The latest IDC Marketplace report on applications for virtual events just dropped. And while it’s full of insight, it limits who it looks at...and doesn’t touch other things like pro services or things that affect a virtual event experience.
Join V2's Aaron Cole and Roger Courville, CSP as they discuss insights from the report and then strategy for virtual and hybrid events in 2025.
To stay ahead in the evolving landscape of virtual communication, listen in to:
Understand why the maturity of the virtual events market means it's now heavily influenced by broader socioeconomic and technological trends
Learn how audience expectations have shifted toward content that is personalized, interactive, and immediately relevant
Discover the critical importance of first-party data as third-party cookies decline and how it impacts marketing strategies
Explore the rising need for virtual event platforms to enable actionable analytics and seamless content repurposing
Hear how hybrid events are evolving into strategic opportunities to balance in-person and online engagement effectively
Find out why "work TV," or passive consumption of virtual events, risks diluting impact and engagement
Learn how consolidation in the virtual event platform space is shaping competition and innovation
Gain insights into why tools and teams are essential for smarter event execution, from technical setup to audience engagement
Understand the potential of immersive technologies like 3D environments and AI for creating future-forward virtual event experiences, and
Explore why strategic event design, including the integration of live and on-demand content, is critical to standing out in a crowded market.
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #ON24 #virtualevents #hybridevents #VirtualEventStrategy #HybridEvents #DataDrivenMarketing #AudienceEngagement #EventInnovation
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: The latest IDC marketplace report on virtual event applications is just dropped. And while it is full of insight, it limits who it looks at and doesn't touch other things like pro services or things that affect the virtual event experience. Hello and welcome to one of our occasional reaction videos.
My name is Roger Courville. And today we're going to talk about this report as strategy in 2025 and beyond. And this particular episode of Thought Leader Conversations is the very last of 2024 sponsored by Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with this blue chip crew who will help you achieve excellence in results.
By helping you focus on something other than the tech with me today is co founder, CEO, director, fellow industry, old timer, and a general bottle washer, Aaron Cole, importantly, a guy who recognizes how maturation in the tech industry does and doesn't affect the professional services that go along with that.
And importantly, we've got this latest report in hand and we're just got to talking and thought. Hmm. We should do this on camera. Welcome, Aaron.
[00:01:09] Aaron Cole: Hey, Roger. It's great to see you again. I missed these. It's fun to, it's fun to have another conversation here today.
[00:01:14] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. You know, it's kind of funny, you know, after been in the industry as long as we have every once in a while, you think, oh, there's nothing new under the sun.
And, but then you go, no, that's not, not, not true. There's always these little things that go, that's going to affect that client. And, oh, somebody who does that. should be thinking. So let's start with the report. What are the most surprising findings that you found with this particular report on platforms?
[00:01:42] Aaron Cole: Great question. Um, you know, when I think about it, we've been, this has been a couple of years, we've been doing these things off and on here for a couple of years as a part of the thought leadership series. And if I can be self aggrandizing, I think that a lot of the things that we have previously discussed about where the market is going about things that are going to be changing.
Um, a lot of that I actually see in the report. So if I'm, if I'm going to pat myself on the head, I would say, I think we've. largely hit a lot of things before about where this market is going and what's reflected in the report. I do want to call out and I think I appreciate you bringing it up at the very beginning in terms of the, the, uh, the scope of the report.
What was it above 30 million was, was the minimum revenue of the company, you know, which obviously that's going to include the large players. There is a ton of players underneath that, that, that we're obviously working with. We watch. they are likely at least some of them to become players in a larger sense as the market continues to evolve, things like that.
So I do think that that's one thing that, that I'm glad you, you clarified that a few minutes ago as well too. But I do feel overall, um, one thing we have talked about is, is we are obviously in absolutely in an, in a mature market space after all of what we've gone through for the past five years here, uh, from within this market.
Um, I do think that Being a mature market, we are affected by larger socioeconomic impacts in our society that they trickle through that affect us a lot more because of that maturity. Um, I think that's one thing that we can see grow out. Some of the larger things that the report calls out, um, uh, bugs, excuse me, the, um, the cookie portion, uh, you know, people's preferences to not want to allow cookies to track their, their every day and their every movement I think is a part of it is an example of that as well too.
So I think there's a lot there, long story long. The other thing I did want to call out is when I look at the report, I still do see and believe that there is a difference in segmenting out. What I would call a virtual environment, which is, you know, uh, a multi day event or even a one day event or multiple items that are a part of a single event.
kind of umbrella compared to a traditional webinar, um, or a traditional one off event. I think how it's marketed, how it's accomplished, how it's achieved, um, how people attended. I think all those things are still relevant to segment out. I didn't see that necessarily in the report, but I think that's a pretty important call out still in our, in our world today.
[00:04:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I agree because, uh, well, nomenclature has always been a problem, right? People call everything. a webinar, and it was like, Oh, it's an on demand video. That's like YouTube. That's not a, that's not a web seminar to me. I mean, if you showed up to a person's seminar and all they did was run a video, you'd think you got ripped off, but you're right.
There's probably a difference between an instant, uh, a single session, call it a webinar or a live stream or a virtual event. And, uh, you know, And that more, that, that track complexity, right? Right. Whether it's a trade show with keynotes and breakouts or virtual environments in a more 3D kind of, uh, kinda way.
Uh, you know, one of the other things that I thought was kind of interesting, uh, they said. Revenue had to exceed 30 million and with at least 20 million coming from the U. S. Not quite, they didn't identify why they put that in there. But it also said products must support at least 500 concurrent users.
