In Conversation
Sarah Douglas
Sarah is co-founder of The Liminal Space, helping businesses and organisations synthesise complex topics into tangible experiences. This has seen her creating immersive experiences for the Natural History Museum, Wellcome Trust and the Barbican. And, helping brands as diverse as Visa and Co-op find new ways to connect with their audiences.
Ross Phillips
An award-winning Creative Director, Ross designs playful interactive experiences in art, retail, museums and entertainment. He has created immersive physical and digital projects for everyone from the Batman franchise to Sony and Mulberry. His work has appeared in both the V&A and the Design Museum.
Jez Paxman
Live Union's Strategy Director, Jez, works with clients to help them make the most of a fast-changing live experience landscape. As people's relationship to work shifts, so too does what they value from business experiences. This is opening up exciting new ways to design events, this sees Jez and the Live Union team drawing inspiration from far and wide.
Gavin MacArthur
A Senior Creative Director crafting magical immersive experiences at Pixel Artworks. Gavin has been instrumental in guiding immersive techniques like projection mapping into the advertising industry, and revolutionising customer engagement. His impressive track record includes leading and delivering projects for brands, including Concorde, Faberge, the Macallan, and LEGO.
Mel Noakes
Mel is Santander UK's Head of Sponsorship and Events. She has a passion for building experiences that create impact and has worked with some of the world's most exciting brands. Mel leads a team managing Santander's brand sponsorships and consumer and business events. She also co-founded, Elevate, a unique mentoring programme and community for the events industry.
You can’t afford to be boring.
Many organisations are facing a growing engagement gap, both with their employees and their customers. Live experiences are an incredible opportunity to bridge this, but audiences are more demanding than ever. They don’t respond to (or even turn up to) predictable, old-fashioned formats. They want experiences that put a smile on their faces, that wrongfoot them, that speak to them as people not delegates and earn their engagement.
In the dynamic realm of B2B events, engagement and impact remain formidable challenges. Traditional corporate events frequently fail to captivate audiences and leave lasting impressions. Join us for an extraordinary exploration into the world of immersive experiences and their transformative potential for the B2B events sector.
Our event kicks off with an exclusive Immersive Experience curated by Punchdrunk Enrichment, renowned for pushing boundaries and redefining audience engagement. Dive into a dynamic session where experts discuss how these immersive techniques can be effectively harnessed in the B2B events landscape. Gain valuable insights, strategies, and best practices to elevate your event experiences and captivate your audience in innovative ways.
Engage directly with the Live Union and Punchdrunk as we delve deeper into immersive event strategies, and discover how to unlock unforgettable experiences that leave a lasting impact.
You'll experience
Immersive approaches in action
Putting audiences in control of their journey
Removing barriers and switching on engagement
Breaking through to more valuable conversations
Immersive techniques for landing new ideas
Keeping memories alive
Take the first step...
... now go a little deeper
We're two very different organisations who believe in the power of live experiences to change minds and behaviours.
Together we believe we can raise awareness of Punchdrunk Enrichment's charity projects and introdule new immersive approaches for business audiences.
1
Deconstructing Immersive Techniques
Understand the core elements and strategies behind immersive experiences curated by Punchdrunk Enrichment. Explore how these techniques captivate and engage participants on a deeper level.
2
Applying Immersive Strategies to B2B Events
Learn practical insights on how to adapt and implement immersive techniques to enhance corporate B2B events. Discover ways to create memorable experiences that resonate with diverse audience segments and achieve event objectives effectively.
3
Tailoring Experiences for Diverse Audiences
Delve into the nuances of audience segmentation and customisation within immersive event frameworks. Understand how personalised experiences can drive engagement, foster connections, and amplify event ROI in the corporate context.
We'll Discuss
At Live Union we create immersive in-person and broadcast experiences that change minds and behaviours. Our start point is understanding business audiences and how what they value is shifting.
Whether your audience are leaders, employees or customers, we'll work with you to create live experiences that resonate more deeply.
Our approach to experience design puts people first. By better understanding audiences, we find ways to take them deeper and ultimately deliver greater business value.
At Live Union we design and deliver in-person and broadcast experiences.
Focus on feelings not knowledge.
This was a common theme across the morning. The primary role of live experiences shouldn’t be to convey information, other channels are far more efficient at doing this. Live experiences are at their best when they create an emotional response. This is how they achieve their potential to change minds and shift behaviours.
Become a superconnector.
In an increasingly digital and dispersed business world, the true value of events is sparking human connections. But relationship building is hard and traditional formats fly in the face of it. People shared lots of great ideas: the main takeout was to focus on freeing up agenda time. Fight against more keynotes (consider shifting them to the pre-comms). Design content that’s a stimulus for conversation not content for content’s sake.
Quick Takeouts
You can’t afford to be boring. Today’s audiences expect enlivening, surprising live experiences.
1
Focus on feelings not knowledge. The power of live experiences is in their ability to shift emotions.
2
Become a superconnector. Sparking valuable, lasting relationships should be the goal of all business events.
3
4
Watch out for the sugar rush. Extending the impact of an event is difficult but vital.
5
Trial and measure. This is the way to get senior buy-in to non-traditional formats.
Watch out for the sugar rush.
The most shared challenge at the breakfast was how to better integrate events into wider comms. How to spread engagement over a longer period and maximise investment. People shared ideas like using the event as the start point for an ongoing series of topic-led dinners, or programming broadcasts around the in-person experience. What was clear is that comms planning isn’t something to be attempted whilst in the thick of delivering an event.
