WHY THE AUDIENCE MATTERS

Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to the Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is courtesy of LMG with your host, Les Goldberg. Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. I have three very smart guys that are joining me. First, I have Mark Jeffries, who's an accomplished keynote presenter, host and moderator. I have David, who's the president CEO of Go West Creative, and I have Tony Ricotta. He's actually Doctor Tony Ricotta from as the senior company manager for Cirque du Soleil. Hello guys, and welcome to the show. Today we are going to talk about the audience and why the audience matters. So I'd like to throw it to Mark and Mark. Could you maybe give me your opinion as you are a host, a moderator for many, many different shows we work together on? Could you give me your thoughts on why the audience matters? All right. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast and I too am looking forward to the road ahead. It's interesting, this journey that we're on because there's so much uncertainty, but we're all on the journey, we're on it together. And in all the conversations I've been having as we put together virtual events instead of the actual full on audience events, the conversation is always the same, which is how can we delight that audience? How can we give them what it is they need right now? And that's actually a kind of important consideration, because I think the audience needs are changing dramatically, temporarily, because we're all in the same boat now. Everyone's at home, everyone's in their basements, in their offices. Many of us are looking after kids. The entire world has been turned upside down temporarily. So the audience is the entire reason for doing any event, right? I don't think anyone here would argue with that. And so what matters more than anything else now is that we find them where they are and we're the same. So we're actually all in the same boat. We are the audience. And yet at the same time, we are the performers, we are the corporations, and we are the hosts and the guide. So there's a lot of responsibility there. But to my view, the audience is the absolute heart of any event. And without an audience, literally, what's the point? That is very, very insightful, Mark. You know, I would like to get Tony Ricotta as a thoughts on the audience, because for someone who does shows almost nightly in Vegas, could you give me your thoughts on how the audience plays a part in every show you do? Yeah. So first, hi. Thanks for having me with you today. You know, in the the realm of live shows, it's it's clear that it's a communal event. I mean, you can have a virtual, you can have a television show, you can go to a movie. It's a lot different of a situation. But when you have a live show, it's it's the community sitting and watching and feeding this, this partnership between the performer and that audience that makes everything so special. You get one shot at it. So we really, really, really rely on the audience because they provide that energy to and that give and take. And when the crowds are thin, the audience, the, the, the audience fields it, the performers feel it. And to Mark's point, we cannot. What's the point if you don't have an audience? It's about that communication, you know, that that's really, really interesting. Now, David, I want to know, as we kind of talk about the audience more, just a show change by having a live audience or not having that audience. Absolutely. It changes. It changes for everybody. It changes for. And hey, hey Les, and thanks for having me on the show. But yeah, it absolutely changes for the performers and the audience. That changes the experience completely because as Tony was saying, if an audience is thin or even if an audience is dead, how many times do we hear performers say, well, the crowd is really dead tonight. So there's there's definitely affects the way the person on stage performs. But from from the audience perspective, you know, I think we're in this slippery slope right now because everybody is so accustomed to these Zoom and WebEx meetings. Now that people are thinking that this is a a good alternative to a live meeting, where when we get to virtual, it's it's not just WebEx meetings and it's not just Zoom meetings. There's got to be something that truly engages the audience. It gives them reason to feel like they're actually participating. David, I'm just going to jump in for a second. It's Mark here. I'm so sorry I hear what you're saying, and that's my fear. But I'm going to disagree because everyone I'm speaking to has just got screen burn out. No one is enjoying this anymore. At first it was quite a novelty. You could literally have a decent shirt on and a pair of shorts and nobody would know. That was cool for a couple of weeks. But now everyone is so desperate to return to some type of normal to get out and be with people again. My hope and current thinking is that people do want to get back to the live experience, and they are kind of done with all of this screen time. Well, I appreciate that and I do value that opinion. And there is now we have these terms like, you know, Zoom burnout and things like that. And that's and that's exactly what I'm saying. And I do agree that people want to get back. But I also I also feel that there is going