virtual events
‍Should be easier

This is a great question, and one that if you get wrong can cost you a lot more money than it should.

Virtual Events - If you are planning on keeping people online for 2-3 hours because you are going to cover a lot of ground, have multiple speakers talking on multiple topics, and there is an overarching theme that drives the event then we would recommend a virtual events because you are going to be managing lot of production to pull it off.

Webinars - If you are planning on keeping people online for about an hour and will be sticking to a single topic, for example "How to Build Effective Qualitative Product Research." Then webinars are excellent. Typically, they will attract a very specific audience that you want as leads for your company and will feature some sort of registration form and post-webinar follow up for engagement.

Zoom Meeting - If you are looking for a way to communicate internally with your employees, Zoom can be a great tool to achieve this. That is not to say that the other options above could not also be used, plenty of our clients have created spectacular virtual events for their employees, but you may find it overkill for your needs.

Whatever you decide don't underestimate the power of good branding for your events and bringing in a production team to manage all the button pushing. Live events can be extremely stressful event if things are going well.

It all comes down to the platform you are using. Some tools like Zoom, have very limited branding opportunities unless you upgrade your account, and even then it's still pretty locked down.

Other tools, like the ones we use for our productions, let you add logos, color schemes, play video content, add graphics, play music, and all on the fly. So if you want to play a video right as a speaker gives a cue in their presentation, you can. Or, if you want to change a logo in the background when one of your sponsors does their 5-minute pitch to your audience, it's a quick switch.

Branding is key to protecting your content. If you want to cut segments and use them as content online, you want your branding all over it so that people know who to come to.

Well, that depends on how much additional work you are looking to do.

Live event production takes plenty of planning, a lot of technical knowledge, and the patience of a saint. It can be done by anyone BUT you already have a job to do and this is going to add on a lot more work.

If something goes wrong on event day, you are going to have to fix it and if you've not encountered the issue before, it can be the difference between your event going live with a minor delay or being postponed to a later date and disappointing your waiting audience.

Even Zoom can be challenging. You have polling to run, people to let into the room, spotlighting speakers, muting unruly attendees, the list goes on.

If you decide to work with a production team for your event, everything listed about is someone else's problem to manage and you can focus on getting your content right.

Not necessarily. Some of our customers prefer to do a mix of pre-recorded and live content to manage risk. If you have already pre-recorded the bulk of the content you are almost guaranteed to be presenting content for your event.

If, however, you do everything live you run the risk that a speaker has to drop out last minute and you are left with a 30-minute hole in your event that you need to fill.

It really comes down to your comfort level. We've run hundreds of fully live sessions for clients without a problem, and we've run fully recorded content (broadcast live) without a hitch.

If you want to mix it up like most of our clients tend to do, you could pre-record the main content and then at the end switch over to a live audience Q&A with the speakers. This gives your attendees a chance to ask questions to your speakers based on the recorded content and get a live response.

We would always recommend starting with the least stressful option for you and then adding in more complexity as you get more comfortable with live production.