Don’t just pivot. TRANSFORM.
It was mid February, 2020. As the world was slowly starting to recognize the threat posed by COVID-19, Facebook made the tough decision to cancel their GMS 1World Summit. After ten months of planning and preparation, this massive global event was scrapped just three weeks before it was set to start. Within a couple days, we completely reimagined the experience and set off to recreate it. 18 days later, the virtual Un-Summit was live.
[what it was]
The GMS 1World Summit is one of Facebook’s largest annual events, bringing 6,000+ internal sales and marketing employees from all over the world together for a four-day conference. The goal of this summit is to educate, inspire, and reward the team responsible for driving Facebook’s success in the business world. The event includes more than 30 TED-talk style keynotes from top executives and external speakers, an expo area designed for networking and learning, and entertainment and social gatherings throughout the week.
[what it became]
Facebook’s first scaled virtual Summit. Including:
Over 7 hours of premium, engaging content, delivered in 7 content blocks or “episodes” across two and a half days.
22 pre-produced film segments, featuring 42 speakers, each belonging to a content category with a unique identity.
A diverse and exciting programming mix; featuring fireside chats, executive keynotes, small business stories, celebrity appearances, commercial breaks and plenty of fun moments.
An ongoing content channel post-event to deliver internal comms, featuring weekly episodes and check-ins with executive leadership.
Programmatic content identities
[how we did it]
“Abandon all sleep, ye who enter here.”
We had nine film crews working simultaneously, shooting in studio and on-location across the country and globe. At FB headquarters in Menlo Park, we designed and built three custom film studios which played host to some of our top tier internal and external talent. These efforts were supported by a 24/7 graphics and post-production operation that managed 30,000 GB of video data in just one week. Working lock step with the Facebook team and partners.
Live-to-tape captured in custom built studios
So many pre-produced on-location segments!
[why we did it]
Instead of a knee-jerk “pivot” putting everything from the live event into a webcast, the team went back to the fundamental goals (educate, inspire, reward). We decided a 4-day video conference was NOT the best way to go virtual. By reapproaching the original objectives and putting the audience first, we were able to create a rich and unique attendee experience that fully optimized the virtual environment.
There is almost always a virtual element to our live events, and we approach every project with the question, “how can we make this engaging online (FB Live, IGTV, webcast, etc)?”. In this situation, where we didn’t have to design an IRL live experience, we were able to focus 100% on making the experience as engaging as possible for the online viewer and leapt at the chance to do so.