EXPLORING AUDIENCE INSIGHTS WITH KNW.

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world. This is Les Goldberg on The Road Ahead. Today, I have two amazing guests. I have Nico Ubenauf, who is the CEO of Live Matters. I have BJ Singh. He is the president of ETP USA. And today, we're going to talk about the audience, and what is the audience thinking. And we have a product that we have co-branded and put together as two companies. We've come together to introduce a product called knw. And we're going to talk about all this stuff today. And so I'm going to throw the first question to BJ. And BJ, could you share with us, explain what is knw. And when I say knw, it's K-N-W exclamation point. It's not N-O. Okay, so BJ, share with the audience what is knw. I'm glad you did the spelling because I was going to start there. But knw really is what we believe the first solution in the event space that allows you to measure how your audience is truly reacting and consuming the content that you are serving them, whether you're an exhibitor, a keynote, a breakout. We do that using facial recognition, AI to measure audience sentiment, audience engagement, their attention rate, and we're even able to derive the number of people in the room as well as demographics. All of it to essentially measure clients, attendees, purchase intent. The second part that we are doing is helping you measure and offset the carbon footprint of your event. So we're going to measure the audience and how they're feeling about what they're hearing. And you said purchase intent, but their emotions, etc. And then you said there's a carbon component. Nico, could you add anything to the description of knw as this is brand new and we want to make sure people are really putting their arms around it? I can add to it that I think data collection is really crucial in the world today because what's interesting and the reason why we developed knw was that there is a great data collection in retail, obviously in the whole and you basically find out who is your target group and you push sales. And we had in the early 90s in the event business, we had these questionnaires. At the end of the event, somebody was there, oh, do you have two minutes? And we have five questions for you. And that kind of didn't really work. And then suddenly during the pandemic, with all the platforms, the measurement, the success measurement came back a little bit. And we kind of translated that and said, well, what do we have to do to put this back into a live environment? So I think knw really derived from this idea that data collection is usually important to know your audience, to know what's important for an event. And we're there now. We have a really incredible product to be able to measure events for the first time. So I kind of reflect on the audience survey forms and people are still using them now. And actually, I think they're doing it electronically after the event, they'll send you a survey. I know they do that for people that go to online events, they're getting some surveys, but I'm not a big fan of those. I don't believe the people that invest the time to be really constructive on their surveys. And sometimes they're very short and sweet. So, BJ, maybe you could enlighten us about what is different about the traditional survey, and then actually getting real time audience feedback? And why is that audience feedback important? What are we going to derive from that information? Great question. So there's a couple of things about service. First, you're relying on the attendee to do something for you to get that information. You also are usually doing a survey for a three day event, maybe one per day, which does not give you feedback in real time. If you're doing a half an hour CEO is doing a half an hour keynote, a survey doesn't tell you what part of that keynote really resonated versus didn't. And what no does is there takes any effort on the attendee out of the mix, we are automatically measuring their sentiment, it requires the attendee to do absolutely nothing. And the other challenge with surveys is that you have to have enough responses for it to be statistically accurate and relevant. And if you don't get enough responses, you don't have any measurable result that you can use to take any intelligent actions. And because we're automatically measuring enough of the audience, you're guaranteed that you're getting accurate feedback from enough people to for it to be actionable. You know, if I was the doing an event and I was the CEO and rolling out the vision of a mission or some big initiative for the company to get feedback of what my my employees or my audience is thinking in response would be greatly valuable, especially if I'd spent, you know, enormous sums of money doing these events, if I wanted to make that same event next year even better to get real kind of feedback that I can rely on. So I can make sure we invest dollars for the next year's event and get rid of the things that didn't work, and then really invest in the things that did work. So Nico, this is to you. Do you see this technology as scalable? And can you maybe speak to, you know, size of audiences or different applications of how you could use this technology? Yeah, the original idea behind knw was actually to make this a scalable product. So we have minimal effort on site. We're installing the cameras, we're installing the technology, but then everything is automatically uploaded in the cloud. So we are hoping that knw becomes an industry standard because it's so easy to deploy locally and you can get great measurements. And from a size perspective, I think we have the ability to measure thousands of attendees. There is right now, I mean, we haven't started to look into stadium size events yet, but conventions, large conventions halls, it's just that you just take an additional set of cameras to cover the space. But besides that, it should be really scalable and that is the idea. We want to create something that can