Which I thought was an interesting twist. Because there's a, the vast majority of webinars or virtual events don't get to 500 people. And there's a lot of people having a lot of success going 80 here, 140 there, or whatever.
[00:05:50] Aaron Cole: Yep. Totally agree. Totally agree. Those are great call outs too.
[00:05:52] Roger Courville, CSP: So, ON24 is highlighted as a leader.
Right? The, the, the, in fact, I'm even going to look at it here just to make sure I accurately represent it here. How it will be, we'll do a verb. Their report, is capabilities on the Y axis and strategies on the X axis. And even that is highly subjective, right? Oh, they've got a great strategy. Well, okay. But that puts on 24 in the upper right hand corner relative to this particular report.
So, uh, you know, obviously we've had this long 24. I'm just curious what specific features or strategies set them apart. And how competitors, uh, how can competitors learn from them? But I'm also curious, where do they fall short? What do people want to do when on 24 is not the right solution?
[00:06:47] Aaron Cole: So I, I believe in, to your point, yeah, we've, we have worked with on 24 for almost well over a decade, probably close to 13, 14, maybe even 15 years.
Now we have seen that progression as a company from a private company to a publicly traded company. Um, they have had. Good success in being the leader because I believe they have pushed the market forward in terms of innovation in terms of scalability to truly become an enterprise level solution. Um, they have led the charge on a lot of the things that a lot of other consoles are now essentially picking up as commonplace.
And I think that's, you know, you got to give You got to give kudos to to them for that. They have done very well with that. I think another thing when I think about on 24, this is, um, this is a couple years ago now, but in terms of a larger trend, one of the things we've always talked about is the value.
And the importance of data, the, the value of your data is the gold in the hills, you know, and so being smart about that and aligning yourself with products that, uh, help you to understand and make that data actionable. hugely valuable. And that was one of the things I think On24 really recognized that a good seven, eight, nine years ago.
Um, when they started pushing out some of the analytics and some of the marketing trends that, that could then go through and provide you as a, as a producer or as a marketing company, very highly segmented data on, Your relationship with one person and did they download this or did they go to this? Did they view an on demand whatever it happens to be starting to get that larger aggregate picture of what your relationship is In this case literally on a one off a one to one person individual basis That's pretty powerful.
And so again, I think you have to give credit where credit is due. Um, and they have done very well at that. When, when I look at where we're at in 2024, um, they are absolutely aware of the competition. I think that, that is, is, is fomenting that has made inroads, um, over the past couple of years. If anything, I think that that, will force them to, uh, continue to move fast and agile as a company.
Um, and to continue to try to find ways to innovate. Um, they also have done a very good job in, in helping marketers repurpose their content. And so essentially finding a way to be more than just a webinar events platform. And I do think that's where they both have the opportunity to continue to improve, but they also have an opportunity to potentially.
Fall short with some of the other platforms that are potentially going to really focus on that as a driving metric. The other thing that I would say too, that I think, um, um, I'm sure they spend a lot of time focusing on, is it, you know, it's not. It's not a brand new console, you know, as, as our relationship with them attests.
And so as they continue to push their product forward, um, you know, it's, it's with any product, there's a lot of, there's a lot of technical weight behind that product and, you know, There's a stability factor, which is good, but there's also that ability to be agile, which sometimes can go by the wayside when products get into a more mature life cycle.
And I do think that that represents another potential, I'll call it risk for them because there are so many people that are essentially out there trying to replicate the on 24 experience, trying to do that. And they're doing it on much more agile code. They're doing it without the baggage and without all of that, you know, architectural elements that on 24 has accumulated.
Um, does that make them less agile? Maybe. Does that make them less able to, uh, respond and come up with newer innovations that don't necessarily conflict with their base, with their architecture. Maybe, who knows? I would say though, again, to close out, you got to give credit where credit's due. Um, I think they're very aware that, that where they're at is, is, uh, being the head of the pack.
There's a lot of people looking at you.
[00:11:12] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, uh, and this is not a self aggrandizing statement, I'm going to put an exclamation point on what you just said though, uh, many years ago, and it was enough years ago that it was, uh, that I'm way beyond two acquisitions ago for the folk to go to, long before LogMeIn, like this back in the Citrix days, long before LogMeIn and before they were their own company, uh, I did, uh, You know, when I was an independent consultant and speaker and trainer and author and blah, blah, blah, I did a bunch of private consulting and competitive analysis.
And even then, one of the things that I argued to them was, you know, I don't think you need more features for the For the live event, the moment of, I think where the market's going are those things that are around that, that a marketer needs to use for their workflow, particularly, how do you, how can you beat people with regard to the.
analytics and reporting and content repurposing and, and all of that kind of thing. Um, and to you, as you point out to their credit, that's one of the things that, uh, on 24 has begun to do. In fact, I would even say weakness here. You know, me, everybody's, every presenter's got their opinion, but I think the presenter experience on, on 24 sucks, but that's just me, right?
More importantly, uh, and this is, this is a little storytelling. Clayton Christensen got Famous writing a book called the innovators dilemma and his third book was was seeing what's next and he tells this interesting story about Western Union versus Alexander Graham Bell when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the problem was that and this is a hundred and twenty years ago now, but Western Union was the player right sending Telegraphs across the country, stock reports or whatever that happened to be.
And here comes Alexander Graham Bell with his telephone that had a range of two miles to begin with, meaning you could be called the next farm over. It was basically the problem. But the problem that Western Union had was they had big company expectations, shareholders who just wanted you to steadily deliver your eight or ten percent a year increase, and they missed some of the other opportunities.
