Insider Events – Encore Canada CSAE Tête-à-Tête 2022 Activation

Basic details of the event: 

Title: CSAE Tête-à-Tête 2022 Activation 
Date: Wednesday April 6^th, 222 
City, Country: Ottawa, ON, Canada 
Host Venue: EY Centre 
Website: Tête-à-Tête 2022 - CSAE

Organizing Team:

• Digital Services
• Production Management
• Custom Scenic Division
• MediaLab Creative Services
• Sales Team
• Industry Relations

Specific Event Questions:

Who was the target audience?

Association Executives, Event Professionals, Meeting Planners, and Key Decision Makers.

What was the main objective of your event?

This was an official brand launch for Encore “We Are”.  It was the first time that we collaborated publicly in the event community in Ottawa as our new brand.  We wanted to reinforce the fact that the same passionate individuals from before the merger are the same ones that make up our team today, and the only difference is that we are doing it together as one team, one Encore.

What was unique about this particular Tête-à-Tête for your organization?

This might be a bit of an obvious answer but…  The first in-person tradeshow event in two years in Ottawa!

• We were excited, it was our first public Encore event post-pandemic in Ottawa
• We wanted to do something more elaborate than purchasing a standard tradeshow booth

We met with CSAE to discuss how we could create an activation and design a unique attendee experience with a few key ideas: 

• Unconventional, Speak-easy vibe
• Mystery campaign to attract from afar and draw attendees in

What was the biggest obstacle your team had to overcome?

The Challenges -
The Canadian Teams first major in-person marketing activation in Ottawa post-merger of the 3 legacy brands:

• Poor brand awareness, initial launch was impacted by the pandemic
• Added complexity of the brand positioning among 3 legacy brands

• How do you reliably describe the complex array of qualities that encompass our people at Encore?
• How do we spark honest, human conversations at our booth?

What was your biggest triumph?

We were able to succeed in all of our goals and the messages that we aimed to convey. While also showcasing our own actual team members in the artwork, in the immersive video, and even the voices in the soundtrack. The triumph was being able to genuinely represent our true nature as a team of passionate event people.

The Re-positioning of our brand: Focusing on our People.

• Bridging the past and the present
• Ease into the new brand
• Draw a connection, a consistent story

Establish identity of our brand, eliminate confusion:

• We are more than just AV
• We are “All of the best, merged into One Brand”
• We are Encore

Showcase our brand identity by highlighting these 4 Key Qualities of our People:

• Humanity
• Canadian Diversity
• Expertise
• Collaborative nature

Did you do anything new or innovative? If so, how did it go?

Content-Driven Solutions: Animated motion graphics and Augmented Reality (AR) were identified as the best tools to help convey such a multi-layer, complex concept of “Our People”.

• Video / Animations – One of the most impactful means of communication, next to live events themselves (Courtesy of our MediaLab team)
• AR Technology - Low impact, software alternative versus hardware (Courtesy of our MediaLab and Digital Services teams)

Why AR?

Augmented reality allowed us to unlock deeper brand messaging with rich multi-layer, digital content using the attendee’s mobile device, without requiring third party apps or downloads and ability for full integration into our Chime Live platform.

Capabilities:

• Boost audience engagement
• Convey complex concepts and messaging
• Support meaningful and intentional stories

Benefits:

• Eco-friendly and sustainable
• Increase return on investment via rich analytics
• Extremely high adoption rate

Additionally, AR can leverage opportunities for sponsorship and allows the content to be utilized more than once, extended the life of the experience allowing you to amortize costs over time.

What challenges did you have in putting together all of the features?

• Design of the Attendee Experience end-to-end
• Collaboration with the various event stakeholders
• Delays in response time resulting from the current industry landscape and labour shortages

What were some things that you improved on this year over last year?

When comparing to our pre-covid tradeshow presence, we improved upon… well… Everything.

The Marquee Tunnel Entrance leading to a 3-sided Projection Experience with an Immersive Video Reveal were thoughtfully designed with the attendee experience in mind to:

• Curate the arrival and check in experience
• Build anticipation for the attendee with added fear of missing out (FOMO)
• Deliver high impact of our Brand Messaging “We Are”
• Reinforce the focus on our People at Encore

Last Words

When you do something so grandiose, it can make it difficult to surpass any anticipations for our booth next year.  From all of us here at Encore, we look forward to seeing you at Meet Week in 2023!

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