MarTech Outlook: Specials Magazine

Imagine a powerfully immersive hybrid event experience, powered by cutting-edge production technology solutions, where people interact in the same place but from different locations. Through expansive visuals and rich audio, virtual audiences can feel like they are part of a live experience in a space that blends virtual and live audiences into one. Making this possible by bridging the gap between the physical and virtual with technology is Ice 9 Productions—a facilitator of live, virtual, and hybrid events. This high-end audio and video engineering company utilizes the best of live event and broadcast technologies to create, compose, and control dimensional experiences for corporate events. “We are pioneers in designing and developing connected live virtual and in-person experiences that differentiate our client’s brand, company, or service from their competitors,” says Blair Howell, Vice President of Ice 9 Productions. Their comprehensive technical design and production services help produce 3-Dimensional brand experiences that place clients from around the world in the same place, creating high-impact, unified live business events such as investor days, leadership meetings, customer conferences, town halls, and corporate events of all sizes and profiles. As a behind-the-scenes command center, the Ice 9 Productions HUB has created quality interactive broadcasts, a staple of modern live events, for the last decade. Connecting participants to live events in impactful ways, Ice 9 provides 3D virtual environments that allow live and virtual audiences to seamlessly communicate through meaningful human interaction. These virtual experiences transcend the restrictions of live event environments, and clients are only limited by their imagination. Ice 9 provides easily customizable design templates, rendering a transformed, 3D world populated with brand elements, screens, desks, avatars, motion graphics, and animated transitions that fit your brand and inspire action. Modern businesses understand the value of virtual meeting technologies like Zoom and Teams to relay essential information without in-person meetings, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Influencer marketing is fundamentally transforming the way marketing works. In recent years, it gained tremendous traction as more brands aim to capitalize on social media's reach to establish reliable connections with customers. As traditional advertising models lose ground to this approach, new generations turn to social media to discover products and inform purchase decisions. Collaborating with the right influencers and fostering an engaged online community of brand ambassadors is a proven solution for brands looking to reach new audiences and build trust. Here’s where Fohr can help. Fohr developed a self-serve platform that allows businesses to find, recruit, and partner with influencers—not just any influencers, the right ones—creators who can effectively communicate brand messaging to a targeted, engaged, and trusting audience. Brands can recruit from Fohr's database of 180,000+ opted-in influencers or self-recruit using the platform. Fohr's self-serve platform, Discovery, helps brands find qualified influencers, verify their metrics and following, and manage influencer relationships at scale with tools to organize and communicate with partners easily. Once clients land on an influencer's profile, they can access deep insights and analytics, including comprehensive demographics, verified statistics on growth, engagement, and reach, trends, top-performing content, audience testimonials, and conversion metrics. The platform can also generate reports, conduct competitor research, and find statistics on a hashtag, brand name, or interest. Brands can build a list of influencers, export them to a .csv or PDF, and calculate the earned media value of the coverage they receive from influencers.