Kantar Media is the recognised world leader in audience measurement, delivering insights on audience behaviours in more than 60 markets which underpins advertising and content decisions. Its flagship event, The World Audiences Summit, provides a unique knowledge-sharing and networking opportunity for clients and partners.
The World Audiences Summit 2022 offered the first international, in-person event for the research community and Kantar in three years. With delegates from more than 30 countries, the summit was scheduled to take place in Rome, but entry restrictions due to Covid meant that a contingency plan to move the event to London was implemented, allowing just 90 days of preparation against 270 in a business-as-usual environment.
With sensitivities around Covid-19 as its backdrop, Kantar Media created a series of health protocols to ensure that delegates had a safe and enjoyable event, with regular updates on specific requirements issued ahead of its launch.
Onsite Covid tests were offered as well as traffic light wristbands showed an individual’s level of comfort interacting. Socially distanced seating was introduced at all plenary, dining and timetable sessions, as well as face masks while hand sanitising stations were located across all venues.
The programme for the event was curated by an advisory group, comprising eight business directors from across television, entertainment, and streaming companies. The audience comprised senior decision makers from similar worlds plus advertisers and branding agencies.
Kantar Media had four objectives. It wanted to secure an audience that was at least 75 per cent of pre-Covid attendees, to increase attendance from new business prospects and streaming platforms, and to deliver four experiential activities for delegates to discover data in a new and compelling way.
A Summit App was created that fostered pre-event engagement. It also included all the information about the event, as well as allowing in-app polling at sessions, with results shown in real-time, creating key talking points for presentations.
Kantar Media also launched the Summit Challenge, where, using the app, participants could collect points throughout the event by winning codes at touchpoints, including experiential elements, such as Play Your Cards Right. Prizes were available for those who scored highly.
Across the programme, an ‘unlocking value’ thematic was at play, which demonstrated myriad ways in which value is delivered and gained. Keys and codes were used in the gifting and gamification of the event, to ensure the theme was apparent at all times.
Six experiential areas were created, which encouraged participants to engage in digital and gameshow style activities, while memorable networking activities, such as afternoon tea and a speedboat excursion on the River Thames, allowed small groups of guests to explore London.
The final guest numbers, at 180 in-person attendees from 36 countries and five continents, was 20 per cent above target, while attendance from key target segments (new business prospects at 12 per cent of delegates and streaming platforms at 14 per cent) was double 2019 levels. Participant feedback was astounding with every single attendee rating the event as either very good or excellent, against the previous year’s 93 per cent score for a hybrid event.
But, more importantly for Kantar, as the summit serves as its sales opportunity and renewal funnel, discussions are now ongoing about potential contracts worth more than $170 million.
The judges were impressed with the ‘creativity and thought applied to every part of the process and the event’, adding that it ‘showed in terms of the results’.
