Hybrid events! The allow you to reach a far greater audience than you could possibly reach at an in-person gala, they can build awareness across entirely new audiences, build mailing lists, build community and of course, inspire donations.

So how do you create a hybrid event with this kind of impact? An online event that…

  • Emotionally engages your audience
  • Inspires your audience to share the event with their social networks
  • Makes your audience feel part of the greater community
  • Gives your old and new supporters a deeper sense of connection with your cause
  • Encourages your audience to donate multiple times during the show
  • IS FUN?

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of IMPACT.

The pursuit of perfect is the number one way that orgs deplete the impact of their hybrid event, often in the form of a pre-recorded video. They plan and edit for weeks — sometimes spending tens of thousands of dollars on editors and copywriters. Then they present their perfect one hour live event as a pre-recorded video. Now, it might have been a truly beautiful one hour video, but you spent all that money and time and creativity but left all the Impact on the table! Why? Because the data backed truth is that no one watched it. Perhaps your most ardent supporters showed up at the beginning and perhaps they watched a lot of it, but no one else did. Why? Because that’s not how it works.

The internet is built for doing: scrolling, clicking, chatting, liking, playing, commenting, buying. Therefor the average pre-recorded video view — a video that you passively watch — is between 3–10 seconds across all social platforms. The same is true for your beautiful video. It’s hard to swallow, but it’s a cold hard fact about online audience behavior.

It might have been a truly beautiful one hour video, but you spent all that money and time and creativity and left the IMPACT on the table!

So what was your ROI? If no one watched it, no one shared it. If no one watched it, no one felt a stronger sense of connection to your cause, or a part of your community. No one donated multiple times during the show, like the might during an IRL Event.

So how do you create an Impactful event? Again, to define Impactful we mean a virtual or hybrid event that:

  • Emotionally engages your audience
  • Inspires your audience to share the event with their social networks
  • Makes your audience feel part of the greater community
  • Gives your old and new supporters a deeper sense of connection with your cause
  • Encourages your audience to donate multiple times during the show
  • IS FUN!

First of all BE Live. Encourage fun and spontaneity from your hosts and guest. It is that spontaneity that will keep your audience from scrolling away. They won’t want to miss what might happen next. My favorite example of this is an all virtual gala we produced last year that had 25 live on camera guests. The organization surprised one of the event’s honorees by bringing on her idol to present her award to her, live. Imagine if this had been all pre-recorded videos? We would have had the expected, pre-recorded, “I am so honored to be presented this award by the [person I admire most]”. But LIVE ? Live, the honoree was shocked! And Thrilled! And Nervous! And Excited! So, spontaneously, in real time, instead of giving her speech — she sang! She Sang! The emotional energy was bouncing off the virtual walls , and the audience was delighted.

In that same show we celebrated another honoree’s 90th birthday. Because we were live, and the show was so fun, all the speakers and honorees stayed to watch the whole show, even those who had warned us they would only come for their short segment. So there we are, nearing the end of the show with a zoom room full of a who’s who in this particular field, all of whom were available to sing Happy Birthday to our illustrious birthday honoree, LIVE. We were using zoom as our production green room so we simply cut to the green room with 25 singing Happy Birthday faces. It was moving. It was FUN. It was emotional. It was Real Time. Again, the audience was thrilled. That charm, that excitement, that FOMO can not be replicated in a scripted, recorded event.

Second of all — give your audience things to DO! How? Raffles! Milestones! Auctions! Rewards! These are all ways to create the urgency and competition that will keep your audience leaning forward, excited to see what’s next: Competing to have their name pop up on screen as the winner. Donating multiple times to get that necklace that is only available during the next half hour, to win that skateboard because the auction is ending at the end of this video…

This can be achieved with high production values and expensive production teams, or just with the staff you already have. Play games, invite local celebrities on to do a reading of your favorite sitcom from the 80’s. Just don’t worry about perfect. Perfect is for Netflix, and it costs approximately $16000 a minute to produce. The internet is for DOING.

When you create an imperfect, live, interactive event, filled with FOMO your guests will have FUN. FUN means more community, more engagement, more sharing to social platforms, and more fundraising.

Now that’s a hybrid event with IMPACT.

When It Comes to Hybrid Events You Can Be Netflix, or You Can Be Twitch. There is No In-between