Rebecca: (00:01)
Today's episode is a little bit of a special one. I've actually pulled the interview today from my recent virtual conference, Nailing Virtual that I hosted in Pyrmont Studio back in August during the middle of the New South Wales lockdown in 2021. This conference was aimed at medium to large organisations, struggling with the transition to virtual. and navigating that on both a national and a global scale. I interviewed one of my favourite clients, Chris Britton, who is the chief marketing officer of Objective a global software company. In 2020 Objective had to pivot that annual conference to virtual in just eight weeks. But then this year in 2021, they had just two, because of the snap lockdowns, we threw plan A, B and C out the window and had just two weeks to pull together the entire show in a virtual format. In this interview, I deep dive with Chris into the lessons learned and discovered just how objective navigated the global transition to virtual.

Rebecca: (01:19)
Hello and welcome to the Rebecca Saunders Show your place to discover how to build resilience, craft confidence, and have a huge impact on the world. This podcast is for female business owners wanting the skills and knowledge they need to show up and stand out in a noisy digital world. Over the last decade, I've got a global seven figure production company and work with organisations both big and small to create impactful video content for business growth. I have a purpose built film studio in Sydney, Australia, and my team, and I produce live virtual events and I run my signature online programme, The Video Accelerator twice a year to help make that scary video journey just that little bit easier. Recently, after 25 years of wearing a wig in public, I took my first step out into the world hair-free in a bold move to encourage confidence in front of the camera and ownership of individual uniqueness. Every week on this podcast, you'll hear honest, insightful and practical conversations with successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and video specialists, which will give you the tools and knowledge you need to step into your power on the small screen. Described by my clients as a video ninja, I'm your host, Rebecca Saunders - and I cannot wait to dive into this episode with you. Let's do it.

Rebecca: (02:34)
Thank you, Chris, for joining us. I know you have just come out the back of this year's Activate which has been absolutely huge for you and your team for anyone that doesn't know Objective. Can you give us quick insight on who you are? What do you do?

Chris: (02:49)
Excellent. Hello everyone. My name is Chris Britton I'm the chief marketing officer Objective. You might not have heard of Objective, but we're an Australian software company and we primarily work with government at all three levels at state, federal and also at local, and we're a global company. So we service the public sector here in Australia, in New Zealand and also the UK. We've been through a huge transition over the last sort of 5 to 10 years where we've doubled in size. We went from being a company that had a single product focus, we've now got three different product categories. So we service content solutions, planning and building, and also then regulatory systems as well. So with that growth, our team's grown also. So we've gone from a couple of hundred people, we're now 400 people. We've gone from one development lab, we've now got 4 development labs - 1 in Sydney, Wollongong, Palmerston North in New Zealand and another in London, in the UK. So we're a diverse team with a diverse set of lines of businesses as well. So it's an exciting time to be at Objective - so a little bit about us.

Rebecca: (04:00)
I love it, and I loved all the different areas in which you work, because you know as the video said, we've been able to film with all those different countries and bring all of your teams together virtually. And it's been two years in a row now, which is quite baffling because for me, well, for you guys, Activate is your milestone event which has been running, how many years in a row face-to-face, was it 15?

Chris: (04:24)
We have two really big events during the year, the first one to Activate, and we call that our annual company kick-off and I think it's been running for nearly 20 years, and it has always been an event where people have come together from all around the globe, and they've all been in the same room. And it's a couple of days the traditional event that we were talking about earlier with the CEO gets on stage and speaks for two hours in a keynote with slides behind him. So we've had that and it's been running for about 20 years. But then we also have a little bit afterwards, our customer event and very similar big event a couple of days, and we generally brought people either together or run it as a road show. And that happens about two months later, but last year, because of COVID, we had to go completely digital.

Chris: (05:14)
I joined or moved into the role of CMO on the 1st of July. I think we had about eight weeks to go and rethink it and we delivered that via your studio. Whereas this year we had our big plans. We'd actually taken it up a notch to go and do the prerecording all at the Star Casino, but because of the lockdown laws, we were completely blocked out of that. So over the last fortnight, I guess it was, it's been a bit of a whirlwind. We had to rethink how we actually did deliver the digital event without the use of a studio as well.

Rebecca: (05:51)
It's been a pretty crazy ride the last couple of weeks, that's for sure, but we survived it and we'll touch on what's happened in the last few weeks, but I want to draw back on, you mentioned pre-recording. Now last year we did it all live because that's what we were able to do. We managed to pivot move that all live. There was a lot of pressure on the team to make all that happen. Show days were intense, we moved to pre-record because we're taking some of the pressure off. For anyone out there who's like, can we do live? Should we do pre-record? What was your decision making process in deciding that a lot of the presentations would be prerecorded this year?