to be a large part of our society that is going to be scared, and then they're not going to want to go out. Right. And so the clients that we still have that are doing events that have been canceled in September. Okay, last year we had 3000 people. Let's plan that. Maybe 1200 will show up this year. And then what do we do for the virtual people that don't feel comfortable? So we have to think about that as we're moving forward. It's going to be we're going to be in the land of hybrid for a very, very long time. So we have to figure out how to do both, how to engage these people when they come back. But how do we still win over the hearts and minds of the people that are at home on their screens? You know, guys, that brings me to another question, and I'll throw this to Tony. How do you measure the audience engagement or, you know, participation when you have a live audience? What are your factors that you use when you think about full house? I don't know, your house might, you know, house, a few thousand people. Yeah. Well, you know, that varies many different things. Such as even room acoustics. We have a wonderful, beautiful theater. I won't mention it. Which hotel? And it's very full. But yet if you don't do the right things, the room is dead because of the the treatments in the room itself. It kills all the audience so you can't hear the person next to you clap. So that will factor into it. You know, the you have to hear the the audience respond, but the audience has to hear the audience respond. And so the audience are participant in the show. Yes, absolutely. They are the. They're the person that you're doing it for. So it is it is a dance. It is a communal event that the the performers and the audience jointly participate in. So so, Mark, I want to ask this question to you. You have done hundreds, if not thousands of events where you've moderated been the host. So how do you know when the audience is engaged, when you're sitting in front of 3000 people? All right. This is such a good question. And actually I'm going to speak from experience. A couple of weeks ago, I did my keynote speech. So this wasn't actually the hosting role. It was it was my speech on influence and communication. And it's a very audience involved speech. Normally there's a lot of moments for humor, and there's some big laugh lines. And, you know, over the years, as you perfect your content, as you refine it, you know, what gets an audience going? You know the moments where they they buy into it, they buy into you, and you've got them listening to every word. And then there are other moments where you're playing that role where you're slowly winning them over to get things going. Well, I did my keynote live via Zoom from my basement. I've got a green screen down there, so I was able to replace the background and make it look like we were in an auditorium. But my goodness, instead of having all those people out in front of me, looking at me and smiling and laughing or just reacting in any way, there was nothing. All I have is my view of an old couch and the asbestos in the ceiling. So that does not help you as a speaker, and it certainly doesn't help you understand when you've engage the audience. So a couple of things. Number one, you just have to assume that those moments where they're normally assumed, excuse me, where they're normally engaged, they'll be engaged again. You just won't hear it or see it. Second of all, what I try to do in my live keynote is I popped in some pauses for on screen Q&A, and I made it very clear to the audience. So they were watching across Europe in different countries, and I said, listen, in about ten minutes, I'm going to pause. I'm going to see your chat, your questions, and I'll deal with some of those in 15 minutes. Now, I would never do that in a live keynote, but I did it in my basement because it allowed for some engagement. It allowed for some of those moments where they felt, okay, this is interactive a bit, and that's how I got through the hour. But it's not easy. It's not easy for performer and it's not easy for us as producers as well. So. So David, you have done a number of virtual events and you've done we've we've done together many live events. How do you measure the engagement of a virtual audience, and how do you know you're engaging this? Because whether we do complete virtual meetings, we do hybrid meetings. What are the tricks of the trade that you would know how that your virtual audiences is engaged or listening or through chatter or what is your approach? Yeah, yeah. So that's great question. Yes. We've been doing virtual meetings now for 20 years, a little bit more. 1999 was our first year doing virtual, and something that we learned early on is even when you're doing virtual, if you can have of audience live with your virtual performance. So if, if, if Mark had even three people sitting on his couch in his basement, there is there's inherently a different way that we perform when we can lock eyes with somebody and feed off of somebody's face. And I found and this is why I take most of my presenters and executives through when we're when we're doing virtual. Is it right now when people are presenting, they're just looking straight into their laptop, into this computer, and it doesn't feel engaging. But if I if I see their eyes move and connect with somebody over here