6.10: That's all folks! Event profs head for drinks, canapes and entertainment.
6.05: Event360 chair is giving out prizes including return flights to Dubai and a three-night stay at the Atlantis Dubai, courtesy of Dubai Business Events - The Official Convention Bureau.
6.00: VR is "never going to replace physical events but capturing them" is going to be very important. It's the most powerful medium to entertain. Sales for mobile VR is expected to hit 200m by next summer.
5.55: Virtual reality can capture an event and enable attendees to download a version of their experience when they get home. It will be better quality than what they shot on their own phones and can be monetised.
5.50: Drones will be everywhere, says Rogers. People at events will be able to see new angles at events. "We will see a lot more of projection mapping and hologram projection, too. 3D printing is getting close. There is talk about 3D printed homes. The cost is in shipping."
5.45: Future trends in the big wide world: What are the consumer and tech trends that really matter? Speaker Solomon Rogers, founder of Rewind FX, cites beacons, RFID technology, augemented reality, virtual reality and the Internet of Things as important tech for the future for experiential.
5.40: The audience is given 60 seconds to vote for the act that inspired them the most. Chivaree Circus is named the winner.
5.39: The performer manages 134 rotations within the minute, and breaks a world record.
5.35: Chivaree Circus co-founder Edward Gossling introduces a hula hoop performer/cortonionist, who will attempt a world record for 120 rotations in one minute.
5.26: Hel's Angels staffing agency is the third event supplier to takeover the 'catwalk'. A series of people take the stage to showcase the services the company provides. These include a brand representative at Benefit's pop-up brow bar in Soho, a waiter dressed in back carrying a tray of wine glasses, and an a man dressed in Victorian attire to highlight that the business can help brands to deliver immersive, experiential events.
5.22: Six individuals dance for the audience, and demonstrate how Beyond Repair's performers can be incorporated into events. The company has worked with Secret Cinema and Glastonbury.
5.20: A representative from Beyond Repair Dance explains the company's offering, and is accompanied by dancers painted with greenery, flowers, glitter and more.
5.15: A Cvent representative explains the company's offering in more depth, while the performer continues to entertain the audience with the balancing act.
5.12: A performer from event management software company Cvent takes the stage. Dressed in black tie, he balances a series of white plates on wooden sticks. A video is played on a large screen, explaining that the company helps event planners with a lot 'on their plate'.
5.10: Creative catwalk
15.30: Event's associate editor Alison Ledger catches up with Kyra Oates, head of PR and events at Benefit Cosmetics; David Balfour, managing and creative partner of agency Lightblue Worldwide; and Rory Steel, managing director of agency Steely Fox.
Watch the video here:
14.45: Boaler on rostering agenices: "We don't do it very often." Groans from the audience!
But he adds it's important to keep abreast of what's going on and not to believe everything your agency tells you.
Noakes says having an events team in-house is really important, although agencies provide all-important creativity and variety.
14.40: Now the big question - ROI. Noakes states Sony wouldn't be at MWC if there was no commercial imperative. She believes the brand is seeing a rise in business from the event each year, because of the experience that's been built around the meetings.
"Never underestimate food, ever - it is so important!" says Culcheth Beard.
14.35: Now onto Q&As with the audience. Culcheth Beard and Noakes agree that data is king, but the former says images can also be used as a form of data. She advises:"Take images. Look back at your event in pictures and see what's going on."
14.30: Michael Boaler from Jack Daniel's now. "We want people to choose Jack Daniel's over the new kid on the block," he says. "We are a rock 'n' roll brand, but if we just do rock 'n' roll we're missing 75% of our target audience."
The activity he's discussing is Jack Rocks - a verb, not an adjective, if you were wondering. In 2012, the brand organised more than 200 gigs, which created 50,000 gig-goers and 5.5m online views.
He admits last year was very London-centric, whcih is something he wants to change going forward. His key learning is 'Brand over band'. He explains: "You can book the Foo Fighters, you can book Kings of Leon, but people won't go to your gig because your brand is there. Our point of view is that you can come to our gig, have a good drink, and have a good night."
14.25: Now it's time for Jane Culcheth Beard, manager, wordwide programs and central EMEA events, global marketing at Hewlett-Packard (HP). She moves us on from MWC in Barcelona to the Cannes Film Festival.
The brand creates their own activation space at the festival, with work stations. But it also contains a studio and relaxation area. The space is the hub of the festival for the brand.
She adds: "We provide a visual wall of young talent - it allows people to search and find out about people's work in a very immediate way, that also shows our technology."
She runs out of time in her last slide, but we let her finish!
14.20: Sony's Melissa Noakes has five minutes to explain how her brand becomes the destination of choice at Mobile World Congress.
She explains how her team built a bespoke corporate hospitality space within more than 2,000 sqm. "We make sure [delegates] have good coffee, charging points and good quality food," she says. "We get 80 minute meetings with our customers and an average of two visits."
"They keep coming back because we know our audience. They want good food, they want to be able to check their emails and charge their phones."
14.15: Our next chair Mark Spragg, senior vice president director of operations EMEA at Julian Morton introduces the session's guest speakers from Jack Daniel's, Sony Mobile Communications and HP.
14.15: Five by Five Snapshot Case Studies - Three Brands, Three Budgets
1.57: The Spitfire Sisters take out Beat the Brief 2015. They will perform at the , to be held at .
1.56: Members of the audience have 60 seconds to vote for their favourite performance via Slido, and the winner is soon to be crowned.
1.53: They remove the khaki outfits to reveal black and white polka dot dresses and perform a second song.
1.50: take to the stage in khaki outfits.
1.45: The Beato Burrito trio peform a series of songs interspersed with comical speak in Mexican-inspired attire.