Trial and Measure.
Everyone wanted to know how Emily, Lucy and Laura had managed to get senior buy-in for such unconventional live experiences. For Laura and Emily, the answer was in starting small, trialling something and demonstrating the impact. Whilst Lucy and Emily both highlighted the importance of co-creation, of bringing stakeholders into the design process and exciting them about more immersive techniques.
Please contact Chin chin.michael@liveunion.co.uk for more details.
Last week’s breakfast at the fabulously chi-chi 1 Hotel Mayfair pioneered a new format – omelette talks. These were quick-fire intros to three unconventional live experiences, delivered in a race against a frying pan wielding chef. People then spent time with the clients who led these projects, getting into the grit of how they became a reality and the impact they had.
Huge thanks to Emily from Amazon, Laura from Veolia and Lucy from National Grid for sharing their insights and generally being such good eggs!
Audiences of all types are hungry for new styles of experience design.
Are immersive business experiences only effective for younger audiences?
Attendees thought not.
Audiences of all ages are increasingly experience rich. They want business events to roll out new formats, to offer something different.
Most importantly, audiences want experiences that go beyond surface engagement, experiences that help them go deeper, achieving deeper connections, deeper conversation and deeper learning.
1
Deconstructing Immersive Techniques
Understand the core elements and strategies behind immersive experiences curated by Punchdrunk Enrichment. Explore how these techniques captivate and engage participants on a deeper level.
2
Applying Immersive Strategies to B2B Events
Learn practical insights on how to adapt and implement immersive techniques to enhance corporate B2B events. Discover ways to create memorable experiences that resonate with diverse audience segments and achieve event objectives effectively.
3
Tailoring Experiences for Diverse Audiences
Delve into the nuances of audience segmentation and customisation within immersive event frameworks. Understand how personalised experiences can drive engagement, foster connections, and amplify event ROI in the corporate context.
We'll Discuss
At Live Union we create immersive in-person and broadcast experiences that change minds and behaviours. Our start point is understanding business audiences and how what they value is shifting.
Whether your audience are leaders, employees or customers, we'll work with you to create live experiences that resonate more deeply.
In a hybrid world, face-to-face events are valued for the human connections they spark, but all too often these connections are fleeting.
Immersive experiences draw people into deeper conversations they provide meaningful discursive content. They can break down barriers, out the elephants in the room and provide a shared purpose.
The value of events is increasingly in helping people connect and converse, this isn't easy to achieve - immersive techniques help.
The first rule of immersive experiences should always be consent. This means sharing the rules of engagement from the start.
Immersive experiences allow you to tell the same story in multiple ways: audio, performance, game-play, etc. This has great benefits for engaging neurodiverse audiences. The key is giving choices are and allowing people to take part on their own terms.
Well-designed immersive experiences are highly inclusive.
As communications become ever more data driven, events are under pressure to provide more valuable metrics and insights. Immersive experiences are especially suited to this.
By building in many different touchpoints, by setting challenges, by including digital interactions and drawing people into deeper discussion, events become data rich opportunities and an incredible way to learn more about people.
Immersive experiences offer more ways to get to know your audience and evaluate the impact of your events.
Get in touch to explore how an immersive approach can take your audience deeper.
Please contact Chin chin.michael@liveunion.co.uk.
Quick Takeouts
You can’t afford to be boring. Today’s audiences expect enlivening, surprising live experiences.
1
Focus on feelings not knowledge. The power of live experiences is in their ability to shift emotions.
2
Become a superconnector. Sparking valuable, lasting relationships should be the goal of all business events.
3
Watch out for the sugar rush. Extending the impact of an event is difficult but vital.
4
Trial and measure. This is the way to get senior buy-in to non-traditional formats.
5
Transforming the conference experience
The Takeouts
+44(0)333 800 6121
You can’t afford to be boring.
Many organisations are facing a growing engagement gap, both with their employees and their customers. Live experiences are an incredible opportunity to bridge this, but audiences are more demanding than ever. They don’t respond to (or even turn up to) predictable, old-fashioned formats. They want experiences that put a smile on their faces, that wrongfoot them, that speak to them as people not delegates and earn their engagement.
This was a common theme across the morning. The primary role of live experiences shouldn’t be to convey information, other channels are far more efficient at doing this. Live experiences are at their best when they create an emotional response. This is how they achieve their potential to change minds and shift behaviours.
Focus on feelings not knowledge.
Watch out for the sugar rush.
The most shared challenge at the breakfast was how to better integrate events into wider comms. How to spread engagement over a longer period and maximise investment. People shared ideas like using the event as the start point for an ongoing series of topic-led dinners, or programming broadcasts around the in-person experience. What was clear is that comms planning isn’t something to be attempted whilst in the thick of delivering an event.
In an increasingly digital and dispersed business world, the true value of events is sparking human connections. But relationship building is hard and traditional formats fly in the face of it. People shared lots of great ideas: the main takeout was to focus on freeing up agenda time. Fight against more keynotes (consider shifting them to the pre-comms). Design content that’s a stimulus for conversation not content for content’s sake.
Become a superconnector.
Trial and Measure.
Everyone wanted to know how Emily, Lucy and Laura had managed to get senior buy-in for such unconventional live experiences. For Laura and Emily, the answer was in starting small, trialling something and demonstrating the impact. Whilst Lucy and Emily both highlighted the importance of co-creation, of bringing stakeholders into the design process and exciting them about more immersive techniques.