Because those corner cases and at that time the telephone was a corner case, they couldn't do it. And to your point, there's a lot of fast followers out there that have produced some great, uh, great platforms that, Some people have never heard of, and it's not a right or a wrong. It's just that's just the dynamics of market leaders versus followers and and and and the choices that are available to to organizations
[00:14:00] Aaron Cole: And I do think that you know again to kind of put a cap on what you were just saying as well, too I, I, I, I, I know they know where they are at and I know they have that recognition.
It just makes it that much more of a, of an importance that they do continue to push things forward as fast as they can. And they, they, they are absolutely pushing that envelope. And I think that's, again, to your point, they realize they have to, they have to.
[00:14:30] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. And they've done a good job.
A minute ago, you mentioned. Uh, cookies, right? Yes. That's been one of the big stories of 2024 for the world of marketers because Google is like, well, we're getting rid of first party, you know, we're getting rid of third party cookies. Oh, wait a minute, we're not getting rid of third party, you know, it's still a big fat mess, right?
And following from the previous discussion about ON24, and ON24 is not alone in this, but I've been a big advocate of going, ah, but what about getting first, you know, first party, you know, Data from which you drive everything else through your CRM or, or however you continue to market remarket, personalize.
Right. So I'm just curious, let's talk about data a little bit more and, uh, because that's one of the things that the report brought up with the decline of third party cookies. How, how critical is the data generated by the virtual event platform for enterprise marketing? And what have you seen that that sheds more light on somebody out there going, ah, what, what should I be thinking about?
[00:15:34] Aaron Cole: Yeah, it's, it's, it becomes essential. Number one, that first party data becomes absolutely essential. And, and I agree, it represents a massive change. And this is one of those examples where I think you can see our societal changes, the Googles of the world, the Facebooks, the change of, of how we personally view our privacy.
These are changes that are having a phenomenal impact on our market. You know, I, all I have to do is think about my own personal, you know, awareness of cookies and aversion to allow something just to run on my phone or whatever. And I used to, I used to never care about that. And now I'm at that point where I'm actively consciously blocking it.
That's, that's the, that's the change that, that all of this means. And, and yes, if you don't have that ability to passively gather information, which is the, you know, the departure of third party cookies in a way to actually passively gather that, you have to become an active. Participant and active gatherer of the data that you want to gain.
And to your point, there absolutely are, uh, positives with that, but it absolutely raises the bar for you needing to make sure that you have the quality of your content. The meaningfulness of your interactions with your potential customers, that has, that becomes that much more important because you are now relying on it to build that relationship.
What, what we're talking about is that requirement for you to develop an active relationship, a nurturing relationship. education with your potential clients. That's the only way you're going to get first party data outside of that. Maybe one hit you do, and then they're gone for the rest of, you know, their, their life cycle or whatever.
Um, so that, that just raises the bar, you know, um, I'll go back to on 24 again, uh, platforms that help marketers to become more smart with the value of your content. better at repurposing that content and then also providing you with natural ways to segment out and give additional follow up content so that you've got this pathway that people can then follow.
Hugely important, especially when we're talking about those first party cookies and what that's likely going to mean to marketers.
[00:18:08] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, as a guy who's probably first hat is presenter focused as opposed to promoter or producer. Uh, you know, for me, one of the things that has rolled off my tongue for years is that Use a poll to be interactive is like yesterday's news, right? At the same time, something I've been preaching for years that people actually still don't do very well.
And to me, this is where marketers, uh, the promoters can really work with producers to collaborate on working with presenters. Now, most presenters, because they're, they're subject matter experts, right? They're not professional virtual presenters. They're the product marketing manager or the VP of something.
But one of the missing elements. That I still see underutilized is exactly what you were saying. When it comes to what, how do I build out now the nuance around my, uh, around my first party data? Yeah, right. I got your name and your email address and maybe your title and the company that you work for. But do I have, I really thought about how to strategically work with a produ, uh, a presenter to ask a polling question that feeds the data that I can append.
To the record I have for Aaron Cole. So I know that you answered a, not B or C. And that gives my inside sales team, you know, my lead development crew or whatever, something meaningful to follow up on. Hey, Aaron, I see that you attended the event and, uh, Oh, by the way, it looks like you asked a question. You can pull in that qualitative data from your chat too, right?
It looks like you asked such a question. Um, just curious. Did you, was the answer satisfactory? Can we follow up more around this? Your question about. How to launch hippos on Tuesdays and right, right. And that's, that's a warm followup. And, and I'll use the T word because this is, it all gets back to trust.
[00:20:00] Aaron Cole: Yeah. Well, exactly. It gets back to trust. And if it's something that I, as a, you know, as an attendee on your event, if it's something that resonates with me, I'm interested in, I'm way more likely to respond to that. I am way more likely to return a message to your soft, cold sales pitch. People, if it's something that's relevant to me, and that's largely again, when we're talking about how to position content, being smart of, Hey, we noticed you, uh, you know, you voted on the poll, blah, blah, blah, here's a piece of content that maybe helps to talk through that a little bit more, or we noticed you put this kind of a comment, here's something that you might find of interest.
It's absolutely that, um, positive, positive. I like even call it positive pressure where you're pushing stuff. You're not expecting to passively get it. Um, that's where you a understand. It's really hard to do. You're naturally going to try to find platforms or ways to make it easier for you. The people that are good at it.
The companies that are good at it are the ones that are going to do the best. Without a doubt.
[00:21:14] Roger Courville, CSP: I still see this as a black hole. Final thing I'll say to that, and then I'll ask you one more question about the report and we'll transition to trends, and this may even bleed into trends. Your website crew is probably already thinking this way, right?
