RSNA is the largest radiology congress of the year. The radiology community comes together to learn, to explore the latest innovations on the market, to touch, feel and demo the products, and to hear first-hand how the sector is evolving.
Category : Best Agency Collaboration
Sponsor : ACC Liverpool
Winner : Philips
Event : Philips at Virtual RSNA
Location : Virtual
The Objectives
Due to COVID, the live event was canceled, and a virtual congress was confirmed in its place.
In a year where everyone in the world was sitting behind computers, the events team at Philips knew that people were struggling with screen fatigue and they needed to create an experience that cuts through all of the digital noise.
The main objective was to find a way to transform all of the normal live touchpoints into an engaging virtual space to give visitors the same breadth and depth of content and access to experts.
They wanted to achieve the same interactions, dwell times, and meeting requests as with a live event. Finally, the team wanted to create an experience that would differentiate Philips from their competitors and help them stand out from the crowd.
The Challenges
Time was the biggest challenge, with only 6 weeks to go before the virtual event. A dedicated internal team along with support from three agencies had to develop and execute an effective and powerful plan very quickly.
This was an ambitious project from the outset given that nothing already existed in Philips in terms of the platform or the content.
They knew that a traditional website with a series of webinars wasn’t going to deliver a compelling experience and wanted to try something far more innovative, something that had a realistic feel, giving visitors a sense of space. Inspired by the 3D worlds within the gaming industry and decided to trial a new virtual platform.
Because the 3D immersive environment was new, it meant the execution had to walk the fine line between ensuring it was technically viable and at the same time creating a truly unforgettable experience for visitors. This virtual platform would allow them to engage the audience and immerse them in a new environment, giving them the same quality of experience as a live event.
It was crucial they had a creative, dedicated and innovative team to achieve this goal in such a short period of time. The project required diverse skill sets across multiple disciplines: tech know-how to build the 3D space, spacial design, storytelling and scripting, filming the content, editing and producing creative content, producing 3D files of all products, filming product demos and producing a full program of webinars.
The Event
Consideration for the visitor experience was at the heart of everything. Visitors were welcomed into a stand lobby by a pre-filmed host who set the scene, explained how to navigate around the space and guiding them towards the different elements and highlights. Visitors were able to self-navigate around the virtual Philips world.
Visitors were treated to a mix of content formats, to cater to diverse preferences, and to replicate the sort of interactions that normally occur at the face-to-face event. This included live and pre-recorded demonstrations and webinars, interactive content, and many experiences including a Radiology Escape Room. There was even had a ‘secret room,’ which was accessible by invitation only, where people were given a glimpse at future developments.
Visitors could request a meeting and live demonstrations were streamed from the Customer Experience Centre during the show days. This gave visitors the opportunity to connect with Philips, just as they would at a live show.
The Results
With no vehicle to create an experience like this 6 weeks prior to the event, this cross-function, intra-agency team collaboration was critical to their success. Together, everyone needed to learn and adapt as they ventured into this new and unknown territory.
The event was a phenomenal success and exceeded expectations and KPIs. They completed the project on time, it looked outstanding and they had incredible feedback. In some instances, the results surpassed those achieved in previous years at the live congresses.
There was more than 34,000 visits to the landing page with over 3 minutes of average dwell time. The webinars surpassed KPIs with 3,205 registrations, an attendee conversion rate of 63%, an average dwell time of 76%, and a marketing opt-in rate of 49% which was well above the benchmarks.
There were 400 meetings and demos scheduled linked to almost 70 million Euro in sales opportunities, international markets beat their goal of meetings and demos by 24%.
The virtual booth exceeded the goal of visits by almost 2,000 and almost tripled expected average dwell time.
The social experts hit all their targets, bringing in about 2 million paid impressions and an additional 20,000 organic impressions.
Philips was involved in 18 press releases, surpassing the goal by almost 30%. The team almost doubled their targets for article coverage across the globe.
With the new 3D platform and virtual event learnings, Philips continues to produce content that can be repurposed and used for both prospects and customers, which could be delivered in virtual, hybrid or live event formats. They created a future legacy in very trying times.
Producing this event became a case study on how to break-down silos and align very diverse teams with one tangible, common goal, making it an incredibly special project that has changed the way the team works. They would not have pulled this off without the involvement of Blondefish bringing everyone together. It’s fair to say that a client-agency relationship as special as this does not happen overnight. Philips has been working with Blondefish for 6 years and it is their intimate and comprehensive understanding of the business and needs that meant they were able to succeed on this project.
The Collaboration
The internal Philips team consisted of design, IT, strategy, global events and all of the individual product business stakeholders.
They knew they needed an external agency to lead and drive the project and manage the multiple stakeholders. Blondefish is the chosen agency for the experiences and content of live events, so it was only natural Philips turned to them for help with this almost impossible task. Blondefish was able to drop everything and dedicate a team of people to work on this around the clock.
Blondefish quickly jumped into action, coordinating multiple parties, establishing communication with the many teams involved, and taking the lead on creating timelines, budgets, and a content production schedule. The biggest challenge Blondefish faced was liaising with the numerous internal stakeholders and collating all feedback, ideas and requirements to ensure every Philips radiology solution was represented.
Blondefish was key in pulling everything together, bringing in further external teams where needed, overseeing the creation of the platform, and creating masses of content, all in just 6 weeks.
Judges Comments
A strong submission from a strong category. Many of these would have won a few years ago and a testament to the rising standards and ambitions of the ICE community.
The winning Phillips submission documented a seamless collaboration of equal partners. Ambitious and improved by working together the response was clear-sighted, documenting three strategic objectives with tangible measures tied directly to the three core objectives.
Excellent understanding of the collaboration and accountability between the Phillips internal team and agency team from Blondefish, who in turn extended the collaboration ethos beyond the partnership managing multi-stakeholder involvement. A tough ask for their professional partner who produced a wide platform for the event’s success.
A joy to read, a genuine relationship between client and agency, and pragmatic collaboration to deliver effective creativity. Brilliant metrics, tangible results, business focused and credit to both parties for a sustainable campaign and measure of agency-client success.
Well done from the judges and praise didn’t end there. One judge remarked “one of just one or two that kept to word count… a benchmark submission from the get-go”.
A good event ambitious delivery, ambitious objectives, ambitious metrics. Collaboration was their winning philosophy.
