#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 highlight: Securities Commission's hybrid take on events rakes in sign ups

Securities Commission (SC) has always been known for its SCxSC FinTech Conference. However, when the pandemic hit, events proved to be a challenge due to the regulations rolled out by the government. Keeping up with the trend of going virtual, SC and creative marketing agency Light Up 7 came up with the strategy of hosting the SCxSC Fintech Conference 2020 online. With this pivot, SC and Light Up 7 managed to impress the judges, securing them the bronze award for Video / Production Company of the Year at A+M's MARKies Awards Malaysia 2021. Find out how the team succeeded.

Challenges

SCxSC FinTech Conference has been one of the biggest physical networking business event that SC has held over the past six years. The year 2020 marks the seventh anniversary of the SCxSC FinTech Conference. According to SC, this is the first time the fintech conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was the main factor for making it stand out.

As this was the first time SC is holding a virtual event, it posed multiple challenges for the company. The first challenge was finding a suitable and reliable platform to create the needs of the virtual event. The venue was not the only challenge the company had. In fact, the company also had to consider about the participants and speakers who were attending the event. One of which is the speakers' attendance, with many of them dropping out of the live sessions due to unstable Internet connection. The other was that there were not many fintech-related engagement activities to keep viewers interested.

After approximately two months of pitching and pre-event planning, SC entrusted its first virtual event to Light Up 7. The agency is mainly experienced in physical and hybrid events, hence hosting one of the biggest events for clients virtually came as a challenge to the team. Therefore, Light Up 7 knew it had to adopt a radically new strategy and concept to manage this event. 

Strategy

Instead of a traditional event management, SC and Light Up 7 adopted a hybrid strategy that focused on creativity and sustainability in the virtual platform. The rationale was simple, hosting a virtual event requires a lot of creativity as it depends a lot on the viewers’ point of view as everything is through a computer or laptop screen. Hence, Light Up 7 chose to infuse the element creativity in the collaterals by introducing lots of vibrant eye-catching animations and colours for SC to ensure that the whole virtual event remains attractive throughout.

Light Up 7 ran the digital marketing campaign for a whole month pre-event and managed to garner a total of approximately 8,000 registrations in total, which surpassed SC’s targeted amount of registrations. The strategy was to produce a creative collateral coupled with promoting advertisements on both Google and Facebook platform. Additionally, Light Up 7 implemented a creative one-stop solution website to enable participants to register at ease. The website also contained other informative items such as agendas, speakers, FAQ’s and among others. Light Up 7 wanted the website to be as easy as possible for participants to obtain information.

When it came to the usage of social media platforms, SC and Light Up 7 ensured that it was as intuitive as possible to generate a positive user experience. Both parties also introduced the element of avatars in the platform, designed all the skins for all the live sessions and also infused 3D elements in it. This was to ensure that participants would be able to have an immersive event experience similar to a physical SCxSC FinTech Conference despite being at home.

Execution

Through the combination of both words and design, the virtual event campaign encompassed what the event has to offer to the audience while enticing exhibitors to join the event. The designs created to publicise the event also exuded a simple digitised concept, sending a message to the consumers that fintech is not a complicated tool to use. Meticulous to detail, the company also ensured that the colours used were able to stimulate futuristic vibes in relation to the focus of the events.

The details of the events are highlighted through both the use of graphics as well as words. Meanwhile, the event and partnership logos were incorporated without drawing away the attention from the message that the graphics were trying to portray. Lastly, a template was created to ensure that the information pertaining to the event was shown properly as well as to serve as a reminder for the audience.

Results

The SCxSC Fintech Conference 2020 witnessed great success. In just one week, there were 5,000 registrations and more than 4,500 networking communications have been established. In total, the event garnered a total of 7,500 registrations and had more than 12,000 live views obtained throughout the three days it ran.