Chris: (06:32)
Well, but you actually touched on this at the start and you said, we're moving now more to developing a TV show. And it's this moment when you realise we're not in Kansas anymore, we're actually doing something dramatically different to what we've done in the past. So this annual company kick-off that we had, where, as I said, the CEO gets up and has a really big piece and time doesn't really matter and people can have breaks and engage. That's all gone. So we need to rethink how we deliver our messages. So the first thing I thought we're doing now is going, let's not worry about your slides. Don't worry about the software demos. Let's make sure that we're really clear on the messages that you want - and in this instance, it's an internal event, but it's exactly the same for an external event.

Chris: (07:21)
One of the core messages that we want people to receive, and how do we do that really sharply, really crisp, and so people have a hundred percent clarity on what you want them to do and think afterwards. So there's been a real mind shift change around developing message. As you said, last year we did everything live and it just adds a lot of pressure to the team - and sometimes in the live environment that clarity gets lost. This year, we made the decision to do lots of pre-records. Now we used a platform this year that you recommended actually Rebecca called Cvent, and were able to go and mix a live element where I was the MC I was able to read out comments, talk, make comments - you know, have conversations in a live environment, but then we were switching to this prerecorded content.

Chris: (08:20)
It allowed us to make the visuals more engaging. So if someone did have slides, they were able to bring a slot or in your editing with you - we were able to go and highlight a slide, highlight the speaker, put the speaker in the slide side by side. We didn't have to be thinking about that on the fly. We could actually be doing that at the beginning. But as I said at the start, you really need your team, even in a pre-record to have their story straight. I don't know if you guys have been to a live event in the past, and you can see the person who's about to speak with their laptop open. They're still making changes to the slides - that's gone. That is gone. Someone's not going to nail their messaging in two or three minutes if they're doing that, we need them to be thinking about it upfront when they need to think about - well, how is the best way to deliver that? Because as you said Bec, someone might be watching on a phone. So we get all of those things, right? And then we go to that pre-record environment. I must admit the pre-record with everyone being at home, it added a little bit of complexity. There's no vibe for the people when they're delivering their segments. But really that comes into rehearsal that comes into preparation that comes into knowing your content as well.

Rebecca: (09:41)
Yeah, so there's a couple of pointers that you've picked up on - preparation of the team. Now I'm sure that there was some pushback along the way and how to do a lot of this, and it's going to happen in every single organisation as you try and push change through, particularly out of someone's comfort zone and put them in front of a camera. How did you navigate that? Like as a supplier doing all the video sparkly stuff for you, but internally, how do you navigate that change?

Chris: (10:07)
The change one is what's hard. Like for most people I can tell them what I want them to do, but there's obviously senior people in the organisation that it's a little bit harder to do that. I had an interesting experience, one of my guys told me, you know, I'm really good on stage. I nail it when I'm in front of a live audience, but when I'm on camera, I just don't do so well. And I stopped and I thought, well, I've seen both of his performances and they're exactly the same. I asked him, have you ever actually seen a video of yourself standing on stage? Oh, no. Never. Okay. Getting actually people to watch themselves is really important. I had quite a lot of pushback on doing some camera training initially. But once I did one event and everybody was on camera and they got to watch themselves, it really changed things.

Chris: (10:56)
So if you can, it's hard to convince people to do not only some rehearsals, but also go in and do some camera training. I think that's great because if people can see themselves, it makes a huge difference. The other thing is not to underestimate the amount of effort on the - we call ourselves the corporate marketing team, so each of our lines of business had product marketers and things like that, but corporate marketing - How much additional effort we had to put in. So not only are we in the old days we would have booked the venue. We would have said, right, you're speaking between one and two o'clock after lunch, et cetera. We now going through and helping them choreograph this story. We're making sure that we've seen all of this. If they've got slides, we're putting their slides in we're giving ourselves enough time to hear their stories, so we can then go in the system, finding customer testimonials and case studies as well. Because whilst we all think we're really important and interesting, hearing from our customers is the most impactful thing that we did. So this year we actually had a mix of really stylized case studies where your team went to the north of Scotland and filmed one of our customers. Then went to Dandenong in Victoria, went to the south island of New Zealand. So we brought those in, but then we also had some live Q&A's with customers as well, and that mixed up that medium as well.

