TECHNOLOGY
Swimming
upstream
Contrary to the belief that live streaming will cannibalise
your audience, streaming can increase the reach of an event
and provide significant marketing materials to entice an
audience for next year. But it has to be done right, discovers
Bronwen Largier.
TEDxSydney streams 200 per
cent of their annual ideas event,
according to Stuart Buchanan,
head of marketing and content.
Aside from live streaming
the TED talks which make up
the bulk of the program, they
provide additional live online
content featuring behind
the scenes interviews with
speakers, before and after the
event and while the physical
audience is taking breaks
throughout the day.
Streaming for TEDxSydney
has, thus far, been critical in
reaching an audience not only
too large to fit into any of their
previous venues, which include
Carriageworks and the Opera
House, but also an audience
which is geographically spread
out across the world.
To give an idea of the scale
of the numbers, capacity at
the Concert Hall in the Opera
House is 2500, a number so
insufficient to demand that the
audience underwent a selection
process. However, the numbers
of those who tuned into the live
stream throughout the day sit
around 125,000, and include
viewing parties in Moscow,
Mumbai and New Zealand.
While a move to the
International Convention
Centre Sydney in 2017
promises at least double the
physical audience capacity and
a more traditional first-come-
first-served ticketing model,
Buchanan explains that a live
stream remains essential to the
TED philosophy.
“Certainly our ambition and
TED’s ambition is to allow as
22 Convention & Incentive Marketing, Issue 3, 2017 www.cimmagazine.com
Left and above:
Mumbrella360
utilises
streaming
to boost its
marketing.
wide access as possible to the
ideas themselves. TED is all
about the origination of ideas
that are, in one form or another,
helping to change the world,”
he says.
“Those ideas often really take
flight and spring into life once
they’re shared. The whole
purpose of TED is to spread
and share ideas, therefore
the live stream is a critical
component of that.”
They actively encourage an
online audience to gather,