or connect with somebody over there, suddenly now is a viewer at home, I get a sense that I've got virtual people left and right of me, and I'm part of a bigger audience. So that's that's a tip for for a presenter. The other side is that you've got to for all these virtual meetings, if we're not doing a Zoom where we can't see the people, all we have is our chat, right? So you can't just allow the chat to just be your audience in there. You have to have somebody curating your chat, right? Somebody that's responding to each person that puts something up there so that they feel like they're being heard. This is being engaged. So when we did this broadcast two weeks ago, this global broadcast to raise money for the creators here in Nashville that you helped us out with less. We broadcast that on Facebook live on YouTube live on Vimeo live. Simultaneously, we had three separate curators on all three separate channels moderating all the chat. And so making sure that we are engaging with everybody and as, as an artist would say, my new album is out. Boom. Here's a link to the new album. You can click right on it, right? So we're trying to keep that absolutely fresh and engaged the entire time. So can I interrupt? And David, that is so fascinating. I've got I've got a follow on question. So you've got your executive with 3 or 4 people in the room with with that person, and they're obviously all, you know, at a safe distance. What do you do with eye contact? Are you looking at your live audience who of course, you're very tempted to look at? Are you looking at the camera lens where there's a thousand people watching online, or are you kind of sharing the love? It's both. It's a great question mark. It's really it's both because you're you're you're looking at the people in the room and you're looking at the camera and you're looking at the people in the room. And what that does is that make it feel like we're one cohesive unit, right? So it can't be like, oh, your wife just came in and asked you to to get milk, right? You can't be that big head turn and distraction thing, but it's got to be there just over the, the the laptop eyeline and a little bit to the left and right. So it just looks like you would be naturally panning the audience as you would be if you were hosting an event. So, so so, Tony, I want to throw this to you, you know, do you think it's going to come back quickly, or do you think it'll come back slowly where people will feel comfortable getting into large venue spaces? And just your own thoughts on that? Well, I think I think it's going to be slower because it's it's health related. When we had the economic turndown in 2008, it took a while for people to get back. They were struggling financially. I think that's a component of this as well. But they're also there is that feeling of unease that isn't really safe. Do we know? And they're going to be some just like any like column early adopters, they're going to be folks that are going to show up and they're going to come and say, damn it all. They're going to be people who are going to be a lot slower to get on an airplane and come to Las Vegas for us. And I just think it's really almost impossible to tell right now. A lot of the experts that I've listened to how are saying that these large events, these arenas, these sporting events will be coming back a lot slower than the restaurants and everything else. So it's going to take its time. I don't think it's going to go away, but I think it's going to come back slower than than immediate. Well that's a that's a great point lesson. I jump in on that for a second. Absolutely. Yeah. So what's interesting is, you know, as I've been talking to some of the major convention centers and I know last year and a lot of these convention centers as well, talking to them about what their current plans are, a lot of the plans that they're starting to roll out would be okay. So it would be one chair and then two empty chairs and then one chair, or we're going to set up a six foot table. But you can only have one person sitting at that six foot table. So to me the math on that, it says, so we're going to be at one third capacity. So if we're going to have 1000 people in the room, we're going to have to set up 3000 chairs, right. And so that that's going to create two really interesting issues. Right. So you're going to have a smaller audience than what you had last year. But now the audience is spread out and not connected. And so Tony can probably jump in on this. But when they're not connected like that, there's probably not the energy in the room. If you had 1000 people sitting closely to get together, right? So it's going to create the same thing that we talked about earlier, about the way that the performers can feed off of or the presenters can feed off of the audience. We're going to have to play around with that because they're going to feel really. Yes, David, to some extent that's very true. But also in, say, typical theater setups, you fill the room, you spread it out so you don't have pockets of of energy and then big blank holes in the room. So you do try to fill the space. So that's not something that's uncommon to what we're doing. What I see as a potential issue is if they say two seats, two seats and, you know, they're separated by two seats. What do group larger groups are you family, your