Rebecca: (12:26)
The case studies were a lot of fun. I was a little bit apprehensive about Dandenong given Melbourne's - what was it? Fifth lockdown - and I think we snuck it in just as it got lifted. So definitely I think we've been touching the wire a few times on bringing it to life on our side. How in terms of those segments, we've had a lot of case studies, we've done it across the globe, as you said. How did you sort of source those clients to act, to add to that buffer of content and really enforce that message for you? How did you find them?

Chris: (12:59)
So we've got a very engaged client base, which is good - and in the public sector, a lot of people like to talk about their successes to their peers. So we do have a little bit of an advantage there, but we also have a bit of an issue where there's a lot of hoops that we need to go through. So we've actually now got a process that includes your studio, where we initially had outreach to our customers and we talk about the process. It's actually this part where our customers don't know what it means to have a video crew come into their office - how long is it going to take? How much preparation do I need to do? What happens? How many people do I need to get involved? So we've actually got a standard set of documents and it's in the form of - we'd love you to share your story. And it's a document that we share. It's a personal letter from me. Now it's a letter, that's the same one for internal customers, but it talks about the benefits of doing this, telling their story. And then we have a very standard process where we meet these customers, we talk them through. We then go through the - this is what happens on the day. I find demystifying that day makes it so much easier. That's when we invite you and then we have a very standard process. We know what document we get. We know what sign off we need to get from there, and we follow the bouncing ball along. And all of our customers who have been involved have really enjoyed the process. In fact, they say - oh, I would like to get some of our younger team members involved. And we say - please do, like get them involved - because we actually find that the younger guys find it's a real perk of the job to say - Hey, I was featured in this video and et cetera. So I use it as part of their internal Ra-Ra or if you like as well. So it's a good process, but make it simple. We just say - guys, the whole thing is making this easy. Some of those customers were banned from getting into their office because of COVID, especially the ones in Scotland. We thought of alternate ideas. We rented hotels and things like that, and the last one you shot in Glasgow people have tears coming out of their eyes. It's fantastic.

Rebecca: (15:10)
That's so good to hear. Cause that was again, another near miss - a thunderstorm hit 15 minutes after we stopped filming. So I have to say something's definitely on our side when it comes to making action happen.

Chris: (15:21)
I should say that the tears are from the emotional side of the story and the community outcomes are there delivering - nothing else.

Rebecca: (15:30)
It's seeing it all come together though, and I think doing these case studies twofold is the clients and the customers are telling your stories for you, the team will get to meet them. They get to share the stories themselves, and as you say, making the process simple because every single story is different, but the process along the way has been the same for every single one.

Chris: (15:49)
What's really helped me here, and is I must admit working with a single video crew. So when we go and say - we want to go and do a video in the north of Scotland - you do your outreach with your global videography crew. We know that the process is going to be the same every time, we know that the quality of the files, we know what the editing is going to look like - cause it's all done. You guys know exactly the sort of tone that we like, the music we like, all the way down to the lower thirds. Now if we were finding different video companies and sourcing them globally, we would have no continuity between everything that we do. And for me having a - I don't want to be a video expert - having a crew of people that I can trust, that are fast, that are reliable and can deliver the same - I'm going to call it product - the same service again and again, no matter where it is in the world, just really takes the pressure off. I actually explained that you and your crew are an extension of Objective, and that we actually don't go anywhere else because of the understanding of the view of our business and of our customers as well. And that's been really important to me, and really important to my team as well.

Rebecca: (17:04)
Yeah, we definitely do feel like an extension of the team for sure. And we love creating content with the whole global team. It's been an awful lot of fun and we look forward to supporting all the projects cause we love hearing the stories too, and hearing what you're getting up to. Now just from a few more points I want to touch on because I'm really grateful for your time here. We have got a couple of states in lockdown. Everything's a little bit like - I'm not sure what's going on. We did have two weeks and we shipped webcams and lights to team members across your team, right. For anyone that's planning an event or got something coming up in the next month, two months - And yes, I do know I did say an eight week runway earlier in the show - for anyone that's got something and they're starting to freak out. How did you navigate that? I mean, I gave you sort of the webcam recommendation but how was that, giving that to your team going - you know what guys you're filming from home now, here's the deal? What happened?

Chris: (18:03)
So look we had a plan to go to the Star Casino and record on the big stage and all of that. And so when we then worked through what options A through E - with E being postpone, and we just didn't want to do that. Tenacity is one of our corporate values, and I wanted to make sure that the teams were being tenacious - so we went through those. Could we film it in the office? No, that's still out of COVID regulations. Okay. We've got to go and do it at home. We've got people in New Zealand, we've got people in the UK, how would we do this? The first thing we thought about was consistency in the actual quality of the delivery. So you gave us a recommendation on webcams. Amazon was actually a really neat site because you could actually go in there and give individual addresses for all of those people.

