Clash of the titans: physical vs digital

I like to think of events on a dial.

If you think about one side of the dial being purely physical events, the other side being purely digital events, then anything in between is hybrid. Some events are primarily digital, with a very small physical extension, and some are primarily physical with a smaller digital extension. They’re both hybrid, but at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Whether you should lead with digital or physical ties back to objectives. The most important thing is to work out what your objectives are. What are you trying to achieve?

Nicola Kastner

Education, for example, works really well online, especially technical training. So do broad, big announcements. You can have a keynote in an event for 5,000 people, or you can have a keynote for 400,000 people watching online. You're not expecting them to come to you.

What doesn't work digitally is networking. We all sat through those horrible things where we were put in rooms and so forth during Covid. Senior level engagement doesn't work well either. They're not going to spend that time with you online.

Sponsorships don't work either, which is a really important concept and one that we haven't learned yet as an industry.

Digital behaviour is very different than physical behaviour. You go into a department store anywhere in the world, they're all set up the same. You've got your women's clothing, men's clothing, furniture section, etc - and because of the nature of how they're set up, you browse. And so you may go to buy a dress, but you might walk out purchasing a sofa. Which I have done!

However, when I go on to Amazon to buy something. I know exactly what I'm looking for. I'm only searching for that thing. I'm in and out quickly. I'm not walking around saying, “oh, maybe I should buy a sofa”, when I was there to buy a dress.

That same concept applies to events – and I don't think that's something that we've really figured out.

Physical events, for all intents and purposes, are just bundles of activities that you've put together to maximise time, space and audience. These bundles of activities form an event and that’s the event experience that we know today.

Digitally, we are more direct, non-browsing, task-orientated and focused. Attention spans are very short these days - and getting shorter. The bundle of activity concept doesn't work. So you need to separate them into elements that make sense. You need to create the experience for the medium that you're delivering in.