Whether you've got Marketo or HubSpot or something, right? You can get. Detailed in going, ah, Aaron came back and visited within five days, and I can set up fuzzy logic that says, oh, if somebody revisits and hits this page, or downloads two or more things in the span of 72 hours, right? It changes the priority it assigns to your record in the CRM and.
So that's the web team. They can do all of that just on you hitting a website, right? The sales person's naturally doing that. I'm getting to know Aaron and say, Oh, Aaron, last time I talked, we, you know, you're, you were taking your dog to the vet. Is your dog doing okay? Right. That's part of, that's part of how we be human.
And yet we've got this thing in the middle, which is an opportunity when it comes to webinars or virtual events. And, um, and sadly, sometimes, uh, we just really don't take advantage of what's right at our fingertips. Yeah, last question about the last question about the, uh, the report. Didn't you see in the report?
[00:22:31] Aaron Cole: Very good question. I think, um, I think the biggest thing I didn't see. So again, understanding some of the parameters that, that, that they use to kind of Create this and, and put the metrics together about, you know, revenue and company size, things like that. Makes complete sense. I think probably the biggest thing that, that, that is something that we've talked a lot about that I think is a major player, but is not in the report is the element of consolidation.
Um, consolidation of our industry, consolidation of players, consolidation, even to some degree of trends in feature sets, all of that, I think. Are pretty important because when you stop back and if you go back and just think about the consolidation of platforms, you know, even ring central events, you know, they're, I would hazard to say that the reason that they're listed on this report as well as a major player is because they bought hopping.
You know, I don't think they would probably have made that if they had not consolidated and made that purchase and that is an example, I think, of where as a mature market, we're going to continue to see that aggregation of companies and of, uh, of ideas and products into larger environments. It's only natural.
So I w I would say that's probably the bigger thing. The other thing in terms of consolidation that I think is worth calling out is, um, in, in every platform will bristle. If you tell, if you talk about this, you know, being in a fairly mature market, There's only so many functions and features that you can truly create that are going to be unique and, and noteworthy before everyone starts doing largely the same thing, and everyone starts maybe slightly doing it differently.
Maybe it's a licensing thing, or maybe it's a, maybe it's a, you know, the way that it's displayed on a UI interface or something like that, but it's largely still the same thing. I think that is another thing from a consolidation standpoint that is going to continue to be a very big driver.
[00:24:44] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, it's funny, even as you were saying that I was going back to reading and it's been years since I've read Clayton Christensen was a, a professor at Harvard and wrote some really famous books and it, and he's, I forget how long ago he died, but, but he was a thinker and, and that book that I mentioned before, seeing what's next.
One of his arguments was that product development. Part of the process of maturation is that product development outstrips product adoption. And when you have features that your clients don't value or don't know how to value, then what you end up becoming competitive on is price. And margins get squeezed and, and, and then markets evolve.
And I love how you just put. It brought that around into one word consolidation, because I think of historical examples like, uh, zoom founded by a couple engineers that yes, were came outta WebEx, massive examples. Right. And what did they do different? First of all, they just did 80 20 to begin with. Right.
And we got 80% of the features. But they're the important ones. Number one, but their real innovation actually, interestingly, was a business model of value, uh, evolution, as opposed to a product evolution. Everybody back then had a 30 day free trial. And then, you know, their email team and their inside dev team are calling you to try to get you to convert.
And they said, Hey, when you sign up, we'll give you something you can use forever. Oh, but by the way, it. It's limited to 40 minutes and there's a real convenient button to subscribe if you want to go longer, right? Isn't
[00:26:18] Aaron Cole: that brilliant? Isn't that just Go 30 minutes. Absolutely brilliant. I know,
[00:26:23] Roger Courville, CSP: I know. And bam, I, I, I can't, I can't let this meeting go because I'm on it with a great client.
So I put in my 15 bucks faster and I can, faster I can do anything, right? And the second then was recordings, right? Oh, you wanted to record it. That's worth 15 bucks right there, right?
[00:26:36] Aaron Cole: What's it worth to you? How big we're going to this now? I, I love those examples because they are so brilliant. They're just like.
You know, snapshots of genius, you know, that timing wise marketing licensing wise, it just, it doesn't get any better than that. So yeah.
[00:26:53] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. So I think of, I think of, and just putting on my product marketing hat, I think of your idea of consolidation really kind of happening on like an X, Y axis, right? One axis is represents the.
The use case or the workflow, right? For instance, uh, typically marketers and trainers have a much longer workflow from the beginning of the promotional cycle when I've got to put up a reg page and whatever to the content repurposing and reg, you know, analytics and whatever happens downstream and, uh, Uh, that's a long workflow relative to you and I just firing up a meeting, but the other axis is, is one of, of consolidation or integration with other things, right?
And so you brought up like, uh, purchasing models, right? I mean, I haven't seen anybody yet. Well, I have, but there's, there's very few who, for instance, make it easier to buy a suite of products, right? Think about what Adobe did, right? You used to buy Photoshop, and you used to buy InDesign, and you used to buy Acrobat Pro.
And now you buy Adobe. Put in your money, and you pay him 40 bucks a month or whatever it is, and you just got access to whatever tool I need today. And Aaron needs a different tool, and Roger needs a different tool, but we're just two of the licensees, and away we go. And I haven't really seen somebody pull that off really well yet.
There's a couple that are getting closer, but I think that could be a business innovation that could rock somebody's world.
[00:28:21] Aaron Cole: I agree, totally agree. And I think that, again, that gets to that understanding of it's not going to be, you know, the next latest and greatest platform that's going to just blow the world.
