Earlier this week we had the privilege and pleasure to participate, along with 200 industry peers, in the inaugural Event Marketer Event Tech Conference.   The event took place in Manhattan – a Mecca for events, technology, creative energy and live communications.

The Event Tech conference designed an agenda focused on the industry’s best practices on connecting live events with technology and social media. The application of this spanned from global marketing and advertisement campaigns all the way to the tradeshow floor. We had the benefit of hearing perspectives from designers, technology experts, social media gurus, innovation leaders and brand marketers, making this event a truly unique assembly of industry thought leaders. 

Innovate, combine, and create: as featured in a number of presentations during Event Tech, myriad interactive and social technologies are at our disposal. The ten most relevant to date seem to be large multi-touch interactives, RFID tracking, stereoscopic interactives, tablets and mobile, transparent touch interfaces, telepresence, immersive interactive environments, augmented reality, motion/voice control, and 3d projection mapping.

As interesting and exciting as these technologies are, content is still king – and a messaging strategy that resonates with your audiences is a critical step for success.  Often times the key to unlocking a truly unique brand experience is collaborating with brand leadership to create a social engagement that may include the integration of two or more technologies in a completely new way.

Here our Top Tips for successful digital engagements:

• Start with the basics: Know who you are, be real about what you have, know what your audience wants, and agree on how to give it to them.
• Amplification + Genuine Passion = Buzz. A strong media campaign and infinite budget doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. While these things are important, a genuine passion for the product line is needed for sustained brand recognition. Personal conviction from users and consumers drives long term growth.
• Leveraging interactive social technologies, it’s possible to close the gap between point-of-engagement and point-of-sale in both live and on-line environments. People love social applications with a reward element – be it Foursquare or Facebook, incentive drives participation.
• Don’t forget the role of the nerd.  Developers have a say too.  Those platforms that have made integration easy (Amazon, Facebook, Apple) are winning.  User interface designers and users have found it easy to do what they want on these platforms.

In the company of industry thought leaders – making a big difference in how business grow their audiences on and off line – was stimulating for each of us.  

Jon DeGorsky, Amy Pesa, Katie Slattery, Andy Austin