wife and your and your children. You all want to sit together and now you're managing seats on a on an instantaneous basis, as opposed to how you're selling them to fill that room. And if every other row is sold and every other, it becomes a real kind of a jigsaw puzzle that I'll be interested to see how people are willing to accept and adapt to. Because Tetris, it sounds like a little Tetris. It is. It is kind of a game of moving, moving pieces around because then, well, we can't do this because we have to have this space and then people get crazy and complicate that with a customer service angle, which I don't want to say is different than for trade shows or things like that. But the expectation is different. So it can be a bit of a challenge and they have to work through this. So so guys I'm going to shift this a little bit. So we've had live events for for as long as I've been alive and we've, we've now switched over to these virtual events in the last 60 days where literally most events are exclusively virtual. And I kind of want to talk about going to this hybrid thing. So and David, you kind of mentioned that, that the future events are going to have so much live and so much virtual. So instead of producing one event, you get to produce two. And I'd like you just to touch about what the difference is of producing a live event versus a virtual one. And then then we'll throw it over to, to Mark to say, if you're a live presenter, how does that impact, you know, speaking to the live and the virtual audience. So David, why don't you all pine on that? Sure. Thanks. Yeah. So, you know, one of our several of our big clients would do a stream out every year from their live event, right? So it's just like, grab the camera feed and shoot it out. And so people are kind of getting a peek from home. But now what we're looking at is now, like we have to design an experience for those people at home, because just peeking into a business meeting doesn't create the same sort of experience. So now we as we go into these shows this year, even with the live hybrids we're producing, we have a whole separate switching team that's coming in to produce the live show that's going out, and we're adding backstage elements for them and behind the scenes, almost like if we were producing the Grammys or the Academy Awards or something like that. So you're you're getting behind the scenes and you're and you're making those people feel engaged. And again, you're also creating you have to create ways to engage the home audience. So if there's if there's ways to get people to comment. And when we did the broadcast a couple of weeks ago, again, you know, we started having people say, hey, if you can get, you know, Tommy Davidson to say that this person is the funniest guy I've ever heard, I'll give $500 to your charity. So when, when, when that now that celebrity instantaneously is talking to that person on their couch in Saint Louis, they now feel like, oh gosh, I am part of this actual experience. So we're going to see two things, right? Right. On the on the hybrid. You got to produce your show and you've got to produce your broadcast. Right. We want we want people to. When you think about doing the virtual meeting, think about producing a television show, not producing a Zoom meeting that's going to that's going to change things tremendously. And then when for that hybrid, for that virtual audience to be doing straight virtual meetings, how are you engage the audience besides chat? What are other ways that you're doing to reach back out to them, to make them feel a part of it and make them feel heard? Hey Mark, what are your thoughts on on? You're in front of the camera on stage. You know, do you agree with David and your thoughts? Yeah, David's insight is absolutely on point. So a couple of things I'd say, first of all, add some preexisting events before all this happened, I would jump off the stage following a live plenary session and go to what was, in effect, a TV studio. And then we create a variety of content where I was interviewing people who had just been on stage. And I think that color commentary moment is something that would play a very important role in these future hybrid events. And I think I would like to echo what David was saying. We are TV producers now. I used to work in television a long time ago, and this last couple of months felt like I was back on TV. I just hosted the huge IBM think event and it was virtually all prerecorded. And so watching a lot of it back from the comfort of my office and seeing all the response in the reaction, I thought, my goodness, it's like being I'm back in television again. So yes, I think it's going to be dual track production operation. I'm not sure clients will be thinking about spending double the money though, so we're going to have to find a way to create that experience to matching their budgets. But I'd like to add this as well, especially for people who are listening. I honestly, genuinely believe maybe, hopefully so that this is temporary. This is not the new norm. This is the transition norm. When we start coming back to events, I think it's going to be like a switch rather than a very slow flow. I think if events are one person at one table, then six feet away, another person, that's just not an event and it's not going to happen that way for very long at all. Once