16 Feature
September, 2020
The onset of Covid-19 has added
a few new words to our collective
vocabularies. We’re all now
familiar with social distancing and
Zoombombing – but perhaps the one
which has caused the biggest headache
for the events industry is the
much-talked about ‘pivot’ to digital.
From conferences to concerts,
various attempts have been made to
turn live events into online or hybrid
events using live streaming and video.
But how viable is the model for exhibitions,
and can it generate value for
exhibitors and viewers? To find out,
EN spoke with the organisers of two
major B2C exhibitions, the Running
Show and The Rugby Show, both of
which ran digital editions in June.
Neither Raccoon Events, which
organised the Digital Running Show,
or 73 Media, which organised the
Virtual Rugby Show, had originally
planned to go virtual. For Ed Tranter,
managing director of 73 Media, the
decision came after their main event
was forced to cancel on short notice.
“About five weeks before the show
was supposed to take place, we had to
make the decision to go virtual,” he
says. “I phoned Lawrence Dallaglio up,
as you do, and said ‘we’re going to do
it virtually, and raise money for your
charity.’ And he said ‘yeah, why not?’.”
73 Media pitched the show as free
to enter, but asked for charitable
donations for Dallaglio Rugby Works
- a charity which provides support for
teenagers who have been excluded
from school. Raccoon Events also went
down the charitable route, building the
Digital Running Show off the back of a
charity drive called the Indoor Relay.
Mike Seaman, Racoon’s CEO,
describes this as a “24/7 Zoom
The digital
‘pivot’
EN speaks to the
organisers of the Digital
Running Show and the
Virtual Rugby Show about
how they took their events
online, and the future of
hybrid
Words
Stuart Wood
meeting with various people spending
an hour running inside their house”,
which raised £43,800 for charities
including the NSPCC, Mind and Children
with Cancer UK. Seaman adds,
“the next logical step was to run a
virtual event on the same days as the
London show should have traded.”
Both 73 Media and Raccoon
Events used Hopin as their platform
of choice for their online events,
after asking around for recommendations.
Tranter says: “It’s simple,
and it’s engaging. You can actually
make something of it in terms of
sharing content and also branding
it.” Tranter jokes that Hopin – which
was launched in February – is one of
the ‘grandfather’ platforms compared
to some other online platforms that
seemed to spring up overnight.
“In terms of virtual platforms at
the moment – I liken it a bit to Formula
One. There’s a race one weekend and
by the second weekend, practically
80% of the car is changed. The online
event platforms are definitely operating
like that, because the demand
is there. They’re working with the
organisers who are telling them what
they need, and then they’re updating
them almost on a daily basis.”
Raccoon also opted for Hopin, with
the addition of event video company
Silverstream, which helped piece it all
together. “Working with Silverstream
was a masterstroke, and their recommendation
to pre-record the sessions
but add a live Q&A at the end de-risked
the whole event,” says Seaman. “They
also helped us knit the technology
and content together to create a relatively
seamless visitor experience.”