I’m going to peg the tipping point to the launch of Windows ‘95 launch (fittingly, in 1995). I mean it was the launch of a $209 geeky operating system but you would have thought the Queen was coming to town. Suddenly geeks, software coders and engineers were celebrities. The launch had a carnival-like atmosphere with Jay Leno starring as tech’s biggest cheerleader. The Stone’s “Start Me Up” (a multi-million dollar buy for MS to use the song) became synonymous with turning on your computer. Take a trip down memory lane with this video from BlueOS. MS taught us that a product launch was an event. And an event was a spectacle. 

Product launches continue to compete for celebrity status, now with the added exposure of creators and online influencers. Gamified immersive environments such as the Illuminarium in Toronto are destinations unto themselves, but last month intel brought its Encore AI Exhibit to the venue. It featured audio, video and sculpture installations as well as meet-the-artist events. All to help consumers gain a new appreciation of a computer chip.

Samsung used The Louvre in Paris as its backdrop to launch a new foldable phone and some amazing AI powered enhancements to its products. They turned reporters and influencers loose in the City of Light to report on the product by using it. CNET’s first 24 hours with the $1900 phone captured some of the new phone’s best tricks. The event provided a perfect mix of user experience and an exotic destination.

In truth, event budgets are down. But expectations for delivering ROI are up. That’s the bottom line from Forrester’s new State of Events study. Here are a few notable insights from the study:

• Fifty-eight percent of marketers are planning to hold more small, hosted/owned in-person events, making this the fastest-growing event type.
• The second-fastest-growing event type is webinars. 
• Marketers are all about giving their events a long tail to improve event ROI. 
• 92% of respondents plan to improve their post-event follow-up this year, and 77% are taking this further and looking to build year-round attendee engagement. 
• Year-round event engagement relies on repurposed event content and mixed-format events like webinars. 
• Data and measurement is the number one priority. Sadly, ESG is not much of a priority, though, with the exception of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. 
• Event technology usage and spending seem to be where the money is going. 
• And that darn event tech stack is still a challenge, meaning that event technology is often separate from the businesses' other technologies, making data siloed and hard to share. 

The answer, says the Forrester report, is centralization so that events are seen as part and parcel of a company’s business. Forrester clients can read the new B2B event trends report or request a guidance session to better understand what the findings mean for their teams and organization.

Fessing Up

The Atlantic magazine has clearly labeled this AI-generated narration. We hope to see more transparency when AI is used in all sorts of content creation.

Hamsters and Their Crypto

What do hamsters and crypto have in common? Apparently, a lot of spinning wheels. On LinkedIn, Shira Lazar wrote about the crazy popularity of a game where you play a hamster investing in cryptocurrency. She reports that Hamster Kombat, created to celebrate the Binance crypto-exchange’s 7th anniversary, has attracted 239 million users in just 81 days. According to Lazar, Hamster Kombat is “setting new records and driving interest in blockchain technology through its interactive gameplay.” The YouTube channel traffic is through the roof, with 33.5 million subscribers. It’s sort of CryptoPunks round 2 in terms of a cultural phenomenon, but it underscores how important digital currency will be for engagement.