Can social media be décor?

In an age when planners are obsessed with socializing their events, Sam wanted to make social media sexy and make it part of the decoration. “Most technology providers make everything look like the 1980´s. The decoration is very nice but the tech infrastructure doesn´t match it, is not as attractive”, especially when it comes to social media elements, often limited to a basic tweetwall.

So for Lexus, they created a videowall, taking the social media content to make it part of the décor. “You need art and science”, says Sam. Given the data and processing it is science, but making it appealing is art. This dynamic wall (images are constantly renewed and moving) includes photos and videos automatically fetched from several social networks (whenever the event´s hashtag is included): twitter, facebook, Instagram. This gives an incentive for people to post content (they love to watch it come up on the screen) and creates a lively, dynamic decoration element. Result: more than 600 photos and videos were shared on Instagram. They generated over 40,000 likes and 900 comments in 24 hours.

Also some clients take their message and want to control it, so their priority is to make the event easy to be distributed on social networks. A platform including many of the event´s photos can be used so people post event photos on the social networks they wish. This is done mostly onsite (most organisers want to spread the word right away), but it can also be done after the event, creating great branding for the client. This photo management can be offered as mere software, or as a turnkey solution with on-site management.

Other example: for a 300 pax event for IBM, Sam created a game bar, in which attendees could use iPads to answer questions about the conference. “It is a fun way to digest content. Also people start commenting the questions and discussing the conference content, which is very useful”. 25.000 questions were answered, and people brought home a better knowledge of the conference content, besides having connected to one another.