Brands and agencies alike have had to pivot their events as a result of the pandemic. And things were no different for Now Comms Asia, which also embarked on a major shift towards phygital or fully digital events.
Despite the challenging period, Now Comms Asia still managed to win more than 100 new clients as a result of its client servicing team, which was always keeping abreast of industry trends. This led to the agency winning gold for Team of the Year (Agency) at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE‘s Marketing Events Awards 2021.
Now Comms Asia’s vision was founded upon a key principle set out by group CEO Andrew McArthur-Edwards: “To find, create and close sales for its customers by discovering, activating, and creating intent to close each journey.”
The team begins every project by understanding the needs of each client, following which, it injects its own creative touch to create an engaging programme to deepen the customer experience with its clients’ products or services. According to the team, this can be challenging at times with digital events because technological restrictions can impact the methods through which they can create an immersion.
To overcome this, the team used its resources to create seamless digital experiences with the use of chroma key and PIP technology. It also used guerilla-style production methods to create high-quality digital events.
By thinking of events as educational, and using entertaining digital content, Now Comms Asia said the team was able to create a greater impact and engage the audience for longer periods. It was also able to scale its events up or down depending on the requirements and resources of each client.
Now Comms Asia also pivoted by developing the Now Events Platform, a virtual events hosting solution, for clients last November and has continued to enhance it in anticipation of future needs.
It also developed a standalone app, VUE, which offers features which Now Comms Asia said were “above and beyond other industry competitors” such as BlueJeans and Zoom. According to Now Comms Asia, VUE will be launched on iOS and Android in the near future.
These features include PIP viewing, casting via Airplay, Chromecast, and Sessions, where viewers can watch broadcasts, VOD or simulive events. These features were designed to enable users to access content at their convenience.
One example which exemplified the effectiveness of its team was InnovD by ST Engineering. The agency was tasked by ST Engineering to create a new programme that would enable the company to feature all of its new innovations to top-level global leaders of defence organisations and government institutions across the world. These products spanned land, sea, air, and even space.
Apart from the challenge of showing real-life innovations in a digital landscape and format, Now Comms Asia also had no existing framework or examples to guide the team, as this was the first time ST Engineering was presenting its innovations together across the entire company.
With little to no pre-existing data to base its planning upon, Now Comms Asia said this made it more difficult to come up with a concept that would work. It also had a tight timeline, which added to the challenge.
Its creative team started from a blank page: asking how Now Comms Asia could design an event that would showcase each and every innovation and communicate them effectively to the audience. This led to a realisation it needed a two-part solution to this problem, as well as a way to integrate them into one seamless experience.
Now Comms Asia took on a dual-pronged approach for ST Engineering. The first was to design a virtual exhibition that would enable the client to present its products and services effectively through virtual demonstrations, and a live event that could showcase each of them to the audience.
This event required even greater involvement than usual of ST Engineering’s products, because it needed to understand how the agency could best showcase its unique selling points within a virtual space, as well as highlight them quickly and effectively to the audience.
It needed to understand how the products would be used from the audience’s point of view to create the right assets for the live event as well as the virtual exhibition. The entire team was involved in each and every step of the event from start to end.
Now Comms Asia was able to execute this radical event for ST Engineering in such a short time thanks to the team’s integration and co-operation, despite the challenges of COVID-19.
Not only did it introduce a new way of presenting ST Engineering’s product innovations to the audience, it also resulted in a permanent virtual exhibition that could be renewed for use over and over again, extending the longevity of the event infinitely.
In the past year, Now Comms Asia has helped more than 100 companies conceptualise, promote, plan, and host their events. Despite the pandemic, it also managed to grow its client list to include local, regional and international organisations such as Mastercard, SAP, Matterport, Veeam, NUS, SIT and NHG Healthcare Group.
It also continued to expand its work with existing clients such as Dell Technologies, Standard Chartered, Okta, Oracle, Workday, and Amazon, among others.