Chris: (18:57)
And they all got shot out. So we not only shot the webcams out, but we also send out lights as well to light people up. And then we had a number of sessions where we were taking people through how to deliver it. So you and I, and my team got together and did a couple of tests. We did a video on how that test looks. We showed our team what the transitions will be. So I got up there and said - Hey guys, there's some presenting now. We're going to shift to a slide. We're going to go slide and person. We're going to go picture and picture now. Now we're going to go slide. So our team got the idea of what we're going to do with the final product. Again, just like our customers, when they do a case study, let's talk them through that process and say, it's going to be easy.

Chris: (19:44)
Here's what the final product looks like. We do exactly the same for our team. And we have an internal Wiki page so we posted the copy of the video. We did stills from there. Julia on my team gave a bunch of direction around, how do we dress the environment behind you? We didn't want to shy away from that people were at home. We wanted to look back at this in two years time and go - Look at that time where we had to do all of this from home and had to rethink it. So again, it was about making sure that we tested the systems. We had the right equipment, we'd prepared the team, and then we took them through that, and then away we went. As I said, there was probably a little bit more stage management than we generally would have done. People still went over time, but I think this year really hit it home that you just can't spend that much time when you're on video, you can't spend 20 minutes getting to your point. You need to get there in three minutes and it has to be really crisp. So I think we'll continue to learn with every event that we do - and our team will continue to lift during that learning as well.

Rebecca: (20:59)
100%, it's a constant learning curve. And as tech changes and all these things change around us, we've got to be making sure we're at the forefront of all of that. I've got two more questions for you, Chris. Your biggest lesson learned in this whole transition to virtual phase for Objective.

Chris: (21:16)
My biggest lesson is pre-recording. You do not need to have all of the stress of a completely live event - like you do not need to have that - So that's something that I really liked. I liked mixing the , yet they need to have a flow and stylistically look the same. They can't all be completely different, but we went from presentations to like a zoom style interview, where we had two people in Palmerston North in New Zealand, we could get into the office - so then we transitioned to that as well. People need breaks - you do need like two hours. We talk about movie length - if it's over movie length, you've got to have a break. So we also have some breaks in there as well. So mix that up. The other thing is just really push home that people need to prepare. People need to practise as well. If someone says they're doing an interview, it doesn't mean - Bec I'm going to ask you a question in just one monologue comes back. It needs to be like, this needs to be a back and forth. So if you're a marketer and someone goes - Yeah I've nailed this. Now we're going to do an interview, it's all good. - Actually sit there and do it with them, actually sit there and watch them and go - Wow, we could do that one again.

Chris: (22:32)
So there are things, but the prerecording has been a revelation. And there's no reason why you couldn't, pre-record a customer interview a month before, right. Two months before it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. We even have posted some of our customer case studies on our website, but a lot of our team hadn't seen them yet. So, you know, it doesn't matter that the content might be already out there. You can reshape it and re share it as well.

Rebecca: (23:00)
You've actually just put another couple of questions in my head and I'm going to have to ask them, cause you're here. You said that the case studies are already on your website - in terms of thinking through this content, we've had this conversation in detail, producing content that lives beyond the live show.

Chris: (23:16)
Has to, and we go for that. So, yeah. So when I mention this though, we have two milestone events, so we have a big internal kickoff. And then we have, for what was traditionally called Collaborate, which was a big customer event. We see the internal event as the prelude to that. We previously many years ago, we may have had a customer come and speak at our internal event, we'd have one, and - Wow isn't that great - but it's gone. They don't get to speak again. Whereas now what we do, we go and get four or five customer case study videos. We show them at the internal event, then we re-show them at the customer event. Then we go and slice them up, so when we get to go and speak at an industry event, we can actually use that video footage as part our PowerPoint.

Chris: (24:09)
So you go - We're going to talk you through a case study. This is customer X. Let's get them to introduce themselves. You can press play. They talk about it, let's hear about their biggest problems. You can press play. So you can use them in that format. We slice those videos up and make them small social snippets as well. So we've got those on there. With tools like Wistia, you can get all of the subtitles done on there really quickly. I know you offer that service as well. So there's lots of different ways that people can consume that information. But what we also go and do is take transcripts of them as well. So we can create written copy to support those videos. So we've got all of these times that we're using this video content over and over again.

