If you’re like every other event planner on the planet, you’ve had to cancel or postpone an event because of the coronavirus. After saying your share of WTFs and considering all the other things to worry about, you might wonder if the time and effort you put into planning your event will go to waste.
It doesn’t have to.
Happy 2018! A new year and a fresh start. Star Wars and Jumanji are at the top of the box office, new Will and Grace episodes are on NBC and a Roseanne reboot is coming soon. There’s even (lukewarm) buzz about a possible return of the 90s sitcom Mad About You.
Blasts from the 70s, 80s and 90s are back, bringing comfortably filtered memories of bygone days in the glow of today’s digital screens.
Now that Luke Skywalker is older than the original Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi, it’s time to take a new look at the familiar. Here’s how to use nostalgia marketing to strike an emotional connection with your audiences.
If that describes your day, we’re sorry, you deserve better. On the plus side, there’s a day in your honor: December 15, National Cat Herders Day.
This special date made us think of the challenges of event planning – more specifically, event registration. Slippery and unpredictable? Yes, but it doesn’t have to be.
We tracked down Bryan Meyer, Lightspeed’s head of event operations and registration management, fresh off his most recent red-eye flight from a customer event. What better time for an interview, we thought, as we asked for his cat-herding-whisperer insights into making event registration simply the cat’s meow.
You want to make your event a “Wow!” for your audience, right? Engaging. Memorable. Above all, an event experience.
Let’s set the backstory with an opening crawl (we’re Lightspeed, we’re allowed):
A long time ago, in a conference center far, far away.
It is a dark time for event attendees. Keynote speakers, entrenched behind their podiums, hit every bullet on their PowerPoint slides with relentless force.
In the darkness, audience members shift in their seats and cough in sequence. Dreaming of the scheduled agenda break.
The besieged event planner huddles backstage. A daring new hope glimmers for a brighter, engaging future…”
It’s not often that you can say you’ve helped change an industry’s approach to channel marketing. Today, as we reflect on the 10-year anniversary of Cisco’s Marketing Velocity program, we get to do just that.
10 years ago, Cisco was presented with a challenge:
Develop an immersive program that will help increase the number of partners engaging with them in co-marketing, while simultaneously improving their overall marketing expertise to drive greater return on their co-marketing investments. And this program needs to be one that can be easily replicated across the globe. They needed a program that would help make stronger marketers across their channel by giving them not just tools but also the knowledge in how to use them.
