What can event organizers learn from a man with cool glasses eating a Goo Goo Cluster?
Quite a bit, I’d wager.
Carl Landau, Niche Digital, eats a Nashville specialty.
Happy Change of Venue Friday. That off-kilter thought occurred when a conference notification arrived in my email. I will read most all copy (words) that come my way, but typically I am loath to click through to time-sucking video content. And yet there he was, this guy, about to eat a Nashville confectionary delicacy. Click.
What I got was a charming and idiosyncratic view into the Niche Media Conference. Its annual event was in Tempe this past year, and it’s good stuff. (Yes, Arizona Attorney Magazine is niche media, and proudly so. That makes all you legal eagles “niche readers.” Congratulations!)
How do you get people to use their scarce resources—time, money, attention—to travel across country to attend an educational conference? If you’re like most organizations, you inundate prospects with emails and printed materials, flooding their minds and short patience with all of the content content content that will be available, but only if you REGISTER NOW.
We’ve all been on the receiving end of those pitches.
Well, if you’re Carl Landau with Niche Media, you try something else. You recognize that people attend events for all kinds of reasons, not all easily categorized and put in a formal box. You decide to try to connect to viewers on a deeper level. You realize that people do want content (yes, indeed), but what they yearn for is a genuine transformative experience. They want to arrive in a place whose guides (some organizations call them “presenters” or “PowerPoint drones”) will challenge them in fun and innovative ways. It’s at places like that, people think, that they will learn the most cutting-edge industry strategies.
And they may even want some local color. That’s where the Goo Goo Clusters come in.
I was at a great Nashville conference a few years ago, and I cannot say enough about that wondrous creation. I even waxed poetic about it (and its Moon Pie partner) on my Tumblr stream.
Two great tastes taste good together: Nashville specialties Goo Goo Cluster and Mini Moon Pie.
So enjoy Carl’s video introduction to the conference; it is embedded down below. The conference may be one you’ll never attend. But the video may provide you ideas about how to make your own events and content come alive, and how to get your viewers or other audience members firing on all cylinders.
For myself, I plan to steal shamelessly from the approaches Carl uses so well. (And I love that long closing tracking shot! Am I crazy, or did I see that used in Alfred Hitchcock’s TV show, when he sat in a high-backed chair far away from us in a looooong room, as the camera crept closer and closer, all while Al told us what we were about to see? Hitchcock fans, let me know!)
And I’d suggest the State Bar of Arizona might want to try an evocative video like his. But until they do, be sure to view what’s coming up at the Bar’s own June convention.
Here’s Carl. Have a great—and Cluster-filled—weekend.
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