The contradiction between the inability of people to gather offline on a large scale since the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for communication for customer acquisition has become increasingly prominent. In the absence of a clear expectation for the pandemic’s progress, many companies have shifted from initially pausing and observing to seeking new ways to hold events. Faced with pain points such as the long cycle, high cost, low efficiency, value mismatch, relatively poor experience, and difficulty in evaluating the effectiveness of traditional offline events, event organizers urgently need an innovative way to return to the original intention of hosting events, reconstruct the value chain between participants and organizers, reshape the experience and effectiveness of events, and maximize the efficiency of event hosting through structural efficiency optimization based on the ability to hold events anytime and anywhere.
A virtualization event platform can replicate traditional large-scale offline event scenarios and processes on one hand; on the other hand, it can achieve refined management of the entire process before, during, and after the event, promoting efficiency improvement through structural efficiency.To this end, we selected Polyv, which has one-stop operational service capabilities, as the event service provider, and used the collaboration case of Polyv and TV Taobao’s “recorded + live” as an example to demonstrate the customer value and user experience of the virtualization event platform. We welcome your appreciation.
Case: Polyv x TV Taobao: Cross-Domain Cooperation to Create a New Benchmark for Online Industry Conferences
01
Post-Pandemic Era: TV Taobao Embraces “New Changes” in Hosting Events
The uncertainty brought by the pandemic continues, and in an environment where various industries are suffering from the impact, “hosting events” has also ushered in “new changes”—offline events face high risks, and most companies have turned to embrace online formats.As an interactive shopping platform under Alibaba Group, TV Taobao is no exception.The Double 11 year-end promotion has put merchants into a “sprint” phase, and TV Taobao, which provides “OTT integrated marketing and sales” services, has comprehensively upgraded its 2022 Double 11 strategy. In terms of marketing concepts, TV Taobao has not only launched the “New Marketing for TV Taobao,” “OTT Five-Dimensional Closed Loop New Marketing Model,” and “OTT Integrated Marketing and Sales System,” but also invested hundreds of millions in red envelopes, millions in membership cards, thousands of new product samples, and targeted subsidies for thousands of merchants.However, to respond to the changes brought by the pandemic, TV Taobao resolutely chose to release its “2022 Double 11 Strategy” online through MR live streaming.Given Polyv’s good service reputation in the industry, solid MR virtual live streaming experience, and technical strength, TV Taobao ultimately chose to fully cooperate with Polyv for this summit.It is reported that as TV Taobao’s first industry-level OTT marketing summit, this summit attracted over 4,000 viewers from the OTT industry, advertising industry, and Tmall merchants. Through discussions with nine guest speakers, the conference clarified the ideas for the integration of OTT marketing and product effectiveness, and provided Tmall merchants with strategic directions for the upcoming Double 11 on large screens.
02
Exceptional Service: Polyv and TV Taobao Create a High-Quality Conference
As a new attempt for TV Taobao to embrace changes, despite having sufficient understanding of the online conference model, TV Taobao still faced the following pain points:
- First, switching from familiar traditional offline formats to new formats, TV Taobao seeks certainty in outcomes.In traditional offline summits, all parties are familiar with the process, which is controllable and predictable. Virtual events are a new phenomenon, and many people have never encountered them, let alone know how to connect, how to advance and cooperate in the process, and how to assess the service quality of the service provider.
- Second, the short project cycle requires service providers to prepare quickly and execute efficiently in a short time.The project from initiation, recording, post-processing to live streaming takes only a little over a month, which is at least 50% shorter than similar projects, and the process replicates offline, increasing the workload, requiring high comprehensive capabilities and project practice experience from vendors.
- Finally, as TV Taobao’s first foray into online conferences, it needs support from professional service providers.Traditional offline events have a sense of ceremony, atmosphere, and participation; partner products and services can be displayed to participants in specific areas and in specific ways (e.g., conference materials), but how to ensure the above effects in virtualization events requires professional partners.
These situations lead to multiple challenges for TV Taobao’s summit in terms of cognition, cooperation, implementation, and effectiveness, raising higher demands for the product strength, service capability, quality control, and execution experience of event service providers.To address these pain points, under Polyv’s suggestions, both parties carried out overall cooperation in three steps: “Cognitive Icebreaking – Efficient Preparation – Perfect Hosting,” ultimately successfully completing the hosting of TV Taobao’s “2022 New Marketing Summit for TV Taobao” in the form of a virtualization event.Image 2: Steps for the Taobao TV Virtualization Event Project Cooperation
The specific process is as follows:
1. Cognitive Icebreaking.Faced with the client’s complete lack of understanding of virtualization events, Polyv understood the background, audience, expected outcomes, themes, and general agenda of TV Taobao’s event, combined with public materials, and formed a preliminary cooperation plan based on Polyv’s material and template libraries. From five dimensions: the advantages, effects, experiences, planning of virtualization events, and Polyv’s capabilities and past successful cases, it helped TV Taobao establish a basic understanding of virtualization events and Polyv’s advantages in this field.
