Cheap and convenient or expensive and unforgettable?

Ian Whitworth writes: As media polarises between two extremes, attention to production values makes clear business sense.

Story by Ian Whitworth

The standard pocket camera is dying. What does that mean for your events and presentations? It’s another symptom of how people now alternate between a high quality experience and everyday convenience.

The end of the middle ground
Photo-sharing websites report that most shots posted now come from iPhones. No surprises there. Phones take a pretty ordinary shot, but they’re always with you when a photo moment arises. Interestingly, the next most popular sources of shots are high quality digital SLR cameras. Retailers report the same thing: plunging sales of pocket cameras, and increased sales of expensive cameras to people who also shoot with phones. The middle ground is dying out.

Same with films and TV. There’s a massive boom in streamed video to your phone, delivering amazing convenience.
Watch anything you want, any time, any place. Despite the tiny screens, smeared pictures and the sort of audio you’d expect from two tin cans linked with string, people can’t get enough of it. The same people who buy a new flat screen TV each year with the latest HD technology and surround sound. And who happily pay twice as much to see 3D movies in the Gold Class theatre.

Likewise with events. Thanks to affordable projectors, presentations are everywhere. Screenshows are now standard for regular office meetings. Sales reps carry small projectors wherever they go. Presentations are just a part of everyday business life, a kind of visual background drone no more or less exciting than phone calls.

What’s your real budget?
Putting on that kind of humdrum presentation in a hotel ballroom with deluxe catering is a major waste of your budget. And when you think budget, don’t just think of how much you actually spend. Think of the combined hourly salaries of everyone in the audience, ticking over a fortune in lost activity while they watch presentations that they won’t remember. Your show can’t be stuck in the middle ground. If it’s a monthly meeting, cheap and cheerful is fine. When it’s an annual event or an important announcement, it has to be special. Gold Class quality. 

Here are five ways to lift your show.
1. Uncompress your video
Compressed video is convenient, but chintzy. If your video content is extraordinary, like a chimpanzee landing a helicopter on top of a crowded jumping castle, any old quality will do. But most event video is about new superannuation products, medical equipment or pet food. Worthy topics, but not something you’d forward to your friends. It needs all the production gloss it can get.

A lot of video is produced in HD, then crunched down to DVD resolution for the event. On the big screen it can feel a little grungy, now everyone has HD TV at home. Authoring your own DVD’s is another quality killer. If you’re showing something important, get a good, fast computer and play it straight from an HD file instead of DVD. It’ll add a noticeable sparkle to your show.

2. Bass reinforcement
People are so used to low-fi bargain basement audio from buzzy laptop speakers and puny headphones.
A key element is using separate bass sub-speakers. Cinemas use them to create that massive sound that makes going to the movies worthwhile. Your audiences doesn’t just hear it, they feel it.

3. Theatrical lighting
Nothing adds atmosphere to a room like well-designed lighting. It doesn’t need U2-scale banks of moving lights. A good, theatre-trained lighting designer can give your room instant emotion. Good lighting makes presenters look much better too, making them the star of the show rather than blending into the stage backdrop.

4. Use a stage set
Sets don’t just look good, they build your audience’s expectations, so they perceive the presentation as being better than a standard speech. They think: this will have a TV-style level of authority, so it must be trustworthy.

5. Use a creative producer
Hire an experienced creative producer to plan out the presentation. They’ll do two things. Firstly, they’ll come up with creative ideas to get your message across. Secondly, they’ll stage manage the presentation so it all ‘feels’ right, like a theatrical show, with walk-on music, presenters entering and exiting the stage professionally, and all the other details that make audiences pay attention.
 

Ian Whitworth leads a double life as co-owner of audiovisual group Scene Change, and principal of creative marketing consultancy A Lizard Drinking.