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Adapting to the dynamic event landscape presents an exciting opportunity for organizations to innovate and grow. Today’s attendees seek engaging, immersive experiences that are both innovative and data driven. This shift inspires brands to reimagine their event strategies, positioning them to meet evolving expectations and deliver impactful, memorable experiences.
Following Augeo's recent webinar, Event evolution: Reinventing your brand experience, we explore the essential steps and strategies for transforming events to meet today’s standards. By embracing reinvention and focusing on the attendee journey, organizations create impactful, memorable experiences that resonate with diverse audiences.
Join Augeo’s President of Experience, Joan Wells, Vice President of Experiential Marketing, Kevin Cobb, alongside Director of Client Strategy, Callie Motz, with special guest, President of Kansas University Alumni Association, Heath Peterson, as they discuss the dynamics of event reinvention.
KEVIN: Brand reinvention is tough. It's not something that everyone likes to do, but we're seeing a lot of it right now. My first question is, why now?
JOAN: I would say over the last couple of years, expectations of attendees have evolved at light-warp speed. Attendees no longer want a passive role when they attend an event. Instead, they want an active, engaged and immersive experience that's innovative and data driven. For our clients, reinvention has become a strategic imperative, so that you never want your event to become stale. You want to ensure that you're providing as much value as possible so that you are meeting people where they are, attracting new desired audiences in a compelling way that resonates.
KEVIN: The follow-up is we must figure out a way to do it. But what's the first step? How do we start this?
JOAN: The first step is to start with the right mindset—to embrace reinvention, as a clean slate which is hard to do. People's first inclination is ‘I want to evolve my event’ and ‘I want to tweak our experience.’ That might be the solution, but you don't know unless you start with a whiteboard.
One of the things we do at Augeo is lead in on creative events, experience and strategy—co-creating with our clients—starting with our design-and-discovery session to blue-sky ideate. For example, starting with the end in mind instead of starting with what we're already doing. It starts with the outcomes and what is the holistic view of the objectives and desired outcomes and then design a solution for that. Then the answer comes to us all at the end: Is reinvention necessary? Or is evolution an option.
HEATH: Like so many following the hiatus from the pandemic, we took a hard look at much of our programming and felt like we had a tremendous opportunity with our signature events in the Rock Chalk Ball that could really reinvent the experience our Jayhawks had while participating in the largest alumni network in the world.
The team took a step back and really capitalized on an opportunity to create a new, more inclusive event experience that aligned with our engagement-first strategy as an alumni association connecting Jayhawks to the university in new and exciting ways—and really building energy that carried throughout the entire evening.
Broadening the audience and creating pathways for Jayhawks to connect to the event—even if they could not be there that evening—we thought about the diversity and the attendees in every sense connecting Jayhawks across generations. Those are just a few of the drivers as we work to create a more immersive and relevant experience to celebrate the university and highlight the value of having a vibrant, impactful alumni association.
KEVIN: Callie played a central role in helping to develop this reinvention strategy. How can we help some of our attendees think through what it takes to put this into practice?
CALLIE: I commend Heath and his team for being willing to take this type of risk—what it looks like if we start over with the Rock Chalk Ball. That was a great example of how we were able to do that in partnership with KU, taking those key learnings from the discovery phase, feeling what we were inspired by through that process and transforming what has been a storied historic, traditional gala into a more casual and inviting experience. Rock Chalk Ball became Rock Chalk Forever. We really leaned into universal themes like nostalgia, which enabled us to draw and captivate a wider audience and adapt to rapidly changing attendee expectations. That's the biggest thing we want to share with our clients and everyone, we’re seeing such a shift in expectations, and we must adapt to those and how we're putting on events. This is the same for large conferences, award shows and incentive trips.
The other part of that is entertainment expectations are increasing. We are designing less traditional programming like we did historically with Rock Chalk Ball and creating more dynamic shows with video graphics and audience engagement and including them as a part of that.
A big piece of that is leaning into this idea of heightened immersion. When we were looking to design Rock Chalk Forever, we were thinking through what the holistic attendee journey is end-to-end that we're going to take our customers and the alumni through. What we learned from those discovery sessions is replicating the experience of visiting KU’s campus—including everything from a virtual reality experience that featured the new Jayhawk Welcome Center to the food that you were serving—hitting all five senses and that high-end, immersion, holistic attendee journey.
Similar thinking can be applied when we're looking outside of this. When we're thinking about incentive programs, conferences, brand activations going through that discovery process, organizations identifying what is most important to their audience now—which in a lot of times has changed in the last year, 2 years, 5 years—and then leaning into that, whether it be location, theme or a feeling. Like in the case with KU, we leaned into that experiential immersion because we're bringing alumni together in a way that we want them to remember their experience and through that experience give back to the university. Looking at that experiential immersion on every step of the journey, even if it means deviating from the things you've done year after year, how do you look at creating new opportunities to lean into that?
JOAN: We're doing a lot of work at Augeo right now around destination experience centers. That's a prime example of dedicated branded space that ignites your stakeholder engagements—whether it be through learning, connection, engagement and community building—and I had the opportunity to spend a fun day at the Jayhawk Welcome Center at KU. Kudos to KU, Heath and his team because that experience represents the gold standard of reinvention. They figured out how to go deep on personalization, immersion and interactivity When prospective students walk through the door of the space, they can see their name on a 34-foot screen and then they instantly feel connected.
