4 TIPS TO WORKING WITH AN AV COMPANY
There are a lot of factors to consider when booking an event: the location, the amenities, what portion of the budget should be allocated to the AV production, etc. You want your attendees (your employees or clients) to feel taken care of. Swag bags are always fun, but a poor AV experience might really leave them talking. When it comes to events, AV can make or break the experience of your attendees. Presenters need to be heard, their content seen and their message delivered. With AV being a pivotal portion of each event, it is important that everything goes smoothly. That’s why the AV company that you select is equally as important as the equipment chosen to support your event. It is important to know what can go wrong; how a small change can affect multiple aspects of an event. Asking the right questions of your AV company before, during and after setup helps to ensure a seamless event.
Tip 1: Book Site Visits With Your AV Company
When planning a large scale event, a site visit provides crucial information for your AV production team. Hotel meeting room “diagrams” only go so far, and often aren’t entirely accurate. The wall that you wanted to put your set up against might have a dedicated service entrance, could be an egress for fire escapes, or there may be an unmovable fixture and now your set won’t fit. It is important that your AV team knows the space beforehand, or does a walk through to ensure the nuances of the meeting space are documented and accounted for when designing the AV production.
Tip 2: Ensure Your AV Team Has Experienced Staff
Imagine this: your keynote presenter is on stage, ready to begin.
They start to talk and you hear nothing; their mic is off. Or, they talk and there’s a loud screech in the sound system. Worse still, the mic was turned on before they got to the stage, so their ‘pre-talk peptalk’ was just heard by everyone. Would you want any of these things to happen? We definitely don’t. These are amateur mistakes, but they are very real occurrences. Sometimes, these large in-house AV companies hire inexperienced people and leave them on their own.They aren’t concerned about messing up for who they perceive as a “small client” because there is more revenue elsewhere; new hires will always exist. Your event deserves a team of dedicated professionals who will work tirelessly to make sure that every detail is perfect.
Tip 3: Have a Shared Vision
You have a vision of how your event should go; you know when the lights should dim, when the video should launch and when the perfect moment is to have a spotlight hit the keynote speaker. Your AV team should as well. The truth is, many in-house AV companies don’t look into your event and don’t feel the same passion as you do. For you, every event is as an opportunity to give your employees a great experience and a chance to show your clients that your company is worth their investment of time and dollars. If your AV company isn’t as enthused as you are, it will show and reflect in the experience of the attendees. It is important to get to know your AV company and share your vision with them so that they can bring it to life.
Tip 4: Ensure Consistency of Your Brand
Have an event that is making its way across the US? Sure, you could use the same chain of conference centers, and they all have the same in-house AV company. You work with them from event to event; sounds ideal, right? It very well could be, but just because the team in New York was great, doesn’t mean the folks in Cincinnati will be able to help you as well. That’s why building a relationship with a singular company is helpful. Each event, despite being in different locations and spaces, will have the same exact feel to it. Continuity is the lifeblood of branding and choosing one company will ensure reliability. The presenters and executives see the same faces and can feel more confident when they take the stage.