You know, blow the socks off of every other platform because it's likely not going to be there. It's going to be something like that from a, from a feature set, not necessarily, but from a licensing model or how people think about consuming that product. Absolutely.
[00:28:49] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I mean, think about the ITVP that you're selling to where, you know, the, and you're buying a license for everybody in the marketing department or, or ultimately everybody in the company, right?
That's one of the things that Microsoft had, right? Microsoft, you know, had an app for everybody and Aaron uses Excel a lot and Roger uses Power BI and, and I don't have to figure it out on a person by person basis. I just sell one suite of licenses to the ITVP and away we go.
[00:29:20] Aaron Cole: Right. Yeah. Let's shift.
[00:29:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Let's shift from that report to really leaning into 2025 and there were some implications in that report. But let's speak, talk specifically about hybrid. You brought up what has happened in the last five years, right? Obviously COVID crazy enough, you can imagine that's almost was almost five years ago when that was.
I know. Right. And then we saw events are coming back. Oh, events are not coming back. Events are coming. Events are not coming back. As hybrid events continue to evolve. Do you see a balance between virtual and in person? Shifting? Growing? Evolving? If so, how?
[00:30:00] Aaron Cole: I do see a balance. It has been painful to your point over the past five years.
It's like this pendulum just going back and forth with, with the market, with acceptance and all of that, you know. Um, but I do think that to your point, I do think that there is going to be that kind of continued consolidation of, um, what we do for a living and how that's going to find a larger picture, you know, in, in, In our society, because I think that there's a lot of it, you know, marketers came out of the COVID years, um, whether or not they wanted to, whether or not they'll admit it, they came out of the years, understanding that hybrid and virtual events are fairly valuable, you know, coming up with ways to make it now appropriate and acceptable for someone to spend time online at a conference that used to be one of the, one of the bigger hurdles I think was, is that, you know, prior to those years, it was absolutely an outlier about, Oh, I'm not going to go to Florida.
I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to join it online, you know, that's now even beyond acceptable. It's preferable in a lot of ways. And so I do think that the use of that and the fine tuning of, of the hybrid environment, um, is going to continue to solidify even more as we go through, uh, because of the values that it brings, you know, because of the ability to gather audiences that might not be the first ones to jump on your plane, but absolutely can fit into that sales funnel and become a part of your actionable, uh, not passive, but direct marketing to nurture those leads.
Um, so yeah, I, I, I, I don't want to go through the last five years again. I'll be the first to say that. I'm, I'm done with the roller coaster ride, but I do think where we're at and seeing that kind of solid platform, that solid foundation and that understanding and acceptance of what virtual events can do for a business in that gradual climb.
[00:32:06] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I, uh, I'll still put this out there as a prediction. One of the things that the report mentioned, just kind of referring back to what we were just talking about, was that. Almost two thirds of people they surveyed will attend one to five virtual events in the year, but half of them will do more than six.
Right? So this has become, and that's of U. S. workers, as I recall from the report. So that's a lot of people. So that's, that's a lot of eyeball time.
[00:32:36] Aaron Cole: A lot of connections. Yes.
[00:32:37] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. And. Uh, without going into examples for the sake of not making this four hours long, you and I have even seen people's business models evolve as they got their heads wrapped around virtual, right?
I used to be a primarily in person seminar company and now I do fewer in person seminars and I mostly do it online because my audience expectations are evolving and they say, Hey, it's kind of nice to sleep in my own bed. Nice to meet you in Boston and, uh, have a drink. But it's also nicer to just sleep in my own bed and be able to walk the dog at lunchtime.
That's great. And, and so one of the things that I think of is that we're gonna see is people's understanding of what tool fits best, where or what scenario fits best. Where is one is gonna get a little more discerning, right? It's already growing in that direction. I think it's got some room to grow. And the second thing is, I think someone's going to figure out how to have a smaller, much less costly in person event.
And maybe we have 300 people instead of trying to push a thousand people there. But now we reach the thousand or 5, 000 online online and it's, and it's in a sense the best of both worlds. Now, what happens to your design thinking? when most of the people I'm going to reach are going to be online as opposed to in person.
I think there's still some room to grow there as well.
[00:34:07] Aaron Cole: I would agree. Yep. And I think that's another very, very, I'm glad you brought that up Roger because I think that is a very sizable change in how people view. It's an indicator of the importance of it because you know, we have always come from this from the standpoint of you have to, you have to preserve, you have to accommodate the virtual audience.
And it was always. An uphill battle and to your point again, that is largely changing because of the, the, the, uh, opening up of who could potentially come and sit in and be a part of your event, regardless of where they're at, regardless of, you know, their time zone. I guess if they want to attend it overnight, whatever it happens to be, they, they have that ability.
And so I do think you're exactly right. That's a big change and that's a welcome one from our standpoint because I think it's going to pervert, it's going to provide higher return on investment because you've got more eyeballs, you've got more leads, more actionable data, ultimately for less money than it's going to cost you to fly everybody to Reno or wherever it happens to be.
[00:35:11] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, my word for you, but I think you, this was what you just said, There's something about experience and we all get it. We love an in person experience. But one of the reasons that people show up to events live in real time, as opposed to simply watching the recording, is also experience, right? People in learning and development have known for a long time that active Learners or participants learn better than passive participants, right?
And the history or past of, of hybrid events has often been, Okay, we have this live event. Oh, and we also happen to live stream it out. And, but Aaron's just sitting there like a bump on the wall and we wouldn't know if he was there or not. As opposed to people that are now thinking ahead and going, Ah, we want to create an experience.