I would call it a long haul of video and interactive technologies that are all customized for me, based on what KU already knows about me—my interests, my preferences, fun facts about me. What then comes from that is a highly curated, storytelling experience. I was impressed bringing all of that to Rock Chalk Forever through the virtual reality experience while leaning into the theme of nostalgia. That enabled us really to deliver an end-to-end, immersive experience because it really replicated the spirit of the Jayhawk Welcome Center itself.
CALLIE: Joan, as we are thinking about our brands and organizations and how that can come to life, one thing we're really challenging our clients on right now is to not confine ourselves in a box. And that example, Jayhawk Welcome Center, is a stationary place but we were able to take the theme, energy and essence of that place and bring it to life through the experience. And when we are looking at incentive programs and at large conferences, thinking about how you replicate those same feelings that they may have in other areas, based on the things that are identified as most important, is how you achieve that high incentive sense of immersion—and looking at what the full attendee journey looks like.
HEATH: That's also a great example of how you can create an experience that's relevant to different stakeholders, whether it's a prospective student, a current student or the emotional experience that alumni have when they return to the building—that’s really what we tried to achieve with Rock Chalk Forever. It’s reinvention.
CALLIE: And what I love about that is the personal piece of it which we discuss during the discovery process. How are you looking at each person who is walking into your experience—whether it's a prospective student or a current student. For a lot of our clients, it’s current employees and potential customers. What do each of those people need? What do they want? How do you make sure they feel like the event was designed for them? That is one of the greatest trends we're seeing as we look through experience evolution.
It takes a lot more to get people out of their house these days than it used to. When people go to something, they expect it is designed for them and with them in mind. You need to give them that feeling for them to come back and have that positive brand association to want to achieve that milestone again.
KEVIN: So, finding ways to build that into every experience is our future, not just our present, but the future of experience design. We've talked a little bit about outcomes and the long-term outlook of implementing. But I'd love to pick your brain, Heath. Could you share some of the outcomes and the long-term outlook you've got for implementing this more immersive, interactive, engaging reinvention.
HEATH: As we think about the individual experience, or the customized experience, it’s based on the various activations that attendees could self-select and be a part of. I think about the aspects of Rock Chalk Ball that I really enjoyed like the reception when folks gathered and reconnected—there was such an energy level. And then, when we sat down for dinner, the energy was stifled. One of the outcomes of creating that impact is we carried that energy from the very first steps in the door throughout the entire evening and that was one of the main goals from the very beginning.
Another key outcome was our ability to connect with that broader audience by creating avenues for them to get engaged if they couldn’t be with us—whether it was expanding the silent option to a global audience or asking them to share stories about their time at KU—and certainly, activating greater diversity across multiple generations. That is so important as we think about not only the Jayhawks who are doing so much for KU today, but also as we build for the future—how are we developing, connecting and building strong relationships with the next generation. That balance is critically important.
The other thing that I would underscore is as we reinvented an event. We did so with our phenomenal partner Augeo, and I’m so thankful that we decided to partner with you because the team, the expertise, your knowledge in the special event space and your relationships really challenged us to think differently and bring a fresh lens to our entire approach. I'm grateful that we selected the right partners and went down this pathway to build for the future.
KEVIN: We really appreciate that. And it is truly one of our favorite things to sit down with our clients, who are our partners, with a blank sheet of paper and sharpened pencil. We can create something that is cool and that is going to be transformational for the attendees that are part of it.
HEATH: Kevin, I should add the risk was tied to achieving fundraising goals and we did that in spades. So, the risk was worth it.
JOAN: That was a risk because Rock Chalk Ball was a successful fundraiser by financial standards, and so, making that shift was a risk, but it was doing so with the bigger end goal in mind. Your whole team willing to take that strategic approach and focusing on the outcomes and Callie's point—the multiple personas, multiple critical audiences—that was why that transition was able to happen in the first year.
CALLIE: And I love, Heath, that you talked about connection because that is the bottom line. We put on experiences to create connections—whether that's between a university and its alumni, a company and its employees or a product and its customers. When we are thinking about the need to reinvent brand experiences and take that risk when lacking connection, you can suffer in the sense that you're not responding to those changing and evolving expectations. And so, at the end of the day, that's what it's about. It's about making sure that when KU alumni are thinking about their experience and where they want to put their dollars or whatever that looks like, they're thinking about KU and about the experience they had and the feelings they perceived during that event—and the same is true with corporations and businesses.
HEATH: I'll just round that out by saying you always look to what happens the next year. We laid a great foundation in 2023. We're excited about Rock Chalk Forever this year and reservations are already outpacing the reservations total last year. So, we're seeing a lot of repeat Jayhawks join us and we're attracting new Jayhawks. Those are indicators that lead me to believe that we made the right decision, and folks are excited about this new experience that we created. So, thank you for your leadership and partnership to help us do that.
KEVIN: I want your top takeaway. If you are going to sit down with coffee with anyone and you're going to give them your favorite tip from this, let's hear it. I'm going to start with you Joan.
JOAN: Take the long view and reinvention so you can create an experience that is both scalable and sustainable.
HEATH: Don't be afraid to take a calculated risk. If you do it the right way, it pays off in multiple ways.
CALLIE: The biggest mistake organizations can make is not adapting to those evolving expectations we've been talking about. So, maximizing both immersion and customization through adaptation is critical, especially in this moment in time.
*This transcript has been abridged and edited for clarity.
Watch this insightful webinar, Event evolution: Reinventing your brand experience. In just 18 minutes, discover how to transform your event into immersive, personalized experiences that resonate with today’s audiences.
Explore how Augeo’s experience team can take your event to the next level.