Chris: (24:55)
And one thing I didn't talk about is when we say at the start and we engage the customer and say - here's the permissions form - we actually say - Hey, we're going to take the words that you use here, and we will put them into a written format so we can use them for shorter social snippets as well, or printed case study things or whatever. So we see them having life all the way through the year, all the way up into our investor reports as well. We even on the digital one, it says, click here to hear this customer story, click here, to get this customer story. So they have a life that just keeps on giving.

Rebecca: (25:30)
So I guess in that sense I love re-purposing content and making it go the extra distance, but the ROI on that must be quite phenomenal from an organisations perspective both, but I know there's a common sort of mystery around what does a virtual event costs then whilst it still is relatively meaty given perhaps all the moving parts to it all, the cost of it in comparison to an impasse and getting everyone together is, is, is big anyway. But being able to repurpose that content even more, um,

Chris: (26:00)
It's all about people together. It was getting up to nearly half a million dollars. By the time we put everybody in a hotel flow on them all from all around Australia, all around New Zealand, people coming in from the UK, but that is a lot of money. And we see our internal event as a real culture event. We want to make sure that it's not training. It's not skills enhancement. It is a culture event. We want people to really feel that they're part of something that's making a difference. You know, our whole thing is about delivering digital government, which in turn drives stronger community outcomes because our customers are in the public sector. So ultimately the beneficiaries of what we do is the community. So you know, great messages for the and so we want to make sure that they hear that, but you know, there's also that expense of those live events, what we even do now without internal events, if you are new to our team in two months time, and you're coming through our induction programme.

Chris: (27:00)
Well, one of the things that you do is watch the last Activate that was had and that's up on our Wiki, it's all timestamped. You can move to certain bits. And, and so even those events, even that long format gets used and used and used again through inductions because you know, we're hiring, we're getting new people in all of the time, so it keeps getting used. And that's the key to, I think video content, any content that you have, let's use it, reuse it. How else can we cut it? How do we make it that case study, et cetera.

Rebecca: (27:32)
Yeah. Even how can we go back to the raw footage and cut a different message is something I know that you and I have got coming up in the next couple of weeks. Now, my final, which I know you've probably had enough of the content already, but we'll go for it one more time. Final question for you, Chris, for everyone watching. If I haven't done this before, you're golden piece of advice for anyone launching in to a global or a large virtual event with their team

Chris: (27:59)
Is to make sure that people realise that it is not a live event. That it is changed. They have to change the way that they think. And I don't know what it is about people these days but they like to, before they start - oh, I've got to do a presentation. Well, I'm going to start in PowerPoint. I'm going to start working in PowerPoint. And I'm saying to all of my guys get rid of PowerPoint. I want you to get a pen, not a keyboard, a pen, and I want you to write down a summary of what you want to say. I want to start the middle of end. I want you to tell me how people are going to feel. And I want you to tell me what people are going to do at the end of it.

Chris: (28:41)
And that's really, you know, the pre-recordings good, like all of these, this consistent flow of information, all of those things are really important, but it's got to come back to your message. And we need people to do that because once we have that brief, if you like, of this is the message I want to give. Well, then I can sit with the rest of my marketing team. People like yourself and say, well, how could I bring this alive? How can we actually go and do something that's pretty innovative? That's engaging, that's memorable, and we can take that and make it something new. If someone goes, here's my PowerPoint deck, and I've already gone and done all of the work, there's not much scope for creativity. And in fact, you end up with something that's relatively boring. It doesn't look like a TV show. So that will be mine.

Rebecca: (29:27)
Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I look forward to making many more, many TV shows with you in the future. We love working with you guys and thank you for your time.

Chris: (29:36)
If people just go to objective.com and they just go to our customer stories, all of the videos that we've shot are your ones. So feel free to go.

Rebecca: (29:45)
Thank you. And I'll make sure I link that in the resources page that will hit everyone's inbox at the end of the session. Thank you very much, Chris.

Rebecca: (29:53)
That's a wrap on another episode of the Rebecca Saunders show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really hope you've taken some golden nuggets away from today's show and a one step closer to having a huge impact on the world. If you've loved this episode, please share it on Instagram and Facebook with your friends or on LinkedIn, with your colleagues and business network. And if you've really liked to make my day, you can pop a review on iTunes. If you have any questions about today's episode, come on over to Instagram for a chat. You can find me at the handle at the Rebecca Saunders. And if you'd like to know more about what I can do for you, check me out at RebeccaSaunders.com. I'll see you next time on The Rebecca Saunders Show.