As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our focus as a communications agency has seen a major shift. At the beginning of the year around 30% of our events were digital events, but between March and the end of May this shifted to almost 90% digital events for obvious reasons. Now with the COVID-19 measures slowly being relaxed, we are currently experiencing a strong increase in clients requesting a mix of live and online formats, the so-called hybrid events.
Irrespective of COVID-19, we are convinced that hybrid events will have a significant impact on the future development of the event industry, as they enable parallel live participation on site and online from anywhere in the world. At the same time, such formats, just like digital events, require completely new concepts and methodologies, both in terms of content and technology. Simply taking a “live” event and producing it online is not enough and will not take advantage of the online communication potential. Our clients are increasingly coming to this conclusion as well and inquiring about our hybrid expertise, be it as event technicians or concept designers, or when simply looking for new solutions and possibilities.
One aspect helps us a lot with regards to hybrid events and makes us confident for the future: We are not starting from scratch; we have built up our experience and competencies in the digital, virtual and hybrid area for years. We developed flexible concept platforms for digital, virtual and hybrid events since 2010 and that expertise is now really coming into play.