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How AV Drives Your Message Home

Picture these two events:

One takes place in a half-darkened room with a sleepy audience bored by a presenter they can’t hear, and fuzzy slides they can’t make out from a dim projector.

The other has music pumping before it even starts, drawing in an excited audience that immediately engages with dynamic lighting and eye-catching 3-dimensional stage elements. The presenter speaks alongside video content that plays on bright LED displays.

The difference between these events is two letters: AV.

Emotional connections

Audiovisual (AV) is an essential event component that can make all the difference in driving your message home to attendees by creating an emotional connection with them. Good AV is the difference between attending an event and experiencing it. 

“AV establishes an emotional connection through sight and sound,” says Steve Wildemann, president of Rental and Staging Network (RSN), and president and owner of Advanced Staging Productions. “This connection completely changes people’s attitudes toward a meeting or event. Making them feel like they are part of an incredible live experience is something that cannot be duplicated with a webcast or video feed. Creating this emotional link also drives retention of information. Attendees want to tell stories about it. The emotional connection is the forgotten piece of most events these days.”

Sensory experience

AV should provide an immersive feeling where the audience feels like they are enveloped by your message and they become part of it. As Mark Miller, president and CEO of RSN-member Markey’s Rental & Staging puts it, “It’s like being on a conference call and you are the only one on the phone; you can feel that isolation and lack of connection. Even with today’s broadcasting and streaming technology, it’s not the same. At a live event, you build off one another for a deeper, more enriching understanding through a shared experience.” Properly executed AV at a live event stimulates all the senses and captivates audiences “AV ties all of the elements together for a cohesive event,” says Miller. 

That cohesiveness isn’t necessarily something the audience can articulate, but it is something they notice, at least on an unconscious level. You can measure it in your audience’s rapt faces, the comments you hear when they exit and talk amongst themselves about what a great event they were in, and most importantly, in the number of people who come back for your next event.

Well-orchestrated AV is the glue that holds your event together and keeps your audience’s attention on your message. AV facilitates the immersive experience that excites audiences and drives your message home.

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