We want something, you know, for instance, I've worked with a, worked with a client where, where they actually had it. a dedicated pair of MCs who sat in a hallway and they'd grab people going by in the hallway and stick a microphone in front of their face. And they'd, you know, and in strategic times, they'd be interacting with, and that was all for the online audience.
Right. And, and, and so sometimes you were piped into watching the keynote and sometimes you were interacting with these two special MCs who were, who were asking you and seeing you. And that's a, it was just really powerful.
[00:36:31] Aaron Cole: Yep. I love that.
[00:36:32] Roger Courville, CSP: Another leaning forward kind of thing that's been in the works for a long time and yet probably still hasn't really come to as much fruition as it will.
Those virtual trade show 3D experiences, whether it's extended reality or 3D environments, I think there's a lot of upside there. Thoughts on those kinds of virtual shows where I. like second life. I walk in, I can go to the vendor booth. Oh, because it's time to walk into the main hall and see the keynote.
[00:37:08] Aaron Cole: Right. Right. Um, yeah, I, I absolutely think that there is potential there. I come at it, I think a little slightly, maybe more jaded, um, from a standpoint, because what I want to see and where I would look at it from a standpoint of is making sure that the novelty of the technology does not. replace or, uh, cover over the quality of the content.
And I do think, you know, whenever, whenever there's something that's new, that comes out, I think we always have to be careful of that. And to your point, I can, and maybe this is where I'm jaded from before, but I remember like years ago when, when the first virtual environments came out and you, you know, you chose what shirt you were going to wear in your virtual environment and you know, whatever you decided to go and stuff like that, which was fun, which was great.
But I would be the first one to say, I don't know if I came to this virtual environment to learn content compared to, you know, choosing my Hawaiian shirt, I probably came here to learn the content. And so, uh, I think we need to be careful of that. There is no doubt whatsoever that, you know, 3d virtual reality, extended reality, those kinds of environments have a massive, um, potential in those more collaborative.
sessions in those more hands on training or, you know, group collaboration or, you know, things that are smaller environments. I think it has a massive potential. I just want to, I think it's important that the technology, um, is a facilitator and not the reason for the flash in the pan kind of a meeting of why you're doing it.
So coming up with ways to make sure that it's relevant to the topic, that it coincides and complements the topic and the messaging of the meeting I think are key. But I agree, I think that um, well I can guarantee you there's going to be stuff that people are going to come up with in terms of ways to use that technology that, that we certainly haven't thought of that are going to be brilliant, you know.
The ones that are going to remain, I think, are those that, that, again, are not just there for the technology sake.
[00:39:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I'll just put an exclamation point behind that. The bandwidth is there like it never has been in the past. Uh, CPU power, et cetera, FPUs and, and, and GPUs and LMNOPs and, right, all of that, they're like possible, but you're dead on correct, right?
It's kind of like somebody who discovers animations in PowerPoint and next thing you know, the very next PowerPoint's got flying crap from Mars coming in on every slide.
[00:39:54] Aaron Cole: Great. Exactly.
[00:39:55] Roger Courville, CSP: When really the question is, does the movement or proximity or something communicate something that's part of the message as opposed to just whirly gig word art and which, which may have been interesting at the time, but it gets really old really fast and it doesn't keep attention.
I do think, I do think there is a time when, when the question is how immersive Right, because think about like our work with Hoppin and RingCentralEvents or, or a virtual event platform like that, like we were talking about before, keynotes here, uh, breakout sessions over here with the Mount Hood room and the St.
Helens room and the, and the Mount Shasta room. And then here's the vendor booths over here if you want to go talk to vendors. that can all be branded and has built in virtual networking and things like, there's a lot of on boots on the ground functionality there that facilitates human behavior and human connection that gets the job done long before you take the risk of going, Oh, who is somebody in my audience not going to have the bandwidth to, is their computer going to choke because they log into this thing and.
And, uh, and they're sitting in a Starbucks and now it doesn't work
[00:41:19] Aaron Cole: and now they're mad because it doesn't work. Right. Right. Yeah. Yep. I hear you. All right. Last
[00:41:24] Roger Courville, CSP: question with regard to trends. What strategies can marketers use to avoid the trap of, of turning events into just work TV?
[00:41:37] Aaron Cole: Yeah.
[00:41:38] Roger Courville, CSP: Or is that okay?
[00:41:39] Aaron Cole: Yeah, yeah. Well, so I got to say that was one of the things that I really, really thought was, was powerful in the latest report was that whole nomenclature of, of work TV. And if I remember right, they were, um, they kind of prefaced it as a difference between participatory and attendees, people that are actively, that you're actively participating in compared to a more passive or work TV type of an environment.
Um, and I do think that that's a very, very good call out because I do feel like that is, um, that is potentially another danger or another way to look at it. Because what I think about, um, from a virtual TV standpoint, the minute you get into that past or you revert back, let me put it that way to the passive.
Um, uh, integration and passive involvement. Your message is expendable at that point as a marketer. Your message has a much harder chance of, of actually landing. Um, if you're not actively participating and you're not actively nurturing that relationship. That goes right back to some of the things that we've already been talking about, you know, and again, from a societal standpoint, I think that's another trend that you can see those relationships and that similarity boil down to our environment.
You just look at, look at our, look at our television viewing habits, the on demand, always on, what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. How I want to watch it. It's the exact same analogy. And so if you go back to the idea of, you know, we're just going to be this passive, always on work TV kind of an environment, I would be very careful for that.
