The corona pandemic has made us rethink as a creative agency, including this case for the Mpac Group. The Mpac Group is a world leader in full-line packaging automation solutions. Mpac Group has been designing and producing “automation ecosystems” for organizations for many years. Due to the pandemic, less or no travel was possible and many events were cancelled. Unfortunately, this was also the case at Interpack, an international packaging fair. Since Mpac was planning to have a large stand at this fair again, they had to draw the attention of their target group in a different way. You can read how we contributed to this in this case…
When we were approached by Mpac Group to think along with their booth at Interpack, to produce video content and make shows for this, nobody had heard of 'COVID' yet. After this event was cancelled, we took matters into our own hands and changed course together with Mpac. We started brainstorming to come up with the best possible alternative. For example, the request from Mpac Group was to reach (potential) customers, despite the pandemic, in order to be able to show new innovations within packaging automation. A high-end virtual event, fully Mpac branded, with several table guests, live demos and a professional host, that 's what we came up with after a joint brainstorm.
After having made the choice to go for an online event, all preparations could begin. As a kick-off, it was important to find out the exact purpose of Mpac: What is the purpose of this event? What things do we miss compared to the normally physical event? What value can we add precisely because of the virtual character of this event? Fortunately, this soon became clear. It was important to show the target group how Mpac can continue to meet the needs of its customers, despite the changing market. Although Mpac is often already known to existing customers as an innovative and reliable organization, this proved difficult to communicate to customers where a physical meeting was not possible at that time.
We started brainstorming based on this question… How were we going to ensure that the message was conveyed as well as possible to the (potential) customers? With this in mind, we have come up with a number of themes that are important to our customers. These themes formed the structure of the virtual event, where after an intro video about the theme, a conversation was led by the host of this event, Mark Wijsman. Roughly five themes were discussed, with other employees sitting at the table for each theme who knew all about it.
When you as an agency organize an event for one of your customers, you basically have one main goal, which is to ensure that the customer is relieved and we arrange everything down to the last detail. We have really thought of everything, for example the catering, call sheets, timetables, table, the lights, the 'on-brand' factory hall, the sound, the light and so on.
To ensure that all (potentially) interested parties were aware of this event, a short-term campaign was launched, consisting of video teasers, social posts and emails. All those resources resulted in a conversion moment: the registration page of the Adapt & Grow 2020 event.
Then it could finally start, after making sure everyone feels comfortable in front of and behind the camera, we were sure… This could only go well. We had kicked off and we started covering the themes. Since Mpac would actually be at the fair, where customers could ask questions directly, we wanted to include this aspect. This was the reason why the event ended with a live Q&A, where everyone who was present online could ask questions. It was nice to see that there was quite a bit of engagement.
In the end we went live with Mpac four times for an hour, this was spread over two days. This way everyone could free up a spot in their agenda and different time zones were taken into account.
After running these two days, we immediately started with the reduction. Despite the fact that it was already 30 degrees all week, we wanted to keep going and we certainly succeeded. In no time at all the entire factory hall was empty, only they had forgotten 1 thing… Jos was still alone in the factory hall, which had been left behind. After a number of calls with the security of the hall, Jos was also able to enjoy his well-deserved weekend!
John Doe - CEO at Nooteboom Trailer
The advantage of a virtual event compared to a physical fair is the high degree of measurability. The customer had direct insight into the results. For example, we had insight into many metrics such as how long people watched on average, the degree of engagement and the conversion percentage. The latter came down to how many people left their details or request to talk to the Mpac sales team.
From Mpac themselves, we received feedback that we had completely unburdened them and that they didn’t have to worry about anything. This is of course the best compliment you can get during such an event. The visitors of the event were very positive about the organization and the content. Mpac received a number of nice responses such as the ones below:
As a creative agency, to be able to create an (online) event for Mpac, completely on-branded with enormous marketing value, is something we are proud of. One thing we know for sure, the bar for the competition is high!
Do you have a story to tell about your brand, your new product or service and are you struggling to translate it into a compelling piece of content? We can help you out! Let’s brainstorm, have some fun and create something memorable.
