Virtual banquet for 2,000 guests and a sprinkling of Michelin chefs
We worked with Belazu to design and deliver two mass digital events with hundreds of participants and multiple presenters in different locations.
Challenge
Belazu, working with Chefs in Schools and a number of high-profile chefs, including Yotam Ottolenghi, Thomasina Myers and Angela Hartnet, wanted to run a ‘virtual banquet’ for nearly 2,000 participants across the country. This was an extremely high profile and complex event, with the value of tickets sold for the event topping £70,000.
They needed the support to turn their idea into a reality, covering everything from event design, event management, logistics, facilitation, social media coordination and evaluation.
Kaleidoscope was commissioned to provide this all encompassing support, and was recommissioned to support the follow-up banquet six months later.
Approach
The event needed to be a technical and entertainment success, involving a range of skills. Similar events attempted by other organisations had been met by a high technical failure rate compounded by poor communications with participants.
To ensure success, our support focused on three areas:
Technical planning and back-ups: using our in-depth technical expertise, we spent the time to plan, stress test and re-plan all of our arrangements so that the chances of technical fault were minimised. This included robust technical systems, but was also built into event design – for example, a ‘back-up’ chef in a different location was on hand to step in if any of the main chefs lost their connection.
Community and fun: mass digital events are novel by their large attendance, yet the individual experience is one of being alone. We designed a range of ways to build community and togetherness, from the sharing of participants’ dishes on social media to birthday ‘shout-outs’ to help people feel they were part of something bigger.
Structure, facilitation and agenda design: these were ambitious events with many different components. Our event plan went down to the minute to ensure that everything was planned meticulously, and facilitation on the night focused on keeping everything moving.
Our approach was iterated and refined for the follow-up banquet.
Impact
Both events were very significant successes – 97% of participants agreed or strongly agreed they would recommend events like this to their friends, with the most common reasons including the joy they gave.
For Belazu’s charity partner, nearly £60,000 was raised at the first banquet. Belazu itself gained very significant brand value, with the first event trending on social media.
Read Richard’s blog ‘Cooking up a storm‘ sharing what we learned delivering these projects.
