Planner Resilience: JR. Global Events
Learn how meeting and event planners showed resilience and adapted throughout the uncertainty covid-19 brought the meetings and events industry
How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?
Jennafer Ross, CMP, CED- Founder and CEO of Jr. Global Events
We took our moment of pause when March started to unravel and realized it was beyond our control at that very moment and we had to quickly and professionally shift our focus to help our clients adjust in what we thought was the interim. We dove head first into virtual meetings and finding ways to create a little happiness - zoom fatigue set in fast… so we shifted our primary focus to more socially engaging elements for companies to offer to their clients and their employees and by extension to their sales teams to keep engagement.
Coupled with that we also began offering cultivated gifting as part of the engagements - themed to the activity - so for Drag Queen Bingo for example we sent everyone colorful wigs, oversized sunglasses and feather boas - to dress the part and play along. It was amazing to see the smiles and hear the laughter albeit across a screen - it was certainly NOT just a virtual meeting and not just bingo. Late October we made the investment with a platform.
While our team is well adapted and managing other virtual platforms we wanted to make something accessible other than zoom to all our clients and colleagues so we partnered with Event Farm, powered by Virbela and purchased our own digital, immersive campus, Global Events Center. This is an engaging and unique platform that you can walk an expo floor, dance to live steam music, and yes conduct face to face business. In the 18 years it took us to create and grow our MICE agency we adapted and shifted in less than 4 months into something so much more. I am beyond proud of the gumption, drive and dedication of our team. Here's to a stronger 2021!!
Stay tuned for the next planner resilience story in our HopSkip Planner Resilience Series, where we spotlight meeting and event planners who have demonstrated great resilience to adapt to the uncertainty that Covid-19 has brought to the events industry.