Anheuser-Busch Virtual Sustainability Event
Challenge/Opportunity
For the last two years, Bishop-McCann has worked with Anheuser-Busch to create spectacular live events. But due to the pandemic, the organization had to rethink their meetings and events in 2020. When they wanted to host their Eclipse Sustainability Summit, they turned to us to pivot to a virtual experience that would immerse and engage their attendees.
The main challenge our team faced when creating this annual meeting for Anheuser-Busch’s external stakeholders was making the transition from an in-person to a virtual event. On top of this transition, the team only had 28 days to produce this 2-day summit for over 350 attendees.
Anheuser-Busch sought to create this virtual event to continue a dialogue with stakeholders and vendors in their supply chain in order to share their latest sustainability goals and objectives. Additionally, Anheuser-Busch wanted to ensure that Eclipse—their sustainability program—was the prominent theme of the event. They wanted Eclipse’s visuals and branding to be integrated through the entirety of the summit.
Response/Solution
To begin the planning process, the Bishop-McCann team held a kickoff call with the client to identify their goals and objectives for the summit. Once those objectives were clearly identified, our team began creating a virtual event that accomplished the organization’s goal of creating an engaging virtual experience for their attendees, allowing them to continue the important dialogue around driving meaningful change for the environment.
One aspect Anheuser-Busch wanted to include was the opportunity for key vendors to participate in an expo to give attendees the opportunity to meet “face-to-face.” Along with the expo, the client also wanted a general session and breakout sessions. To meet the client’s need for Eclipse visuals, we integrated branding into every element. Some of the branded elements included picture-in-picture (PIP) frames, stinger videos, welcome videos, a custom event website, and more. Within our custom website, attendees could easily navigate to find every component of the program they needed to access, including the agenda, information about the event, background on the speakers, FAQ, the expo, and the platform to watch live.
The event was streamed through the custom event website our team created for the Eclipse Sustainability Summit. There were various aspects implemented into the program to increase engagement for the attendees at home, such as a countdown timer to generate excitement and a QR code that allowed guests to input their own questions that were then asked to the upcoming panel. Along with these features, our team ensured that motion, eye-catching graphics, and music were incorporated to further elevate the meeting and keep attendees immersed in the program.
In addition to incorporating a panel discussion into this event, Bishop-McCann was able to manipulate the feed when introducing each of the panel experts to go into a two-shot (showing only the expert and the moderator). Panel members also had their name and their organization displayed at the beginning of the session. Plus, presenters were able to be seen while their slides were displayed beside them to aid in retention and engagement.
Bishop-McCann provided an account director, program manager, attendee manager, executive producer, technical director, creative director, and lead graphic designer to create this virtual event. Even with the short time frame given to our team, we were able to successfully execute every component of the program, including virtual production, creative, logistics, and event registration.
Outcome/Results
The challenge of pivoting from a live event to a virtual event was successfully accomplished. Bishop-McCann was able to create a flawless virtual experience for more than 350 attendees from 10 different countries. There were 11 streamed sessions, 12 expo providers, and 12 speakers for the 2-day summit with only 28 days of planning.
The post-event survey showed that the attendees found the summit to be a success as well. On a five-star scale, guests were asked to rate the following: the quality of the summit webpage, the overall content relevance, and the overall quality of the content. All areas were given over four stars! One attendee even said, “I really enjoyed being able to see everything and being able to be comfortable while attending this event. I felt as though I absorbed more information being online than I would have in person.”
Overall, Anheuser-Busch’s Eclipse Sustainability Summit was an extremely successful virtual event that not only informed the attendees but also kept them engaged with the content.