BEST VIRTUAL OR HYBRID AWARDS EVENT
EIT Community – EIT Jumpstarter
EIT Jumpstarter is the EU programme that trains early innovators to turn their revolutionary ideas into business.
The programme, supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, already trained 500+ passionate innovators yearly from Central, Eastern, and Southern European countries and helped them establish influential start-ups. This is one of the most important awards for the earliest-stage innovations in the CEE region.
Every year we organise the EIT Jumpstarter Grand Final, where the best 42 teams in a total of 7 categories compete for their share of the €159.000 prize pool and access to the most extensive pan-European network of innovators. In 2021, we held a digital-only event: https://fb.watch/aGrAvN9ejO/
Winners were chosen in seven categories: health, food, raw materials, energy, urban mobility, manufacturing and New European Bauhaus (focused on sustainable and inclusive living spaces). This is not only an awards-giving ceremony but the European celebration of innovations and the vibrant community of people who want to make a difference.
Emap Publishing – World Architecture Festival Awards
WAF 21 – Digital Edition was held on 1-3 December 21 using the Swapcard platform with 552 recorded judging presentations available, live-streamed Keynotes, networking, plus the announcement of the overall World Building of the Year Winner. Pivoting WAF 21 to digital meant that recorded finalist presentations provided valuable content which was made available for 3 months post-event. We sold access to this content to all finalists and ran a marketing campaign to drive sales. As a result, we delivered online delegate revenue, plus retained all entry revenue, and 50% of sponsorship revenue. Whilst lower revenue than the live event would have delivered, with lower costs for a virtual event we achieved the same gross profit and delegate volume as budgeted for the live event!
Institution for Engineering & Technology – E&T Innovation Awards
The IET’s E&T Innovation Awards has run for over 17yrs but was rebranded in 2021
alongside our award-winning magazine, E&T, to unleash a new beginning for an old event.
Limited by Covid restrictions, we chose a hybrid strategy to reach our usual 350+ person
event and reach a new global audience.
The in-person event was a VIP intimate affair for our Awards speakers, winners and Advisory Board made up of the most famous Engineering ambassadors. However the main goal was to bring it alive online.
The virtual event was akin to a TV show produced by our own IET.tv production team and our in-house event managers all streamed using the EventsAir platform. Online, 305 virtual guests tuned in from 21 countries including, Vietnam, China, Andorra and Mexico.
Using social media to allow people at home to vote for the Young Pioneer Award, we saw 5,000 votes in the build up to the live event. This idea gave everyone (virtually or in-person)
an opportunity to have a say on the night. The event overall was a huge success achieving a fantastic Net Promoter Score (NPS) score of +40!
Professional Beauty Group – British Hairdressing Awards
The team involved in the British Hairdressing Awards are passionate and dedicated to it and the industry it serves – it’s an event that means so much to so many, culminating in a celebration of this incredible craft. If we had to go virtual, we had to ensure we brought the industry together to truly celebrate the craft and those working within it. We needed to ensure it was a party, a chance to network, and with the future looking bleak, a time to have some fun. Teams from across the globe joined, hosting their own online parties and watching together via Facebook Live.
The awards were simultaneously streamed to the Hopin platform where the team set up the session rooms as “tables”, allowing finalists to network prior to, and post the ceremony itself.
Our studio set-up perfectly mimicked the live event and gave excellent audience engagement, with live finalist interviews, and winner reactions.
27,000+ people watched live, with 2.5k positive comments being posted during the live event – a phenomenal achievement.
As the call from the studio floor came… “it’s a wrap”, there were tears of joy, relief and a huge sense of achievement
Smiley Movement CIC – 5th Charity Film Awards
In 2020, Smiley Movement acquired the Charity Film Awards, hoping to take the Awards to the next level through increasing the number of views to charity films tenfold, raising the profile of charity films, and celebrating the power of filmmaking as a tool for positive change. The aim was to give the charity sector the recognition it truly deserves. The 2022 campaign was a huge success, generating an additional 3.5 million views on films, 60,000 votes, and having more than 550 guests at the ceremony – the highest ever at the Charity Film Awards. We put the Awards on a world-class stage, hosting it at the ODEON Luxe, Leicester Square – giving it the “Oscars of the charity sector” feel. We committed advertising spend to help promote every single film entry, and provided unrestricted, free promotion to charities during the nine-month campaign. Charities sent in overwhelmingly positive feedback after the ceremony, over the moon with the exposure their films had received. It really was a unique event bringing together hundreds of people from the charity sector to work together to make our world a better place.
The Academy of International Extended Reality – The 5th International VR Awards
The VR Awards is at the center of recognition and celebration of outstanding achievement in Virtual Reality (VR). The ceremony gathers the world’s most influential names in immersive technology, to celebrate the biggest projects that redefined the way we live.
The VR Awards celebrated its 5th anniversary in 2021. And like its ground-breaking predecessor the 5th International VR Awards ceremony was experienced through the Metaverse, created in AltspaceVR, and allowed millions of people to join the 5th International VR Awards ceremony from a browser, phone, and VR headsets.
Attendees gather in a gold-plated luxurious virtual lobby after entering their special access code in AltspaceVR’s dashboard, and as a group experience, each attendee is then transported into 5 different worlds representing each year of the VR Awards leading up to the fifth and final red carpet that leads to the ceremony where the VR Awards winners are announced much like a real-life award ceremony.
Wilmington Events, EMEA – HSJ Awards 2020
The HSJ Awards celebrate healthcare service excellence, sharing best practice, driving innovation, and helping improve patient outcomes in UK healthcare sector. The event has been delivered for 39 years in November as an in-person awards.
As our NHS audience were instrumental to the pandemic response, each successive wave of covid-19 impacted our awards strategy in delivering a programme befitting their achievements. By November 2020, after a postponement of the live event to March 2021, the team realised that the 40th anniversary would need to be pivoted to virtual. They delivered a TV quality production with celebrity guests and senior leaders taking the time to thank the NHS. A celebration of the teams and individuals’ projects, at a time when the health sector was experiencing their toughest year in recent history.
Over 2,500 people watched the virtual event live, which trended on Twitter and feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The HSJ Awards team were proud to have been able to deliver such a rewarding, meaningful and impactful virtual event and were able to pay tribute to their audience in an appropriate and tasteful way.
