Tech-EM Chats With Marie Cottrell, Event Marketing Manager for HP Corporate Events

You are part of the corporate events team, yet your focus is virtual events. Would you explain the synergies between virtual and live events?
At HP, we believe that a virtual event provides all the benefits of a physical event, whether it’s an event or a tradeshow—with the ability to accommodate tens of thousands attendees. We deliver that experience through an online 3D application where attendees self-navigate through the experience. They view keynote speeches, attend webinars, participate in social networking activities. All the benefits of a physical event are captured within the virtual event, so it’s a natural extension of what we do.

What types of virtual events are you doing?
We are conducting a variety of types of events. We do customer meetings; external events; partner events; internal meetings, such as sales, product or marketing training; award ceremonies; and leadership meetings. The life of a virtual event or the capability of a virtual event is exactly the same as executing [an event] in the physical space.

In some instances, are virtual events replacing live events?   HP constantly looks at evaluating all our programs to see what makes sense, where and for what objective. In some instances, and where it makes sense, yes we are using virtual events to replace live events.

Tell us about your platform.
We are taking a very different tact on how we execute virtual events. We have developed a fully branded virtual events platform. It’s designed to bring innovative, technologically advanced and visually engaging virtual experiences to market. And we do that with extraordinary creativity and technology.

The 3D event platform is designed to improve online business-to-business communications while accelerating our customers through the sales cycle,  and deepening our relationships with our customers. We encourage [participants] to participate in social networking, which as you may know is a key part of our marketing mix. It accelerates our time to market and it allows us to achieve a higher marketing return on our investment while expanding our global reach.

What does a HP online event look like to an attendee?
An HP online event is a 3D representation of a space. It could be a convention space or an event meeting space, there are also auditoriums where speeches are presented. And it’s all 3D and motion graphics.

There are quite a few ways through which we deliver content to our attendees. We do that through presentations, keynotes, webinars—whether they’re live or on-demand. We also have the ability to allow our users to go to our event experience and easily digest content that we have placed there—just as you would at a physical event. Then they’re able to download that content into a zip file or onto their desktop as a takeaway. They have an event bag within the virtual event that they can download all their takeaways into. When they’ve completed their experience, and they’re able to take that with them, just like they would at a physical event.

How do you keep your virtual initiatives integrated with everything else you’re doing?
I think that is one of the things that is unique to HP. The manner in which we’re building this virtual event platform—because it’s repeatable and works with any number of attendees—enables all of our global marketing teams to use this platform. Thus, we maintain a very consistent look and feel for our customers; to present a consistent environment for our customers and our partners as well.

What kind of feedback are you getting from the attendees?
We’re getting amazing feedback. People really enjoy the platform. They’ve found it very user friendly. It’s easy to navigate. All the content that they need is there. And unlike a physical event, they’re able to access the event on their own time. We’ve had nothing but positive feedback on our platform and the user experience, which is extremely important to us.

What results are you generating?
We’re seeing significant ROI for our virtual events. We’re seeing significant increases in the number of attendees. We’re seeing a five time increase on our qualified leads.

For example, one case study shows the comparison between a physical and live event  where our total ROI increased from 15-to-1 to 51-to-1, so it’s very significant. Also we’ve seen a significant increase in our lead captures.

So what is your next step?
In 2009, customers will continue to see the platform evolving into an even more highly interactive place to visit.  

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m originally from Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been in the U.S. for about eleven or twelve years. My hobbies are varied. I teach greeting card making and creative rubber stamping classes. A little bit of scrapbooking, but it’s mostly greeting cards and mementos. I’m an avid photographer as well. I like capturing life’s moments. And I like to watch movies and read. I have a wide and varied repertoire of books; it all depends on where life and work is. Some brain candy stuff, I like reading psychology books, I like reading history books as well as crime suspense—it really varies.