If you know what HQ Trivia is, there’s a good possibility you just finished playing. If you’re not familiar with HQ Trivia, chances are someone in your office just snuck away to get a quick game in, and now they are trying to back to their desk without the boss noticing.
What is HQ Trivia?
HQ Trivia is a live trivia game show app that allows people to play in real-time for a cash prize. The games are held live twice every day.
Why Is the Relevant to the Event Industry?
HQ is one of the largest virtual events held every day with hundreds of thousands to a million plus participants and a variety of big-name sponsors.
Power of a Captivated Audience
As an event organizer, the audience is yours to command. You tell attendees when to go into a session, when to eat, even when to get up from their seats. A captive audience will listen to sponsored presentations, fill out surveys, and volunteer their own challenges in the hopes of finding shared solutions with their peers.
For 15 minutes, HQ has a captivate audience glued to their screens. What does HQ do with that undivided attention?
Creative Sponsorship Opportunities Using Technology
Whether it is a walk-on spot from the Rock to promote a new movie, or a Nike themed game, they don’t miss an opportunity to give their sponsors exposure. Recently, HQ signed a 3 Million Dollar sponsorship agreement with Warner Brothers. The first sponsored game was part of the launch for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. It included one of their largest cash prizes of $250,000, a short video promotion, and the theme for questions were related to the film.
Exhibitors love new and creative ways to showcase their brands and services. How are you using technology to increase sponsorship revenue? Are you offering sponsorship opportunities within your event app? Does your check-in process include a branded screen? Technology and sponsorship go hand-in-hand and no opportunity should go unexplored.
Product Promotion and Branding
For HQ, every game is another opportunity to promote their product. If there is a special large prize on Sunday, you better believe the host is plugging it every day at the start of the week. In addition to product placement, HQ pushes branding. Their dedicated fan base, dubbed ‘HQties’, are very active on social media, and HQ never misses an opportunity to engage. At the start of every game, the host gives shout-outs to their followers; providing anyone who tweets or messages them an opportunity to be mentioned to an audience of thousands.
How are you engaging your attendees on social? Does your event have a dedicated hashtag? What type of content are you provide inbetween events?
Keep Content Fresh
Part of what keeps ‘HQties’ coming back each week is the many new ways they position the event. While the allure of a cash prize is a great incentive, HQ is keenly aware of what it takes to attract new users and keep their existing audience engaged. They are constantly experimenting with different game formats, new hosts, themes, prizes, and giveaways/freebies.
Have you heard of Death by PowerPoint? For annual events, the challenge of content is a constant source of anxiety. Your unconference breakouts sessions, games, and networking were a hit this year, but what do you next year, and the year after that? Keeping content fresh is essential to lower customer attrition.
Technology Can Be Unreliable Sometimes, but It’s Not the End of the World
We’d all like to believe we live in the future; with our self-driving cars, face-timing, and Keurig’s that pour the perfect cup of coffee, but anyone who has ever been dropped from a webinar or conference call knows better. HQ Trivia is a global event sometimes hosting over a million users. Your last webinar was 6 people, and Jim from accounting still couldn’t get logged in.
What happens when HQ experiences technical difficulties? They keep the show going. The host stalls for time with an ad-libbed joke, a witty push notification gets sent out to let players know the game is back on, they turn what could be a crisis into an opportunity. The bottom line is technology will let you down at some point in your event career.
If you can anticipate a roll with the punches your audience will appreciate it. Now if only you can get Jim to stop using internet explorer.
