Think Outside the Box Seats
We make it harder than it needs to be to throw a creative shindig outside the big cities. Movie theatres, art museums and show stages are all used in plenty of metros. Earlier this week, the triple-tiered Hudson Theatre allowed us to choose how center stage we wanted to be while listening to speakers at the Conversational Marketing Summit in New York City.
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- Hudson Theatre NYC
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- Inside the CM Summit
Options like the Hudson are alternative venues that create a relaxing space to take in a day of intense speaker presentations. The event included plush red seats, a few signs up front, a multi-media screen and a blast of indie music thrown in for good measure. Nothing fancy, yet effective. Federated Media, the host, did a nice job mixing up the format with a splash of multi-panelist discussions, interviews and individual presenters. They speakers weren’t all fabulous, but the overall style and business variety – corporate, start-up, investors, and agencies – worked. And a few high-powered video ad campaigns from the likes of P&G and Intel added a little spice.
As the definition of an event space changes, there’s also a new definition of “audience participation.” Gone are the days when booting up your laptop during a presentation is taboo, an insult. Granted, it was a social media crowd, but this event looked like a rock concert, except the “lighters” were blackberrys, netbooks, laptops and iPhones. (Lynyrd Skynyrd’s famous tune even surfaced in one brand lesson when Marc Ruxin of McCann Worldgroup commented, “If everyone could have their own Freebird,” flashing a picture of the virtual Zippo lighter in full flame on the iPhone.)
Local venues need to be flexible and encourage new ways of using their space, especially if it attracts revenue, visibility and casts a creative light on future potential opportunities. The ability to accommodate technology requirements like videotaping, music and mics is basic stuff. We need to think outside the box seats. It’s valuable to offer a change of pace and not confine attendees to a stark conference room or corporate hotel. Event managers should feel inspired to push the envelope and bag the status quo.
