buyers and spend your money in the right ways and create those amazing experiences. As far as gamification, I mean, I don't really think it's a trend.
[00:44:27] I mean, I think with the rise of event technology and then during COVID, we saw it become huge with virtual events and, you know, people are competitive, people like to win things. So, I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
[00:44:38] Rachel Moore: Thanks again to Bethany Murphy, Brandon Wernli, and Erica Spohr for joining us on another great Bizzabo industry webinar. And thank you for listening to this special version for the event experience podcast.
[00:44:49] If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening. Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends. You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast. You can also partake of the full webinar experience available on demand. On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
