FAST FACTS Event: Salesforce World Tour Sydney Reimagined Date: 4 March 2020 Location: Broadcast from ICC Sydney Studios Reach: 1.5 million people across live stream and social media
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Who: The Company We Keep
A virtual success
Just 10 days out from the event, Salesforce World Tour was transformed into a live broadcast that attracted more engagement than organisers could have ever imagined. By Brittney Levinson.
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alesforce World Tour was among the first major business events to be impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia. Scheduled to take place at the International Convention Centre Sydney in March 2020, the annual conference was just 10 days away when organisers decided the physical event could not go ahead due to COVID-19 concerns. Rather than postpone or cancel the event completely, the Australian leg of the World Tour, which was expecting some 10,000 delegates, was reimagined and delivered as a virtual event to an even bigger audience. Through digital streaming and extended social media coverage, Salesforce World Tour Sydney Reimagined reached an estimated 1.5 million viewers. Here’s how it was done.
1. S peakers Turia Pitt, Craig Foster, Billie Jean King and Erin Molan on stage at Salesforce World Tour 2. L eandro Perez, VP Asia Pacfic marketing at Salesforce, speaking to camera 3. B ehind the scenes at ICC Sydney 4. P anel on stage at Salesforce World Tour 5. Welcome to Country performance in studio
12 Spice Winter 2020
Reimagining the event Behind the event and its digital transformation was event management agency, The Company We Keep (TCWK), who were determined to ensure the virtual event would be as engaging as the real thing. “We couldn’t just go ahead with the live show as it was and then just record it, that wouldn’t be interesting,” says TCWK founder Nigel Ruffell. The solution? A live broadcast from ICC Sydney, complete with 11 different stages, LED backdrop walls and 4K broadcast cameras.
Guest speakers were given a crash course on how to present without a live audience and the content was adjusted for maximum engagement. “We were very conscious that people were at home watching it where they could just wander off and make a cup of tea,” says Ruffell. “We had to transform the whole perception of how the content was presented.” To make it as dynamic as possible, the event included a mixture of pre-recorded content and live crosses. Guest speakers in the studio included sports icon Billie Jean King, CSIRO chair David Thodey, OzHarvest CEO and founder Ronni Kahn, presenter and sports reporter Erin Molan, and mining engineer and athlete Turia Pitt. Some teams hosted viewing parties, in accordance with the social distancing guidelines at the time, to allow small groups to watch the event together.
Increased engagement With a combined engagement across actual viewers and social media of 1.5 million people, the event was even more successful than expected, says Ruffell. “We were worried about [reimagining the event] at the outset – how are people going to take this if they’re used to being there in person?” he says. “But the feedback has been incredibly positive. We’re really pleased, especially with the time we had to turn it all around.”
