Stories from the Corporate Events War Room: Featuring Caitlin Lamont
This summer may be one of the most unique summers any of us can remember for a long time. Festivals, events, celebrations, expos and more have had to make a major shift in strategy in order to accommodate the pesky and downright unwanted virus. We’ve all seen solutions like hybrid and virtual events replacing fully in-person gatherings; traditional marketing campaigns turn into community engagement strategies; drive-in concerts bringing big time musical heroes to small town neighbourhoods and more.
It has truly been the summer of Plan B’s for event profs.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: given the impacts of COVID-19, event professionals have been given the opportunity to be one of the most essential and necessary partners to an organization more than ever before.
As well, stakeholder engagement and honouring existing sponsor and donor relationships, regardless of the pandemic, has had to become more thoughtful, more thorough, more consistent than ever. For our second instalment of our summer blog series called “Stories from the Corporate Events War Room” we caught up with our colleague Caitlin Lamont (Director, Strategic Events at the University of Calgary) who shared insights on pivot strategies from in-person events to virtual, how she and her team built a new plan to celebrate the end of a successful and ambitious $1.3B philanthropic campaign without an in-person event, and her thoughts on the future of stakeholder engagement and events.
You’re not going to want to miss this. Keep reading!
Featured Event Professional:
Caitlin Lamont
Director, Strategic Events
University of Calgary
What was the COVID-19 "war room" like for you and your counterparts at the U of C back in March and April?
We had alumni engagement events planned for early March in New York City and Washington, DC. The decision to cancel felt surreal at the time, mostly because COVID-19 hadn’t yet started to impact us here in Calgary. However, only a few days after that, we started having conversations about our other events taking place in the spring. By mid-March the university had instructed us to start working from home. As a first step for events, our risk management department put a hold to the promotion of all events, regardless of how far out they were, and soon after had us cancel all events until June 30. We had many events on the calendar, including a large campaign close celebration which, as you can imagine, was hugely disappointing for our team.
There were a few solid weeks of cancelling -- sending out communications, negotiating with suppliers, etc. and then we came together to talk about what was next.
We pivoted by providing online content for our community through weekly webinars focused on COVID-19 (showcasing UCalgary experts) and transitioned a few of our signature events online.
Tell us about the U of C's unprecedented Energize campaign and how COVID-19 adversely impacted certain elements of the experiential execution you had originally planned.
The University of Calgary just successfully completed an ambitious $1.3B philanthropic fundraising campaign called Energize: The Campaign for Eyes High. This is the third-largest fundraising campaign in Canadian history which we are extremely proud of!
A large-scale public celebration to mark the official close of the campaign and announce the final tally was planned for June 30 on campus. The goal of the event was to celebrate and promote the impact of philanthropy and engagement at UCalgary, instil UCalgary pride among our stakeholders and the broader community and maintain positive momentum in our fundraising and engagement efforts. We were planning a very engaging, hands-on event with large custom-built activation stations as the key focal point to showcase some of UCalgary’s groundbreaking initiatives supported by philanthropy.
With no hope for an in-person event on June 30, we knew we had to evaluate our options:
Cancel completely
Postpone until it was safe to proceed
Re-schedule for the 1-year anniversary
Celebrate virtually
There were many conversations about whether or not it was even appropriate to celebrate this accomplishment during such an uncertain time. However, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to rally together with our community and genuinely thank all of the contributors to the campaign. We eventually came to the conclusion that we wanted to move forward with a virtual event, albeit with a different tone and approach than our original plan.
Let's talk more about the "Plan B" virtual execution your team designed to close out the campaign. Tell us what you came up with, how you got there, and what you loved about it.
Due to the global pandemic, we weren’t able to gather in person, but we did invite donors, alumni and community members to join us for a short virtual program, where we publicly revealed that we had surpassed our goal and raised a total of $1.41 billion dollars.
For us, this was an opportunity to genuinely thank all contributors to the campaign. Using a grass roots approach, we tried to build a sense of community and shine a light on the impact of philanthropy through a simple, authentic touchpoint with our donors and larger community. It was also a chance to introduce our new giving website and a new slogan “Energized by you” that we will be using to help demonstrate gratitude and impact.
For me, the most impactful part of the virtual program was a montage of stories from community leaders, philanthropists, supporters, students, alumni and faculty. By humanizing the campaign through inspirational stories, we demonstrated meaning. You can see this video here.
Another highlight was an energetic musical performance by student and alumni musicians. You can watch the music video here. Complimenting the online event, city monuments were lit up in red to provide enhanced communication tactics for the celebration. You can see the highlights here.
Have there been any unexpected benefits to your organization, your team or your projects due to COVID-19? Tell us a bit about a "positive" that has come out of all of this.
This has forced us to learn new skills and become Zoom experts overnight! Our team started producing COVID-19 webinars very early on, which opened us up to a new audience base. They have been so successful that we’re currently working on a plan to continue the series, post COVID-19, with expanded topics.
As well, we’ve seen increased engagement numbers for all the events we transitioned online. This has me excited for a future of hybrid events! There are so many ways we’ll be able to continue to interact with our audiences virtually even once we move back to in-person events.
What do you see being the biggest future hurdle for event producers, as it relates to the impacts of COVID-19?
I take guest safety and the perception of safety very seriously. If we’re inviting guests to attend an in-person event, it must be safe (and feel safe) for everyone. A challenge I see is that there are different thresholds for what make people feel safe. Transitioning back to in-person events will require us to strengthen our event communications, think creatively and anticipate human behaviour like never before.
As well, I would argue that it’s more important than ever to create meaningful, memorable guest experiences. This will be difficult, but not impossible, with public health precautions in place and will likely look very different than it has in the past. However, if there is no added benefit (in terms of guest experience) for hosting an in-person event over a virtual event, then what is the point of proceeding in-person? The point is, people are craving a sense of normalcy and human interaction. We need to completely re-evaluate what will make a great guest experience for each event and find new or modified ways to offer those experiences, safely.
True or False: Virtual events are a stop-gap but people will desire to be together in-person again as soon as it is safe to do so.
Definitely true.
However, I do think that this has fundamentally changed stakeholder engagement moving forward, in that there will be an expectation to provide both in person and virtual experiences. The possibilities are endless, which is exciting, and I think we're just starting to scratch the surface at what's possible for hybrid events.
Follow Caitlin:
IG: @caitlinrlamont
Follow University of Calgary:
IG: @ucalgary
About the blog series:
In order to bring positivity to the industry and showcase examples of possibility, our summer blog series “Stories from the Corporate Events War Room” will shine a light on in-house event planners across Canada that are softening the chaos within their organizations, re-strategizing from all angles, and doing great work.
Our core belief at Brand Alive is that corporations have a unique opportunity to amplify human culture, and that events enable them to do just that. Follow along this summer as we take a look at Canadian event professionals bringing their own corporate culture to life regardless of the barriers set out by COVID-19.
