One of the earliest known uses of branding goes back millennia to the ancient Roman civilization of Pompeii, where archeologists found branded loaves of bread preserved in the volcanic ruins of the city.
Branding has changed throughout history, adapting from a sign of ownership like branding livestock to a symbol that, when combined with marketing, tells customers who the company is, what it does, the values it has and so on.
Marketing is the strategy and tools used to promote a company’s brand. Think of it as the vehicle that gets a company’s brand out to the public. A company can have a great brand, but without marketing, people won’t know about it.
For MYOB, digital experiences are a branding opportunity that should not be missed. The Australian-based business management company used digital experiences to host weekly happy hour events to connect with clients and prospects during the pandemic.
As the winner of ON24’s Digital Branding Award, MYOB’s Virtual Happy Hour aligned with the company’s branding and made a lasting impression on audiences by delivering a visually engaging, well-branded digital experience. Read more to learn how the company created its award-winning event series.
Want to see what award-winning experiences look like? Click here to explore the ON24 Experience’s award-winner gallery.
Why MYOB Took Its Happy Hours Virtual
In-person events with clients and prospects around Australia and New Zealand were a large part of how MYOB built and maintained its relationships. The company relied on events to generate leads, engage customers, share product updates, build community and enable its sales teams.
Prior to COVID-19, MYOB had more than 200 face-to-face events planned for 2020. But, once lockdowns and social distancing were enacted, the company had to shift its event strategy quickly.
MYOB’s answer? Pivot to digital experiences and stay connected with various stakeholders, customers and prospects. And it did so with its ever-popular Happy Hour events.
With Virtual Happy Hour in place, MYOB could easily foster connections with clients and bring fun back to work – even at vast distances.
How MYOB Brought Customers Into Its Virtual Happy Hours
Using ON24 Webcast Elite and ON24 Breakouts, MYOB invited various client groups to participate in its online happy hours. The events featured a live mixologist who demonstrated how to make different cocktails.
The hour-long event kicked off with a brief housekeeping video orienting participants to the webinar console and a welcome message from MYOB that explained the different elements of the event. During this initial orientation, MYOB encouraged attendees to engage with MYOB by using polls, asking questions through the Q&A tool and completing a post-event survey.
Attendees then went into breakout rooms with an MYOB team member to discuss the challenges of finding and keeping the right employees for their company.
Prior to the Virtual Happy Hour, registered participants received a cocktail kit so they could follow along with the mixologist and make their own cocktails.
Physical kits like the cocktail ingredients or swag boxes are not only exciting for registrants to receive, but they also help drive registrant-to-attendee conversions and serve as an event reminder when they arrive at registrants’ locations.
After the cocktail demonstration, participants moved to one of four Breakout rooms for a brief small-group discussion on recruiting challenges before coming back together with the panel speakers to ask and answer audience questions.
MYOB also created an after-hours event using Breakouts where participants could hang out, socialize, continue drinking or play games. The casual happy hour setting and use of breakout rooms allowed participants to have fun while networking.
How MYOB Employed Pitch-Perfect Design In Its Events
Throughout the event, MYOB made sure its brand was front and center for participants. Keeping with the happy hour theme, the MYOB team created a custom webinar console featuring an overflowing martini glass that matched the brand’s bright pink and purple corporate color scheme.
This same color scheme was also mirrored within the presentation through background graphics and speaker introductions. For their video backgrounds, each speaker used a digital bar setting that made it look like they were participating from a bar which served to further transport participants into the happy hour atmosphere.
Within the webinar console, MYOB used a combination of the video media player and switched back and forth between video and slides throughout the presentation.
To encourage audience interaction, the event host pushed out several audience polls with fun and interesting questions related to the event. They also had speaker bios, the Q&A widget, a post-event survey, a call-to-action button linking to an e-book and a hidden button advertising their podcast series on Spotify.
MYOB’s Virtual Happy Hour Results
MYOB’s virtual happy hours have been crucial for connecting with clients during the pandemic. MYOB hosted its first happy hour event in July 2021 and the events are still happening.
The team rotates invitations to different client groups and since the event has grown in popularity, the happy hours have turned into a series and increased in frequency from one Friday per month to every Friday.
By hosting such a unique event like a happy hour, MYOB is living up to its reputation as a fun brand.