It was back in February 2020 that we began questioning whether we should continue organizing our MasterClass, which was to take place in March. Little did we (or much of the world) know everything that would unfold when the COVID crisis first began to affect us all. The COVID crisis would grow much bigger and would take much longer than we were expecting it to, back then. After much discussion, we cancelled the hotel rooms and the restaurant reservations, and with a heavy heart we informed our customers that we had to postpone our event because of the coronavirus threat. It was a tough decision and we weren’t even sure if it was the best decision to make.
The year went on with lots of COVID-related news from all over the world and then 2021 arrived, so it was time to make a decision about our MasterClass once again. This time it was easier, as we knew and understood much more of the limitations and threats of a pandemic, so we opted for hosting a virtual event — which offered so many benefits and also proved to be a lot easier than we thought.
More people in a Zoom meeting is no problem at all — invite your customers to join in and feel welcome, even at the last minute.
As event venues continue to open up and restrictions are lifted, many companies are still opting for virtual meetings. I recommend hiring a firm that specializes in event organization to help with this. This can help your company focus on presentations without having to worry about the logistics or technical difficulties of organizing several Zoom meetings at the same time. Additionally, hiring event professionals can lead to a more versatile, streamlined experience that allows each attendee the ability to personalize their experience. The event organizers that we worked with were real pros that brought lots of technical gear to turn our main office into a control room and our showroom into a studio. They proved to be people who knew exactly how to lead things in the right direction, to make it all work well and run smoothly.
The pros of virtual events for organizers
One positive aspect of a virtual event is that there is more time in between sessions to check on things in the office and catch up on other computer work. You can even have small meetings during the event to discuss how things are going. During in-person events, you are likely to be occupied a lot of the time, while a virtual event allows more time for deliberation and consultation.
Another pro is that you don’t have to limit your event to a certain number of participants. Whereas we always had to limit the number of invitations for our usual MasterClass for obvious reasons such as event space, the amount of hotel rooms, transportation reservations and restaurant tables. With virtual events, there is no limit in the number of participants. Depending on the nature of your virtual event, you may not even have to have a sign-up either. During our event, we allowed people to join on the second day. More people in a Zoom meeting is no problem at all. Invite your customers to join in and feel welcome, even at the last minute. These are two great pros for a virtual event versus a physical event.
The pros of virtual events for participants
From a customer point of view, there are pros to attending a virtual show as well. It’s more relaxed to be able to participate from one’s own office or home, without having to travel. For our event, we allowed people the freedom to choose which presentations to attend. In our usual physical MasterClass, they would have had to participate in all the presentations, as part of the whole event. In our virtual event, they could sign up for whatever presentations caught their interest, and join in on a day and time that best suited their schedule.
The cons (for everyone)
One of the biggest cons is that while virtual events offer sound and vision, you can’t touch anything. It’s unfortunate that participants cannot feel the vibrations of toys, squeeze the dildos or touch the material of garments, and everything else that people do when they personally check out a toy or lingerie. We partly solved this by sending out boxes with samples to a great portion of the participants, but it was impossible to send those out to everyone.
Another disadvantage of a virtual event is obvious: It’s much harder to have a great atmosphere, to mingle with everyone attending, to have nice little chats with people and to enjoy moments of relaxation with each other in between the information sessions.
Of course, when using Zoom it’s possible to see each other, wave at each other, and to know who else is there, but it’s quite different from an actual in-person meeting. There’s a danger of everything getting boring or too serious without the jokes, hugs and laughter that people enjoy together in person. What helped to make the atmosphere amicable and funny, and to loosen everybody up during our event, was the regular broadcast of a compilation of bloopers. The bloopers came from our sales reps while creating the pre-recorded presentations that we used in between the live Zoom presentations. This situation and way of working was new for all of us, and we’re only human after all, so the bloopers helped to bring everyone closer. We think every visitor and co-presenter could empathize with the struggles of forgetting the text and stumbling over words, and we all had a good laugh about the mistakes and reactions to them!
At the end of the day, virtual events have proven successful for those who attend them, as well as those who organize them. Of course, we’re all hoping very hard that we can soon travel and meet each other again like we used to at industry expos and at restaurants. Meanwhile, in the present circumstances, it’s important to explore the possibilities, adapt and make the best out of it.
Melanie de Jonge is the CEO of Tonga BV.
