{Ask The Techxperts} Eventstagram Activates Live Displays for Ferrari

This series is dedicated to learning from event experts on various topics. We cover event technology, meeting design, and much, more more! Today, we are pleased to interview DAN STRANG, CEO or Crowd Reactive.

First of all, please tell our readers about Eventstagram – what is the company all about?
Eventstagram is all about live interaction at events through social media. We show awesome looking displays of Instagram and Twitter photos taken live at an event. Planners simply create an event on http://eventstagr.am and choose the hashtag they want to use. Then they display their slideshow to their attendees who take photos and post them to Twitter or Instagram, within seconds those photos appear in the display. We pride ourselves on being the easiest to use solution out there, whilst also being the most customisable, allowing events to add their own backgrounds and logos, and even create their own layout!

What were the 3 keys to getting the company off the ground – where did you invest your time?
This is a great question. The first thing was to ensure we had the product working. That doesn’t mean we spent ages to make sure it was perfect and had all the features we would need, that means we had a product that could perform the basic function; getting Instagram and Twitter photos from peoples phones at an event and putting it into a visually engaging display. The second thing was to get the right brands using our software. We had three targets in the UK, we spent all our time making sure they used our live social feeds, and got us off the ground. The third and final thing was staying true to our product. Our vision is to create the best looking live social display out there, so we needed to make sure we didn’t just chase the money, but also select feature updates that matched our vision.

What kind of clients do you serve?
We have events all over the world, and from all different segments use our product; sports stadiums, festivals, exhibitions and of course regular event planners. But because the market is so diverse we have tried to segment them with three different brands. Crowd Reactive focuses on bespoke social slideshows larger one off events; things like The O2 Arena in London, or Lollapalooza in Brazil. Eventstagram is all about easy, customizable social slideshows for regular event planners, exhibitions, concerts, bars, venues and nightclubs. And finally we have http://ii.do which is specifically for brides, grooms and wedding planners to display live photo slideshows and their wedding party.

How do you use events to expand the reach of your brand?
Well, as Eventstagram is an events product which helps others extend the outreach of their brand at events, we really should know what we are doing. Our first solution is to use our slideshow. In eventstagram our free live feeds show our brand name. By having the live feed on screens at an event we know that it grabs the attention of attendees and gets them looking at the screen. So they are then looking at our brand. Additionally we do things like live photo printing from social media, but adding our brand and giving the prints away free or having event based competitions around sharing images.

What is the coolest use of technology you’ve ever done for your brand or events?
That’s another hard one. The coolest would most likely be our activation for Ferrari in Austin. In conjunction with the F1 race in Texas, Ferrari were launching their new 458 for the first time in North America. They wanted to use Crowd Reactive to create a unique and mesmerising live display. So we did just that. We projected 458 old Ferrari images to the side of an aircraft hangar in Austin, and when the big reveal was put on stage we started turning those images into new user generated content directly from Instagram or Twitter. The live feed was a huge success, and using our analytics tool we were able to give the client some awesome data analytics such an overall outreach of over 4.5 million impressions.

I know you have some very interesting developments in your company lately. Please – tell us! What’s new?
Well the first thing to announce is a new investor has come on board to the Crowd Reactive team, the investors are UK based Mercia Fund and have provided funds for sales development in the United States as well as the development of new products and features.

And already we have started launching new features. Firstly we have a new brand I mentioned earlier – http://ii.do. This is to help make sure we have some specific features for brides and grooms to display their guests wedding pics live at the wedding party. We also allow them to show their guests photos in their own wedding album, and print a beautiful photo album after the wedding party has finished!

Secondly we have launched through Eventstgaram a new monthly subscription. This allows event planners, and venues the option to use Eventstagram’s live slideshows every single day without having to break the bank!

Finally, what is your favorite app?
Y Plan is my current favourite app. It really gears to the spontaneous event goer. We all know in big cities like London and New York there are things going on every single night, ad Y Plan makes it so simple to find these events!