become the standard. I just want to add one thing to what knw said. We have adapted this technology for the use of audience measurement, but it's important to note that it's been used since 2017 for public safety market research applications across entire airports and public transit systems. So it's already proven to be scalable in terms of the underlying technology. All right. Well, BJ, could you maybe just kind of give us an example of what you do, how you set up the equipment and kind of how it works just for the layman to understand the very basics of this? Yeah, it's actually very, very simple. All we are doing on site is deploying some number of cameras to capture the facial responses of the audience. The number of cameras really just depends on the size of the audience that we're trying to measure. We then upload that data into our servers and our proprietary algorithms analyze that data in real time by the second to determine the level of positive energy, to determine how much attention they are paying, whether they're looking at the stage, what their facial expressions are, and being able to determine demographics and being able to determine age and the number of people in the room. All of that is done simply by deploying cameras and capturing video of the audience. And we can actually tie it and timecode it back to what's happening on stage. So you can see in real time how the attendees are reacting by the second to what's happening on stage, at an exhibit, or across an exhibit floor, common area, whatever. And you see it basically on a dashboard where we measure commitment, sentiment, engagement, and ultimately also network reach. So all the data feeds into this dashboard where later on you can compare it with other events, you can compare it within an event, but you have a really nice way to actually look at it later on and use the data for further purposes. So Nico, back on the data purposes thing, what kind of conclusions, if you were putting on an event, do you think you would be able to derive from this data? Maybe you could just give me an example of two or three. If you measure an event and you have a different type of speakers, and they're showing a set of charts, for example, they're showing the advantages of a new product, you could already identify which new features of this product resonate well with the audience and which ones don't. If you have an internal event and you have your marketing director, you have your CFO, you have your various departments present and talk about certain issues. You see exactly where is the audience engaged more, where does it resonate. You can look at a CEO speech and he wants to talk about five crucial points for the vision of his company, and you see four will resonate well and one doesn't. So there's so much information that you can gather, and this goes for events, but you could also measure the engagement rate in front of a new product. You show a new car or a new product at a trade show, you see how many people stay there for how long, you see is there positive energy, when is the positive energy there. So a lot of points that can create a lot of value. This sounds super, super interesting. You know, BJ, maybe you could share how is the system different from others out there? Are there others out there that are doing the same thing or is ours unique? Maybe you could just share about that. Yeah, so on a larger scale, other approaches, we talked about surveys, we talked, you know, there's RFID, there's been technologies used over time that could be better and different, may give you some idea of how many people or heatmaps or people flow. What you've never been able to get is measurement of audience sentiment and engagement in real time by the second. So that's what makes it unique from other types of technologies. Are there other people attempting to do the same? Yes, but we are the first technology that is GDPR compliant, which is important to note because a lot of times there's some negative connotation to facial recognition. We collect no individual data. We analyze groups as a whole, which is very important. The technology was developed in Germany, which has the highest data privacy standards on the planet. So that's one thing that makes it different. There are folks attempting to use facial recognition to determine sentiment, but there is no single platform that does sentiment, engagement, attention rate, derived demographics, and gender all on one platform simply by deploying cameras on site. Got it. So guys, and I don't know if either of you can answer this, is there a bunch of pre-production required to do this? Just some number of cameras to capture audience faces is all that's required. But what we notice is the client will start to have to think about what type of KPIs does he really want to measure? What's important for him? What does he really want to know? So when we started to talk to the first couple of clients, they were all wowed by the product. And then when they started to identify, okay, what do we really want to know? It started a whole new thought process within the company because it was never done before. So that is basically one thing where you need to have a workshop, where you need to talk to inside your company to identify what's important to you. So BJ, what do you expect the clients to learn from this data and what actionable things would come from that? Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that clients can learn is what parts of their event, their message that they are trying to sell or engage audiences with resonated the most. We did an event just two weeks ago. And what we found out that the client lost half of the audience at 10:30am and the show went on till 5pm. That's pretty important information for them to have. Whether it was the morning keynote was the highlight, maybe they should have moved in the afternoon and people would have stuck around. We found out that they spent $30,000 on a band and the minute the band came on half the people left and never came back. That's pretty important information to have. For the keynote, they were introducing 10 different products and Nico hit on this earlier, they found out that 45 minutes into that keynote, when they talked about plant based mayonnaise, the level of energy just went through the roof compared to the other nine products. That's pretty important information that potentially could save you millions of dollars in product. development or market research. So, Niko, you mentioned that you would like this to be the industry standard and the first mover to the industry. Maybe how do you see this changing the meeting event industry and how do you see it being adopted? Well, first of all, I see one important change. When you talk to CFOs or marketing directors in the past, they shifted a lot of budgets away from live communication to measurable things like online marketing or stuff where they could clearly see, I'm spending this much and I'm getting a result. And I think no can change that. We can basically get back into the game. We can provide measurements so you can clearly identify, does it make sense to spend this amount of money for an event or does it not make sense? And that's ultimately the question that we want to be able to answer. And then, obviously, you can drill deeper and then find so many valuable insights that actually make your event better, because you can learn about your speech, where does it resonate and what works, what doesn't work. And you actually just don't have a feedback from one or two people who say, oh, great speech, you killed it. But you actually have measurements where you can later identify what you need to work on. Yeah, I'll add to that, Les. In 2021 and 2022, up to 72% of CMO budgets were set aside for innovation spending. Almost 40% of it is dedicated to data-driven insights. And on average, the Global 1000 spend upwards of 20% of their marketing budget on live events. So if your priority is to have data-driven insight and boost innovation and 20% of your money is going to live events, what better solution than to make sure that you're maximizing the return that you're making in these events? I think the ROI, people spend money on these events and they have obviously very specific goals, whether it's recognition or the product rollouts or their education. And I think it's invaluable to be able to provide this type of feedback, data-driven feedback, not by a person, not by someone engaging a pen and a piece of paper or going on to a survey that is actionable stuff that can make your event that you do every year that much better. And I think that is probably the magic behind this, is the algorithms and the AI to deliver these reports. So just to confirm, this is ready to roll out now. If you're in Europe or if you're in the US, we can do this today. This is not something that's vaporware or coming in the future. This is something that is happening right now in real time. And if somebody wanted to go indulge and learn more about it, they would go to the knw website? Yeah, the answer to your first question, absolutely. Product is tested. We've deployed it at multiple events. It's ready to go today. And yes, Nico said the website is knw.net, K-N-W dot N-E-T. The email is info@knw.net. Well, guys, this sounds like we're, how do I say, teleporting into the future of live events. And, you know, it's a little comical with the name knw, but it's really a parody on the word know, K-N-O-W. And I think the more we know, the better events we can make. And, you know, I think it's something very innovative for people to consider as they're spending, you know, an enormous sum of money on events. And I don't think they get real good feedback. So this is a tool in the toolbox of delivering that. And also post-event, being able to sit in front of your clients and really kind of explain what worked and what didn't work and make it very data-driven. That's kind of what Nico, you were saying, that that data becomes the missing link to make sure that we're on the right path moving forward. If we do this again, what would we do and what would we change? And ultimately, it's about making the best events in the world. And I think that's something that's awesome. I look forward to all the cool things we're going to do with Know. My last question is, besides audience sentiment, are we going to have, and you mentioned, BJ, carbon measure, is there any other things that you envision in the future of Know that it will be measuring in additionally? Yes, I think Nico touched on it. The long-term vision of knw is for it to be the industry's first comprehensive measurement SaaS platform or software hardware as a solution platform for you to measure the entire attendee journey. From the time you send out marketing communications to get them to come to the event, the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, sentiment engagement on site, measuring attendee flows, where they're going, where they're resonating, where they're lingering, and then network and reach, which is the effectiveness of your event and its message once the event is over, whether that's via social media, media clippings. But our ultimate vision is that knw becomes a comprehensive measurement tool for the entire attendee journey of any event of any format. And to add to that, we have programmed knw in a way that it interfaces with existing guest management tools and softwares that companies already may use. So they can actually use knw and add the data they already are getting from their guest management tools or other tools that they use. So it all feeds into the dashboard of knw. Guys, this sounds amazing. I am very excited about knw and all the cool things we're going to do with it. Thank you, BJ. Thank you, Nico, for joining me today. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. And I look forward to the shows where we're going to learn more through knw. Guys, have a great day. Thank you so much. Thanks, Les. Thanks, Nico.