I think that's potentially dangerous because I think the ones that are going to succeed. are the ones that find that larger picture more and more ways to nurture and grow and provide on demand and content that's relevant to you on an individual basis. I think that's where you have to almost go, even going back to the whole discussion we had a few minutes about, about cookies and making that be something that I want to participate in, that I'm going to provide data back to you, that I'm going to then expect to receive better, more valuable content in the future.
And I'm happy to give you my data at that point, because I want you to, you know, so to me, it's like all related, this very similar kind of larger societal topic that I think marketers really need to be aware of and potentially steer clear of that whole idea of, of that passive. Work TV type engagement.
[00:44:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Or keep it in its right place
[00:44:28] Aaron Cole: or keep it in its right place.
[00:44:29] Roger Courville, CSP: So when I was consulting with clients a lot, one of the things that I would do would be put up a chart that, and I think I even embedded that in one of our blog posts sometime in the last year that looked at. Time and place as two separate variables.
So we can be in the same time in the same place that's in person Okay, we understand that has a space in my overall go to market strategy And then we have different time different place and that's on demand content That's a video that I put on YouTube or that's my portal where I can come watch old You know past webinars and but then there's same time different place, which would be the virtual thing.
And so then I would ask them, don't you use all of these? And don't, don't we argue that there's a time to put a video on, on YouTube as opposed to having an in person thing. And the question isn't one of right or wrong. The question is what is the right thing at this point in the cycle or for relative to where we're at with our particular strategy.
And. You know, it was a, it was a good way to, to bring up a conversation. One of the things that I think that we're seeing shaking out used to be a lot more problematic, but to you, one of the points that you just made, there's a time when you just have on demand content. But then the question I think is, how, how do we create uniquely valuable live experiences?
So people want to show up to the show. to your live event, online or off, right? We think about that naturally when we think, okay, we're going to rent something at the San Diego convention center. And how do we put up signs that help people get there? And what kind of things are we going to facilitate during breaks to facilitate networking or, or whatever, or support our vendors.
And, uh, I see that evolving significantly in, in the next couple of years as people are getting a little more shrewd about. About that kind of thing.
[00:46:23] Aaron Cole: Yeah, I think you're right. I think those are great points.
[00:46:26] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, because, and this goes back to statistics that I used to quote from a report in 2011, starting to feel old, but there was a time when Twitter back then I was long before Twitter was a weird household name, right?
They partnered with Nielsen, the TV ratings company, and they did an analysis of people multitasking while they watch TV. and relative to using Twitter and found that certainly people are a lot more attuned to live stuff for things, obviously, like news, breaking news, sports, sports, right? If I'm just rewatching a movie, it doesn't have to be live like when I grew up as a kid and you made it sure to tune in at 7 p.
m. on a Tuesday night, right? And so people are getting smarter about that. I think there's a place for both. That's one of the beautiful things about integrations. What on 24 has done other other clients where they're bringing the live experience a little closer to the follow up experience so that someone can come back to maybe even a customized portal or something that feeds them up content.
The, the, the, not just the rip, the event that they just missed, but other things that might be important and useful to them.
[00:47:43] Aaron Cole: 100 percent and you know one thing we haven't even even brought up yet today is is the importance and the value of AI in predicting some of that but it but it goes right in line with that about finding ways to present content that's either more relevant or more timely or both.
me as a consumer. Um, that's absolutely it. And the other thing I would say to your point as well, too, about, uh, where all of this is headed, um, you know, the, the, the amount of noise in the market is not going to go away. The amount of, the amount of messages looking for eyeballs is not going to lessen. And so you absolutely, from a marketing standpoint, really need to be aware of that and need to arm yourself with the correct tools and find ways to be creative.
Find ways to help you be creative and find ways to get your message out there because your, your competitors are likely already doing that, you know, and so it's not going to go away. It's not going to change. Um, I agree with you completely that as our, as our consumption habits continue to evolve, that's going to push a lot more changes too.
[00:48:57] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, you're right. And we've talked a lot about AI in the past. Yeah. And we didn't hear, and I'm not even necessarily suggesting we go there, but you just highlighted an example of using AI that gets beyond what, what's, what everybody's got access to now, right? Whether it's built into, built into your platform and many or most of them have it now, where you can generate some ideas for some registration page copy, or you go plug something into chat GPT to generate some ideas for copy for a LinkedIn post,
[00:49:27] Aaron Cole: right?
[00:49:28] Roger Courville, CSP: Actually taking that to the next level. of personalization analysis, you know, the, the typical business intelligence kinds of things that increase relevance and trust is, is just barely starting to happen. Right. And that Matt, to your point earlier about consolidation and integration, right? That's a whole lot easier when all of these various tools start getting baked into the same, into the same platform or not platform, but.
They all start talking to each other right now. I can get, I have much more access to understanding behavioral data and then being able to serve things up that, uh, that is appropriate.
[00:50:08] Aaron Cole: Absolutely.
[00:50:09] Roger Courville, CSP: All right. Two questions and we'll be done here. Uh, you kind of spoke about this a little earlier, but in a nutshell, how have audience expectations evolved since the pandemic?
even after some of the crazy whiplash stuff that we saw, and how has it evolved perhaps in 2024 in the way that might extend into 2025? And what does it mean for event organizers moving forward?
[00:50:35] Aaron Cole: Yeah. Wow. That's a great question. Um, and I don't know if I honestly have the best answer for it other than I do think that when you, when you start from that high level view of looking at the past five years that we've gone through and look at how we have changed Um, a lot of what we just talked about in terms of the acceptance of, of online events and the acceptance of, um, uh, attending and benefiting from, you know, what we do for a business, but then also the expectation of my content that I want to see my content that's relevant to me when it's relevant to me and how I want to consume it and where I want to consume it.
