Turning Attendees into Contributors: Personifest's Virtual Video Strategy

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The Challenge: Creating Meaningful Engagement in a Virtual World

As economic pressures and shifting travel patterns continue to reshape how organizations connect, virtual events have become essential for maintaining community and driving business outcomes. Personify, a leader in association management systems, faced the challenge of transforming its flagship event, Personifest, into a fully virtual experience. They recognized a core industry problem: events are fleeting, and the most powerful stories, those of attendees and partners, often go unheard.

The Solution: Amplifying Attendee and Sponsor Voices with Gather Voices

Personify understood that simply moving content online wasn’t enough. To truly engage their audience and deliver value for sponsors, they needed to turn passive viewers into active participants and storytellers. Gather Voices made this possible:

• Amplifying Attendee Voices: Personify invited award winners and attendees to share thank you videos, which were showcased throughout the event. This quick, fun, and empowering storytelling activation enhanced the attendee experience and built momentum and energy during the virtual conference.
• Driving Sponsor Engagement: Sponsors were given the opportunity to share their value propositions directly with attendees through video, resulting in meaningful engagement that sponsors loved.
• Building Community Year-Round: The videos collected weren’t just for the event; they became a library of authentic content leveraged across Personify’s website, blog, and social channels, multiplying the event’s impact long after it ended.

The Results: Real-Time Content, Real ROI

• 5X More Participation: Personifest’s virtual format, powered by attendee and sponsor-generated video, drove five times more participation than prior in-person conferences. In addition, this virtual format allowed attendees and sponsors from across the globe to participate. 
• Sustained Engagement: The authentic, real-time content created with Gather Voices continued to drive engagement throughout the year, far beyond the event itself.
• Sponsor Value Delivered: By empowering sponsors to share their stories in their own words, Personify delivered measurable value and deepened sponsor relationships.

Conclusion

In a climate where budgets are tight and in-person gatherings are uncertain, Personify’s Personifest stands as a model for how to transform virtual events into engines of engagement and ROI. With Gather Voices, fleeting moments become lasting impact, empowering real people from around the world to tell real stories, and driving measurable results for organizations and sponsors alike.