By Windsor Hanger Western

Across the country, business owners are re-evaluating their plans for 2020. COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on our strategies, our tactics, and our bottom lines. One area in my field that has been disrupted in particular is the Marketing Industry's reliance on in-person experiences. In the age of Coronavirus, experiential marketing needs to be completely re-evaluated. Campus Tours need to be re-thought when students are now learning from home. Conferences and Summits need to be re-evaluated when everyone is instructed to socially isolate. If you haven’t already pivoted your event strategy and live in a state that has not yet imposed restrictions, The Atlantic paints a compelling case for calling off all events in its now-viral article, Cancel Everything.

So how do we tackle this challenge? What do we know about our audience, and how do we apply these insights to help our business evolve and thrive in the face of change and uncertainty?

After consulting our community of 39,000+ student contributors, we came to realize that we have an enormous opportunity to reshape our experiential offerings in a way that will perfectly cater to our digital-native audience. In fact, in some regards, they may even prefer a virtual experiential format to an IRL one. 80% of the college students we surveyed said they would attend our events if we moved them online. A recent MediaPost piece highlighted the phenomenon of teens “hanging out separately, together” which was already a trend, pre-COVID-19, with apps like Houseparty being increasingly used to create a common experience despite physical distance. Twitch, a live-streaming platform popular among Gen Z esports fans runs an average of over 53,000 live concurrent events at any given time with an average of 1.3M average concurrent viewers. And it’s not a matter of if they would make the time - according to our research, before COVID-19, 51% of college students were spending up to 2 hours a day on social media, and 28% reported spending 3-4 hours a day on social platforms.

Perhaps I’m wrong to try to find a silver lining amidst all of this craziness, but as it turns out, not only is it the safe and responsible (and legal, depending on what State you live in) thing to do, reformatting our Gen-Z focused events online is going to be a good thing for our company, for our audience, our community, and our brand partners. So that’s what we’re doing. In its 9th year, Her Conference, the leading women’s empowerment conference for college students and recent grads, will be taking place virtually.

We’re not just talking about a livestream of a panel or a keynote speaker talking into their webcam for an hour while our audience looks on board. No, our viewers will feel like they’re taking part in something real and meaningful and new. No longer constrained by geography, attendees can tune in from all over the country. We’ll continue to host the intimate conversations and opportunities for connection that make in person events so meaningful. We’ll continue to lead with groundbreaking live content taught by influential women and men we respect and admire. Our sponsors will be given innovative opportunities for real, in-depth connection with attendees, including sampling which can be pre-seeded and delivered to attendees’ homes.

Additionally, GenZology, The Gen Z Marketing Summit that we host for top marketers and brand experts, will be taking place virtually. And we’re in the process of putting together a template for virtual live events that will provide much needed opportunities for connection for our audience and much needed opportunities for exposure for our brand partners.

Some examples of these events include:

• Virtual Career Fairs for companies whose on-campus recruiting events have gotten canceled and who desperately need new applications

• Virtual Readings and Meet and Greets with Authors launching new books relevant to a Gen-Z audience

• Virtual Live Makeup Tutorials taught by professional makeup artists, complete with a full set of makeup delivered to the homes of pre-registered attendees so that they can follow along live

• Live Streamed Classes with the experts behind some of our top tech firms, helping students elevate their technical skills to stay competitive in today’s tight job market

• A peek inside the studios of top fashion designers with a tour and live Q&A with the designers and executives of brands looking to make a splash with the younger audience

We’re excited to show our brand partners how much they can accomplish by partnering with us for this necessary and exciting experiment in Virtual Experiential Marketing.

So how do you, as a brand, think about the now-present reality that your events will need to be rescheduled or reformatted?

Use this as a guide:

• If your event is tied to a Spring/Summer 2020 timeframe, don’t feel like pushing it to the Fall is your only option. Exciting things can be done virtually with the myriad of technological options available today.

• Would it benefit your event to open it up to people in multiple markets? If so, hosting virtually is a great solution.

• Are you worried about costs? Virtual events can be done beautifully and for a fraction of the cost of an in person event.

• Worried about ticket revenue? Consider offering a “Freemium model” where most attendees can register to attend for free but you reserve experiences created for fewer people and special gifting for attendees who can purchase a “VIP All Access” ticket.

Is this in response to Coronavirus? Of course it is! But, honestly, we should have been doing this before, and we'll continue to do it long after Coronavirus subsides -- it's what our Gen Z audience craves and this provides a unique opportunity for us and brands to give it to them.

So take a strong look at Virtual Experiential Marketing opportunities available to you, and perhaps you will find, as we have, that there is a silver lining after all.

To innovation in the face of uncertainty.

Windsor