1.40: Event and Sternberg Clark's Beat the Brief competition final kicks off with a five-minute peformance from .
1.30: Beat the Brief
12.40: If you have any questions about the , why not pop along to see our lovely awards team? (Located at the back of the theatre by the stairs).
12.30: Grubs up! Lunch is now being served on the ground floor, courtesy of our partner Richmond Creative Events.
11.00: Power Brands Theatre with George P Johnson
11.48: Five points for telling a story from Bradney-Spencer:
- Understand your organisation
- Listen to your customers
- Build an integrated experience pre- and post-event
- Put in place prgrammatic planning, consistent standards and tools
- Use technology
11.47: Looking forward to Wimbledon now. IBM supports the tennis club in its two-week 'spike' in the summer, helping it deliver the best for clients.
11.42: IBM showcases its 'Urban art cloud' from Berlin. "It really helped people feel like they were creating something together," says Bradney-Spencer.
She goes on to show how her brand uses space effectively at events. At one, they didn't want to use barriers to divide different areas; instead, consumers 'tuned in' to different speakers using earpieces.
11.40: Bradney-Spencer explains how event budgets have shifted - now, much more spent pre- and post-event, rather than just on the day.
She highlights the 'essential experiences', pre-, duing and post-event. Her slide reads: 'It's essential to build an integrated experience', through communication, technology networking and so on.
11.32: The theatre starts up again after a quick break. Vikki Bradney-Spencer from IBM takes to the stage, explains how perception of the brand has changed through its 100+ year history.
She says: "The lines are blurring between B2B and B2C."
11.25: Looking to the future, the speaker explains what's to come at Mobile World Congress Shanghai - a crazy golf course is on the cards!
He asks: "How do we hold delgates in our space for longer? What technology can GPJ and our partners bring in? If the press and media come into our space and see the same thing again they'll walk out."
11.20: Montogomery explains how his brand worked with the likes of BMW and Oral B at the Innovation City. "It was putting products into the hands of the delegates," he explains. "It's something we push every year to minimise the amount of screens."
11.16: How does the Innovation City keep evolving? Montgomery explains that in 2015, a wall was built around the experience, but so was a six by 3.5m screen, which communicated video content to those outside of the city. The lattice-style wall was transparent, and could be seen from the other side of the hall and entice them into the city.
The brand also built a virtial reality experience - "the number one experience for viweing appetite" within the city.
11.12: Peter Montgomery, director of partnerships at GSMA, takes to the stage. He highlights its Mobile World Conference (MWC) as a live success story of its brand.
He says of GSMA's Innovation City at MWC: "We want guests to immerse themselves in an environment where they are not killed by Powerpoint. We want to create experiences that tell the story [of new tech] in a different way."
11.10: Dimelow says: "Marketing is about understanding what people need to know for you and working out how to deliver that."
He adds that he hates the phrase, I Heart Events.
11.00: Gareth Dimelow, head of strategy and planning at George P Johnson introduces today's session on "telling compelling stories in the live experience space".
He takes the audience through the history of the agency - beginning right back in 1914. Now, it works with 'power brands' such as IBM, Under Armour and Samsung, using its 4Ds approach: discover, define, design and deliver.
10.15: Balfour says: "We look after Playstation and we created a Twitter vending machine, which the younger generation weren’t buying into. Within two days, we flipped it around into an Instagram vending machine and created incentives for them to use it, which resulted in queues from 15-17 year olds."
10.10: How do you make your brand stand out? Steel says: "Technology – and making it a personal experience for the user. Make it intimate for the person and that will have huge rewards for brands."
10.00: Holden says: "Procurement is a recent thing in the BMW world and the team is heavily involved in marketing and events. It has been a difficult journey to bring them on to the same page. It is up to us and our agency partners to educate the procurement team."
Oates says she is looking for something that hasn't been done before with her events and those venues, agencies and suppliers that are more receptive are the ones that are favoured.
9.55: Benefit's Kyra Oates describes a paint party she delivered last week, which you can find out more about here. .
9.50: The panel begins discussing the relationship between brand and agency. Chair Alex Whitson of Haymarket asks if tight budgets are a challenge for agencies and brands. Steely Fox's Rory Steel says: "Tight budgets force you to be creative."
BMW's Yvonne Holden says: "Agencies see a big brand and imagine there is a huge budget behind it - that is not always the case."
Barclays' Sophie Begg reccommends using existing relationships and your network to secure speakers for free to keep budgets down. Steel agrees that collaboration is key to successful brand experiences.
9.40: The second session of the day kicks off with Kyra Oates, head of PR & Events, Benefit Cosmetics; Sophie Begg, vice president - personal and corporate banking events team, Barclays; Yvonne Holden, general manager – events, BMW; David Balfour, managing and creative partner, Lightblue Worldwide; and Rory Steel, managing director, Steely Fox.
9.30: Dingle suggests taking three minutes a day to breath slowly and evenly and it will release the hormone DHEA, which can make you amazing. "You can start to learn the art of being amazing. You are not determined by the problems of the world. It is determined about what you do about it."
9.20: Tim Dingle of The London School of Excellent Training (LSET) bounces on stage promising to 'wake everyone up' with a brain workout and rules on how to be amazing. He suggests: "Have the courage to dream. You can change in a nano-second. Look inside your brain and be prepared to see what lights it up. Exude passion."
What do you think of Tim's opening session so far? Tell us in the comments box below or on , using hashtag #Event360.
9.10: Event360 chair Maria Kempinska MBE, founder and CEO of Jongleurs, takes to the stage to welcome more than 450 event and experiential professional to the second Event360 event, brought to you by Event and sister title C&IT.
Comment below to let us know what you think.
For more in-depth and print-only features, showcases and interviews with world-leading brands, don't miss the next issue of Event magazine .