Image 3: Polyv’s Preliminary Cooperation Plan for This Summit
1. Content Output, What You See Is What You Get.
1) Polyv showcased the specific effects that videos could achieve in certain scenarios based on the summit agenda and provided a document with venue and video scene style options that matched the summit theme for TV Taobao’s one-stop selection, even clarifying the desired display style together with TV Taobao.2) Similar to traditional offline meetings, virtualization events have corresponding agendas, opening warm-ups, etc. Polyv initially provided video special effects animations for the opening warm-up, allowing the TV Taobao team to intuitively feel the specific effects.3) Additionally, based on the Alibaba system, Polyv provided a series of alternative content for client reference.2. Service Experience Output, Dual Optimization of Efficiency and Effectiveness.1) Based on past experience, a specific execution schedule was provided, clarifying the corresponding matters to be executed at different time points and delineating the responsibilities and collaboration points of both parties.2) Drawing from previous event experiences, Polyv systematically provided TV Taobao with support on how to conduct online audience interaction, customize specific functions for different segments, introduce guests, and whether to drive traffic.3) Facing the display demands of TV Taobao’s partner merchants during the summit, Polyv offered design suggestions on how to present the highlights of different merchants based on its rich service experience, along with specific processed samples.After rapid confirmation and revision of the plan, Polyv and the handling team conducted an online report and Q&A session with TV Taobao’s leadership. Following systematic and intuitive assessments, the TV Taobao team internally reached a consensus and recognized the virtualization event approach. Polyv emerged with a significantly higher score in the client’s comprehensive comparison, and both parties quickly initiated the project.2. Efficient Preparation.Polyv established a professional front-end service team of over 10 members, including project managers, virtualization event technical engineers, virtualization event operators (scene building communication support), directors (pre-shooting and post-processing), and project operation assistants, to prepare item by item according to the execution plan finalized by both parties, following the approach of “event expert consultants + efficient service”:1. Method Selection.Faced with the recorded and live streaming forms of virtualization, given that TV Taobao’s summit did not require real-time interaction and emphasized scene quality, TV Taobao ultimately chose to hold the summit first by recording, then fine-tuning, and finally live streaming, following Polyv’s recommendation.2. Agenda and Script Confirmation.To enhance structural efficiency, Polyv’s project manager had multiple rounds of discussions with the TV Taobao liaison team regarding the summit agenda, and based on its rich experience in virtualization events, provided optimization suggestions for the agenda segments, ultimately confirming the event script to facilitate coordination of all resources and timing involved in the summit.3. Stage Creation.Polyv’s backend 3D virtual production team created industry-specific and distinctive scenes based on the two keywords “immersion” and “grand” proposed by TV Taobao, relying on Polyv’s technical platform, and produced special effects and dynamic KV according to TV Taobao’s conference theme and industry characteristics. Compared to traditional offline methods, this greatly saved stage construction time, and the effects were visible in real-time and adjustable at any time.Image 4: 2022 TV Taobao Marketing Summit Effect Display
4. Efficient Coordination of External Guests.This summit involved numerous external guests scattered across various locations. Polyv leveraged its resource advantages to overcome the “barriers” of cross-regional collaboration during the pandemic, coordinating its localized teams in different cities and collaborating with experienced top-notch filming partners to efficiently connect with different guests and conduct on-site green screen filming, with directors and project managers summarizing and confirming with the client.With strong execution capabilities, Polyv helped TV Taobao tackle the most challenging aspects of this summit.Image 5: 2022 TV Taobao Marketing Summit Work Site
5. Refined Production.Entering the post-production stage, Polyv’s senior product directors and 3D engineers collaborated with TV Taobao to complete the transition videos, countdown videos, and the production and rendering of data bars, floating windows, and other special effects, and based on the event flow, completed the overall integration of video content special effects to achieve an effect that was not live streaming but better than live streaming.
6. Live Streaming Room Setup and Traffic Generation.Based on the characteristics of this event, Polyv quickly completed the decoration of the live streaming room, information settings, lottery setups, and guest seating arrangements. Considering the numerous segments of this event, following Polyv’s recommendations, both parties outlined the key content of the event and generated a response list for viewers to select, enhancing the interaction efficiency of the event and the dissemination effect of key content. Meanwhile, Polyv, based on past experience, utilized customized invitation posters, guiding posters, and QR code traffic generation methods to expand the summit’s coverage, significantly enhancing the event’s dissemination effect.
Image 6: 2022 TV Taobao Marketing Summit Live Interaction
3. Perfect Hosting.With Polyv’s outstanding product strength, systematic service capabilities, and rich execution experience in virtualization events, and with the full cooperation of both project teams, the virtualization event for TV Taobao’s “2022 New Marketing Summit for TV Taobao” successfully launched and was held at the end of August 2022.Polyv widely distributed the live broadcast through official channels such as Tencent Video, Youku, Douyin, Weibo, and Toutiao, increasing the coverage of the target audience and ensuring the maximization of event benefits, achieving or even exceeding TV Taobao’s expected outcomes and goals for this summit.In the future, we believe that more and more organizations will recognize the new experiences brought by virtualization events and the significant improvements in event hosting efficiency, making virtualization events one of the important ways to host events. We also note that Polyv, in addition to having industry-leading technical accumulation in real-time keying, real-time compositing, and real-time audio and video technologies, has also accumulated sufficient experience in real-time cloud rendering technology and digital human technology, which is expected to further open the door to immersive events and empower the hosting of large-scale events for more organizations with product advantages, service advantages, and experience advantages.
Note:Click the lower left corner“Read the Original”, to read the full version of “2022 Love Analysis · Virtualization Events Practice Report“ to learn more.