Those are massive drivers that change everything on our society. Um, as much even more so for a virtual event type of a, of an organizer or an audience. I don't think you can ignore that anymore. You know, it's like the, the, the cat's out of the bag in terms of what people are expecting to see and hear and how they're expecting to, to hear it.
Um, so when I think about. where would I try to be if I was a marketer getting in front of an audience or the audience, you know, that we are these days? Um, I think you have to arm yourself again with the tools that are going to help you make those very difficult journeys with the attendees and with the potential sales leads that you've got.
And it starts with understanding that again, it's not a passive relationship anymore. It's not. Those days are gone. You know, you, you can't, you can't go back to that. It's not passive. It is now, uh, deliberate. It is now forward leaning where you are pushing content to them. The more relevant, the better. The more it fits within what they might want to read, hear, or learn from, the better.
And there are, without a doubt, some marketers that, that are, amazingly talented in doing that. They're probably fairly rare. And so for the rest of us, mere mortals, finding tools that can help us to do that, that can segment out leads and can help us to understand what's going to have the most resonance with a very scattered and fragmented market.
Sign me up, man, sign me up for those tools, because I realized that they're going to largely. provide me an ability to get to where I need to go. Um, it's a very, I don't know. I mean, you, you got to think about where are we going to be in five years from now. It's, it's a very kind of daunting kind of thing to predict and no one can do that.
But I think what you're, what I would look at it from the standpoint of is again, arming myself with the best possible chance for success, which is, recognizing and getting front of people the way that they want to be messaged to.
[00:53:35] Roger Courville, CSP: No argument, because the world is as noisy as it's ever been,
[00:53:38] Aaron Cole: and it's going to get noisier.
Yes.
[00:53:41] Roger Courville, CSP: I love that you bring up that the way I'll put it is the right tools can make you smarter. Yes. Right. Tools can not just automate something that you do, but it can maybe even help you do something that you didn't even think to do before because it helps you execute. And I'll add, I'll add another T.
Tools and teams.
[00:54:03] Aaron Cole: Yes. I was just going
[00:54:04] Roger Courville, CSP: to bring that up. with a lot of stuff, right? You don't need a PhD to fire up a zoom session, right? For a meeting. No, we get that. But we work with clients day in and day out. And this is not self promoting because there's plenty of places you can go for professional services, but there is a degree of complexity.
either one crazy event because we're going to have three keynotes and a whole bunch of breakout sessions, or over time with regard to programs, because now just getting that going, the right team can make you smarter, just like the right tool can make you smarter. Absolutely. And I'll just say this because to me, this kind of hits the business case thing.
The live event is still to me, one of the most economical top. of the process ways to author content, right? Think about what it would take to take Aaron subject matter expert. We get him into a studio, even if it's local. And now producing a video is 15 or 30 grand, right? And now what are we going to do with it?
Cause now we still need to drive bodies as opposed to just saying, Aaron, let's get you on working with the moderator or the producer or on a panel. Now your expertise becomes available to people. And now it is then reusable, repurposable, or whatever that might be. And tools and teams can make you smarter.
[00:55:31] Aaron Cole: I agree. And the opportunity cost of not having the right tool, the opportunity cost of not having the right team, so that your message is not delivered, either if it is for an archive recording or a live event, it almost doesn't matter. But the opportunity cost of not achieving that is, is massive. And that's where we're always going to come at it from a, from a team standpoint, from a professional services standpoint, the opportunity cost of making sure that it's done correctly and with the professionalism that it requires and that it needs is, is that's the whole deal.
That's what it's worth.
[00:56:12] Roger Courville, CSP: Last question.
[00:56:14] Aaron Cole: Anyways,
[00:56:17] Roger Courville, CSP: what question should I have asked you that I haven't?
[00:56:22] Aaron Cole: Wow. Um, I think as always, I think we've covered quite a bit of ground, you know, um, I love having these discussions about, um, about like the IDC report, the inner report, because I think it provides such a snapshot. The one thing I don't think that, um, or the one thing I would say that I think is another, um, thing that we haven't largely touched on, but it's another driver is thinking through, you know, where some of these platforms, you know, where are they going to scale up to?
And what is that end game going to be, you know, from a, from a, either a product standpoint or a market standpoint, you 24, obviously quite a bit. They are not. Going to be looking at themselves in the mirror saying, Oh, I'm a webinar provider, or I, you know, all I do is I, I, I'm a virtual event company. I provide a webinar room for people.
They are scaling up and above that, obviously, for, for a lot of the reasons that we've talked about. I think that's another thing. Um, just in passing that is, that is worth mentioning as well, too. That's going to grow. That's not going to go away. just like everything else we've talked about.
[00:57:38] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, as our dear friend, uh, dearly departed friend and past business partner of mine, I've started two companies with him.
Scott Driscoll used to say he or she who aggregates wins.
[00:57:51] Aaron Cole: Yes.
[00:57:51] Roger Courville, CSP: Who puts more at the fingers of the person who needs to get a job done to impress their boss, to reach and connect with their audience, to build trust in every direction, the person who aggregates wins. And, uh, there are some people that are doing it better than others.
[00:58:06] Aaron Cole: Yes. That's that's that's a that's a goal for sure.
[00:58:12] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, Aaron, thank you so much for a little bit of you Yeah, happy holidays and hey for those of you that follow along on our thought leader conversations series Thanks for being on this journey with us. We look forward to being part of part of the journey in 2025 and thanks for all of the ways that you connect with us, you interact with us on social media when you send us those emails or, or otherwise just let us know you're paying attention.
And of course, thank you to our clients. We will catch you in 2025.
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