As your experiential commerce partner, we at Tixr have moved at a rapid pace to fill the void left by the hibernation of live events with high quality, engaging, and memorable virtual experiences.
Whether you’re a convention owner, promoter, venue, or festival, there are many ways to offer your fans a unique virtual experience. Our team is available to help you navigate the execution of online experiences with the same one-on-one partnership we offer when producing live events.
In the past few weeks, we’ve worked with many producers to take their events digital, or to convert an existing live show into an immersive virtual experience. Every event is handled on a case-by-case basis, designed to meet every individual need, whether that involves ticketing options with personalized rewards or creating online VIP experiences connecting talent with fans. We have since witnessed a number of successful online realizations of a seamless end-to-end experience, and discovered advantages offered exclusively by online events. We spoke with representatives from two such events, Colorworld and Wizard World, to glean insights and best practices learned from going virtual.
Prior to Covid-19, Colorworld functioned as a vendor licensing original artwork sold at anime and gaming conventions around the world. Once the convention market closed down, Colorworld sought a way to continue connecting talent with fans and bringing people together. They approached Bryce Papenbrook, a voice actor and a member of our team, to help them facilitate a new concept that would meet their individual needs, while being equally convenient and exciting for their community.
We helped Colorworld originate a series of micro events that will offer a variety of virtual experiences, including one-on-one hangouts, access to a semi-private stream or panel, personalized video and voice messages, and merchandise fulfillment of Colorworld’s personalized metal artwork. By working with the client one-on-one, Tixr was able to help Colorworld accelerate into the event space within a very small window of time, designing a number of highly-curated online events that will function like a turnkey experience.
As Colorworld is a first-time event producer, Papenbrook employed Tixr’s WAITLIST feature to gather the foundational data that would inform all aspects of the virtual productions.
"Waitlist is a great way of kick-starting these events and gathering data. It allowed us to see what people want, whether they would like a physical item shipped to them, if they're only interested in pre- recorded messages, or if they want a live one-on-one experience."
Unlike live events, where scheduling demands a significant runway, Colorworld was able to quickly translate this data into an actionable, yet flexible plan.
Tixr’s real-time data analysis allowed Colorworld to personalize their merchandise fulfillment and ticketing experience with speed and agility. Item collections using Tixr’s unique interface were inspired directly by fan activity, and fan rewards using Tixr’s organic social marketing tools were designed and processed with a flexibility that would be impossible under the constraints of live events. Certain data was also available on the fan side, which empowered a gamification element that was especially on brand with the Colorworld audience. For example, with the awareness that a single VIP experience (in this case a private link for a video chat with an actor) was available, fans were activated to earn the intimate interaction with their favorite actor(s). This insight is also beneficial for the talent, as they can easily access and reward their super fans.
We also spoke with a representative from Wizard World about their experience producing an immersive, online event. Coming from live events, Wizard World was blown away by the speed and ease of planning a virtual event. Without the burden of orchestrating permits, schedules, and funding, producing an online event was noted as a big financial gain for Wizard World.
"The fluidness to get these events up as quickly as we could and promote them through our own social channels gave us a unique advantage, and something that hadn’t been available in the typical convention environment."
Wizard World built specific collections and cited Tixr’s real-time reporting as another advantage to personalizing the ticketing process.
“We're excited about the landscape and new opportunities that we have. We're seeing so much support from the fans, and we were able to reach people all over - Russia, Brazil, Australia. So regardless of what happens to live events going forward, virtual will definitely always be a part of what we do.”
If you are interested in discussing the opportunities available to take your event digital, do not hesitate to reach out to our client success specialists who will be more than happy to get you the answers you need. Email us at hello@tixr.com.
