May 21, 2020.

To say that we’re living in “uncertain” times is an understatement when it comes to the experiential marketing industry. COVID-19 has brought our industry to a grinding halt over the last few months. No more pop-ups, no more festivals, no more races...the “experience” has been taken out of “experiential.”

While it’s easy to get lost in the constant stream of news articles and tweets speculating about the future, with plenty of murkiness around the timeline of it all, there is some good news on the horizon. The general public are just as eager to dive back into live events as we are.

According to a recent Ipsos-reuters consumer poll, the most common responses were “hopeful” and “cautiously optimistic” about returning to daily routines post lockdown. Live Nation’s impact study from music fans reported 79% of fans expect to be back at live music events within 4 months of restrictions lifting. The demand is there, but a “new normal” mandates that the events industry flexes our creative muscles to develop new approaches to events and live experiences that keeps eager consumers safe. 

As we look ahead to the day when we can get (cautiously) back to work, it’s important to find ways to tighten the feedback loop between you and your fans. There will be a lot of approaches to integrating additional health and safety measures into live experiences over the next 12 to 18 months. Some will work better than others, but the most important thing you can do is keep a trained ear on consumer sentiment around the measures you’ve put in place. Building confidence in your audiences is key as we look to the second half of 2020 and into 2021. 

Meshh’s contactless survey tool provides event research teams a robust way to collect real-time, direct feedback via a consumer's own device, without having to implement additional health and safety measures. The tool allows teams to leverage the acceleration of technology adoption to solicit in the moment feedback around a specific activation, new health and safety measures, the overall experience and more. 

By connecting to a Meshh-provided plug and play wifi network, consumers will have the ability to connect to a custom survey on their mobile device, which is tailored to drive actionable insight based on in the moment fan sentiment at your event. Surveys are built from a variety of different question types, with options to include audio or video responses and incentives to complete the survey provided by a custom digital fulfillment tool to provide instant rewards for feedback.

This tool is just one way to employ touch free technology at your event or activation to gain a deeper understanding of onsite consumer sentiment.

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If you need to learn more about how visitors percieve your venue, event or brand activation, we’d love to hear from you. You can also follow us here on linkedin for regular updates.