What do you do when a global pandemic comprises your largest annual event? Just ask The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). In a pinch, they needed to pivot a 3-part premier, along with a 2,000 person black-tire affair hosted at the Museum of Modern Art, into a series of online experiences. Splash’s branded virtual venue, complete with automated check-in, bring-your-own streaming and engagement tech, and secure tracking, made what seemed like an impossible feat a unanimous success.
The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) represents, exclusively, the interests of commercial production companies specializing in producing commercials in various media — film, video, and digital — for advertisers and agencies. Founded in 1972, AICP supports their members with education and professional development, labor negotiations and other representation, celebrating commercial production with events and awards shows, and more. These photos were taken at one of AICP's events in 2019.
The coronavirus pandemic forced live event cancellations worldwide, leaving teams scrambling. In what seemed like an overnight shift, event marketers had to learn everything they could about transforming their would-be in-person events into virtual events.
While all of this was unfolding, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) was organizing their largest annual events, The AICP Awards, comprising three premiers — the AICP Next Awards, The AICP Post Awards, and the AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the Commercial. These events, which celebrate the craft, creativity, and collaboration of the best marketing communications in the motion image, were hosted over multiple days in New York City and culminated with the AICP Show debut, a 2,000-attendee gathering at The Museum of Modern Art.
Needless to say, AICP’s team had to pivot sharply. And they had to do so quickly, while facing a virtual-event learning curve and keeping guest experience as their highest priority.
Ask any event marketer about their biggest challenges with virtual events, and many will tell you the same thing: keeping attendees engaged from behind a computer screen.
The AICP team was no exception. They knew they had to dedicate meaningful time to an attendee engagement strategy, especially since their event was much more complex than an hour-long webinar or online panel discussion.
“We discussed at length how to engage people in a setting that feels like it’s live and mimics the energy of an in-person event as much as possible,” said Aurora Warfield, AICP’s National Events Producer. “We wanted everyone to be able to talk about the work and watch it together in a way that felt like a group experience instead of an isolated one.
“We also wanted to make sure our attendees still felt like they were getting a white-glove experience, even though we couldn’t host our usual events, including the black-tie premiere at The Museum of Modern Art.
“But at the end of the day, this event has always been about the craft in our industry. So, among all the conversations and decisions around attendee engagement, we still had to make sure the AICP brand and the purpose of our event didn’t get lost in the shuffle of us trying to elevate the experience.”
We got rave reviews, and Splash was a big part of that. Our attendees said that our event was the most seamless, most beautiful, and most well-executed virtual awards show. Splash gave us a really great architecture that gave us the branding, the gating, the ease of use, and the data. But mostly, it enabled us to present something that our attendees truly enjoyed.
Kristin Wilcha, Vice President of Operations
The AICP team knew they had to move quickly in this pivot to a virtual awards show, but they were cautious to avoid rash decisions — especially when it came to the technologies they would use for their event.
“At first, we were just thinking about a registration software and housing the event somewhere else, because we had a few options,” said Aurora. “But then as we progressed down this road, we encountered different obstacles in our goal to make the experience seamless for guests.
“On all levels, we wanted to remove as many barriers as possible for entry and engagement. This meant having a platform that made logging in easy. We wanted it to feel as though — similar to the in-person event — they arrive at a place, they enter through a doorway, and they have that full brand experience while making their way to the main stage.”
And of course, an event wouldn’t be an event without the ability to track attendee data, which was another requirement AICP had for an event marketing platform.
“Having attendee data is wonderful, but our number-one priority was ease of use for our attendees,” said Aurora. “So, if a platform could give us great data, but it became a barrier for guest experience, it wasn’t the platform for us.”
Luckily, AICP found they didn’t have to compromise on any of this. After looking at all of their options, they found that Splash checked all of their requirements.
Splash enabled us to keep attendees engaged through a unified system and throughout multiple touchpoints, from branded invites to registration to event updates. As they went along with us on this journey to a virtual awards show, it was important that every touchpoint — no matter how big or small — made the experience smooth and easy.
Aurora Warfield, National Events Producer
“Because everything was on Splash, we were able to present our event in a way in keeping with the craft, creativity, and elegance our audience expects,” said Kristin Wilcha, AICP’s Vice President of Operations. “With live streaming tools, you may be limited with what you’re able to do in terms of branding. With Splash, we built a really beautiful house for our awards shows, plus had all of the back-end functionality and data to support it.”
Using Splash as the “house” for the entire awards show, the AICP team embedded YouTube for the live stream and connected a chat technology to make for a seamless attendee touchpoint.
Katie Mulligan, AICP’s Manager of East and National Events, agreed that the back-end data was intuitive and helped her understand event performance.
“It was so important that I could go on the back-end and see where the majority of people registered for the event, whether through social media or directly through the event page,” said Katie. “We were also able to see how many people attended over the three nights, who checked in, and how long they stayed.
“At the end of each awards season, I’m usually going through lists and manually tracking how many people from a given company bought tickets and attended. And because of the unique URL that each attendee used to enter the event, I didn’t have to do that this year. The data was simply tracked for us.”
When you’re running an event in real time, you have that sense of adrenaline and you always have your guard up. With Splash, it wasn’t like that. It was so refreshing to not feel as stressed and to know that people really enjoyed themselves. Splash gave us all the tools we needed — the brand customization, the data, and the guest experience. I’m a huge evangelist of it now.
Kate Mulligan, Manager of East and National Events
According to Kristin, many advertising industry awards shows went virtual this year, so they had to market and manage the event right — and she attributes a part of their success to the technology.
“We got rave reviews, and Splash was a big part of that,” said Kristin. “Our attendees said almost unanimously that our event was the most seamless, most beautiful, and most well-executed virtual awards show.
“Splash gave us a really great architecture that gave us the branding, the gating, the ease of use, and the data. But mostly, it enabled us to present something that our attendees truly enjoyed.”
