Almost exactly one year after the world shut down due to COVID, Mary Kay hosted their 2021 Global Sales and Marketing Conference, Seeing HER Future, on the Cadence platform. This event boasted over 200 attendees from all over the world, coming together virtually to learn about Mary Kay’s strategy in the new “phygital” world. Mary Kay uses the term “phygital” to explain the hybrid nature of the world moving forward; the combination of digital and physical experiences, in what they coin the “new normal.”
Romina Kunstadter, founder of The Prism, an experiential firm that helps deliver engaging digital and live events, worked with Mary Kay to put on this global conference. Romina and The Prism specialize in helping companies identify and meet their brand goals with highly tailored industry guidance.
Mary Kay wanted to host a uniquely engaging event that would work seamlessly in many different countries at the same time.
✅ Wow Factor
Mary Kay’s team appreciates that everyone has been stuck in non-stop virtual events since the beginning of the pandemic, and it’s started to wear on people. That’s why they wanted to host an event with wow factor to ensure that everyone stayed engaged and felt connected across the globe.
✅ Aesthetically Pleasing
In the interest of keep everyone consistently engaged, Romina started looking for platforms that were imagery heavy rather than text heavy. She said, “people are motivated by things that look pretty… So I started by looking at … who had a platform that looked beautiful.”
✅ Accessible
With so many people across the globe looking to be hooked into this event, and with their own levels of comfort with virtual life, Mary Kay wanted to ensure that the event was easy and user-friendly to avoid any major day-of confusion for their teams.
✅ Offers Hands-On Customer Support
With so many big asks, Mary Kay and Romina wanted to be sure they would never be left in the dark, scrambling to pull something together all on their own. Cadence’s premium white-glove Customer Success team met their criteria for involved event support that would bring them exactly where they wanted to go.
Mary Kay leaned heavily into the platform’s imagery so that it all felt very in sync with the brand. The focus on the platform’s appearance heightened engagement from attendees without taking the focus off of the event’s content and purpose.
Mary Kay used the following features for Seeing HER Future:
1. Home to immediately engage attendees with highly branded, aesthetically pleasing imagery.
2. Schedule to pace the event’s flow to ensure nothing ever felt too rushed or boring.
3. Speakers to inspire their attendees before sessions.
4. Speaker Rehearsals to ensure that speakers understood the platform’s tech and were comfortable with the material they were going to cover so sessions flowed effortlessly.
5. Web and email Notifications to keep attendees constantly up to date on the event’s progression.
6. Live Feed to encourage attendees to connect with each other and bridge the gap across countries.
7. Collections to allow the audience to review key insights after each session, and even after the event had ended.
8. Surveys to gather honest feedback after the event to inform future strategies.
9. Photobooth to allow attendees to connect and bond with each other in a unique virtual setting.
Mary Kay’s event went off without a hitch. Speakers were well prepared for their sessions, networking was seamless and accessible, and the Live Feed was chock full of participation from attendees.
From a production standpoint, Romina was thrilled with the accessibility of the platform. Aside from the highly involved customer support, Romina was able to easily navigate the platform on her own.
What attendees said was their favorite part of the event in the survey:
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