we have the social proof of people actually going to an event, however small, and everything was fine, it's going to pick up really, really quickly. This is how business is done, and I'm very confident that we will we'll get back to a form of normal. Maybe not the same as before, not for a while, but it's going to happen. That social proof piece is really important. So a year from now, are we are we doing events like we used to do? Are we back into the business of putting on the show a year from now? Yes, I think certainly will be putting on the show, but certain certain components will change. So, you know, we have an animation, a pre-show where there's an interaction with the audience and the and the performers. Maybe that'll change. Maybe we won't do that as much. But certainly a live performance will take place and the audience will participate by viewing it. I think the to the previous point, though, there's a different expectation when you have a virtual versus a live event. You don't. I can sit and watch a baseball game on my couch, and I'm not jumping out of my chair every time someone gets a hit or someone steals a base. But when I'm at the stadium, I'm doing that. So I think it changes your response as an audience member and as a participant in the event. So where the the hybrid event might be a short term solution, the expectation of the audience is also different when they go to a virtual event, when they go to a live event. And then there's the separation between those people that are at the live event and those people that are watching the live event. So there's a separation of an audience, sort of, well, how did they get to be there? So we have to we have to think about all of these things when we create these events. Because I've gone to some of the things myself and watched, and all of a sudden thinking that a particular individual is going to be present, and then they were virtually present, and that was disappointing. So you really have to think about when we create these events, how it will affect the audience, because if you want them to come back, you need to address their expectations. Very, very insightful. I want you all to know that while the world is upside down, at some point it'll get right right side, right side up again and and our worlds. We'll get back to putting on shows and producing some version of a television event and a live event and providing entertainment and communicating, and I, I guess I can't wait to get back to business at hand. I want to thank all three of you guys because you're all super smart and you've all participated and given us some insight and to why we need an audience, whether they're in person, whether they're virtual, whether it's a hybrid meeting. I think I'd like to ask for your closing thoughts, and I want to throw out the question. The question is, will we get back to a new normal where we're all having fun putting on shows, and people will go to shows and participate and get some type of experience that they'll walk away, like Tony just said, and carry that experience and promoting. So it's a self-promoting prophecy that the show must go on and we are going to continue to do these shows. David, would you give me your closing thoughts? Sure. Thanks, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Yes. The the answer is yes. We will get back to it. My my prediction is that we are 13 months away from starting to see any sort of normality coming back. My prediction is June of 2021. And Mark Jeffries, do you have any closing thoughts? And if you want to predict the future? I will first of all, also thank you for having me on. I'm very much an optimist. I'm a kind of realistic optimist. So I'm not going to go as far into the future as David did then. But I think what's going to happen over the summer, especially based on numbers that start to look a little bit better, is people are going to be putting their toe in the water, and I think that there's going to be a lot of experimentation going on, and there's then going to be an urgency to return, because if we're not putting our shows on whether they're corporate or entertainment, then nothing is happening. And that's just not a situation that I think as humans are prepared to take. I think it's going to be a case of people saying, all right, suck it up. I'm coming out to play. Tony, do you agree with him? And give us your closing thoughts. Will the show keep going on and what is the future look like? Absolutely. The show will continue to go on. I mean, since they drew in the caves and you dragged somebody in there to take a look at what you drew on the wall. There's been shows. So we need this as humans. Will it be different? Of course it will evolve into whatever it will evolve into. And we will adapt as providers of that content. I have no idea how long that will take. I hope it's sooner for the for the economy and for the people that do this. Realistically, it could be it could be longer than than our hopes are. I just hope that we do it intelligently so that people are safe and people enjoy what we have to provide them when we get to do that. Well, I'd like to thank you, doctor, Tony Ricotta, Doctor and David Fischette and Mark Jeffries. You guys are amazing. Have a great week. Stay safe, wash your hands and we will all talk soon. Thank you so much. And this is Road Ahead podcast.