CASE STUDY:
FRPO’s 2020 VIRTUAL MAC AWARDS
The Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO) annual MAC Awards Gala honours the leaders in the apartment industry and commends their commitment to their residents. For the last couple of decades, this prestigious event has attracted over 2000+ guests including landlords, property managers, and industry suppliers who have attended live-in person in Toronto.
Creativo Advertising realized that the event was at risk of being postponed because of the pandemic. In fact, 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of the gala. Rather than cancelling the event, Creativo proposed an opportunity to FRPO which would allow the MAC Awards to be presented virtually while still maintaining the integrity of the gala. Creativo Advertising developed a comprehensive plan to stage the online event in conjunction with Buildings Week, sponsors, partners and attendees. The virtual MAC Awards allowed the celebration to continue with growth and success.
PROJECT SCOPE
- Project Management
- Marketing Concept & Strategy
- Sponsorship Deck
- Branding & Design
- Logo Design
- Website Development
- Content Creation
- Email Newsletter Design
- Social Media Strategy
The Strategy
Our strategy for the virtual event focused on five main areas:
1. Shifting the MAC Awards to an online event seamlessly, while still maintaining its integrity and familiarity of prior experiences for its attendees.
2. Creating a cohesive and compelling brand identity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the MAC Awards while at the same time expanding the brand to a much wider industry audience.
3. Developing inventive online advertising opportunities to entice sponsors to continue to support the MAC Awards; albeit online.
4. Building a virtual audience in conjunction with Buildings Week to maximize attendance of the event.
5. Keeping the apartment industry community connected and engaged during these unprecedented times.
The feedback from sponsors and attendees has been immensely positive. In fact, suppliers have claimed their participation and involvement in winning a 2020 MAC Award has garnered them new business.
CHALLENGES
- For the past 19 years, the MAC Awards has been presented as an in-person event with 2000+ industry attendees and has never had much of an online presence before.
- Enticing sponsors to continue to support the event; albeit online.
- Due to the current pandemic and lockdowns, the event needed to be moved to a virtual platform that would be effective.
- The selected virtual platform needed to accomodate online networking for industry members, suppliers and sponsors.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
In a span of just 4 months, Creativo Advertising led both internal and external teams to produce, stage and execute the 2020 Virtual MAC Awards in conjunction with Buildings Week.
We developed a comprehensive plan with timelines, deliverables and responsibilities for various stakeholders in order to bring the 2020 Virtual MAC Awards to life with measurable success. The event captured over 500+ online registrations with an estimated 58% in attendance.
Marketing Goals
- Reposition the MAC Awards as a must-attend online event for the best in the apartment industry
- Create a compelling and cohesive brand identity for the Virtual MAC Awards while celebrating its 20th Anniversary milestone
- Produce a beautiful, standalone web site for the MAC Awards
- Build Awareness for the MAC Awards as a virtual event
- Develop unique and compelling advertising opportunities to secure support from sponsors
- Work with FRPO, sponsors, partners and key players to stage a memorable online event
- Maximize registration and attendance for the event
Website Development
The first step of our strategy was to develop an online presence for the MAC Awards (separate from FRPO). Over the course of its 19 year history, the MAC Awards never had its own dedicated online presence as it was always an in-person event. We strongly felt that in order to successfullymove the event online, the MAC Awards would need a stand-alone, show-stopper type website to house of all of the content including an new sponsorship opportunity. We also developed a Virtual MAC Awards Guide, as part of the web site that provided an additional exposure opportunity for sponsors as well as an outlet for relevant content. There were over 3,941 page organicviews over a period of 64 days.
PROJECT SCOPE
- Website Design
- Responsive Web Development
- Form & Mailing List Integration
- Sponsorship Recoginition
- Virtual Event Guide
Social Media
We focused on creating an effective content calendar paired with compelling social media posts to highlight our sponsors, nominees, event details and winners.
We developed three key pillars for social media posts: 1. Event information and details, 2. Sponsor highlights and 3. Fun Facts about the MAC Awards to commermorate the 20th Anniversary.
The MAC Awards social media content was shared on all FRPO social media channels. They experienced a 37% average increase in engagement on the event posts across all social platforms. Specifically, Twitter obtained over 10,024 impressions from September 28th to the event on December 3rd.
Email Marketing
Creativo produced a series of eight engaging email newsletters over the course of three months. The purpose of the newsletters was to announce the online event, praise and thank sponsors, showcase the nominees, share registration details, encourage attendance and finally, highlight the 2020 MAC Award winners.
The email marketing campaign generated valuable results with an increase of 51.67% click through rate. Specifically, the event emails generated actionable results for online registration for the MAC Awards.
Video Strategy
Creativo developed a strategy for a series of videos to feature event highlights, recoginition of sponsors, nominees, speakers and winners. The video strategy included: 1. Teaser video, 2. Nominee video, 3. Industry intro video, 4. Final event production video and 5. Winner recoginition video.
The video strategy was an important component for the marketing of this virtual event. The structure of the final event presentation was based on the previous in-person event layout to provide attendees a similar event experience for which they were famillar.
A long-standing vendor implemented Creativo’s strategy and produced the video content. Creativo supplied all branding to the video vendor.
The Results
Creativo Advertising successfully shifted the MAC Awards from an in-person to virtual event with the support from sponsors and energetic attendees. The engagement, reach, registrants and attendees was extremely high for the 2020 Virtual MAC Awards. Based on a fairly short promotional period, insights have been measured from the launch of the new website on October 1st through to the final date of the event on December 3rd 2020.
- New Site Visitors – 83%
- Returning Visitors – 17%
- Direct Site Traffic – 85%
Twitter Impressions over 64 Days
Website Page Views Over 64 Days
Increase in Email Click Through Rate
Average Increase in Social Engagement
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