The “New Normal”- it’s what we’ve been hearing a lot about this these days, right? It’s been a wild ride since the beginning of the year, heck the beginning of the decade!
Our day-to-day lives have changed and with it is our social lives as well. The part of our lives where we interact with our friends and other family members. The part where we socialize and plan parties and of course, travel. It’s ALL the things that keep our life in balance.
What’s amazing to me though and I’m sure you agree with me on this, is how we as a society can adapt to change. Like that!
It’s so humbling to see how people are innovating their ways to go about adjusting to this new normal that everyone is talking about.
Take for instance in the business world. A lot of small businesses are restructuring their services.
Restaurants that don’t offer deliveries have been able to do that these days. Streaming services are showing what are supposed to be “theatrical releases” (Have you seen Mulan?!) That way we don’t have to go to the movie theatre at this current time.
EVERYONE has been trying to be mobile now since being online is the safest way to go.
That’s why we at JD Agency Experience are constantly thinking of ways to make sure that YOU don’t miss out on anything and regardless of the current situation- YOU ARE HAVING FUN!
We’re so excited to announce that we’re venturing into Virtual Event Planning! It’s a new service we provide for ANYONE who wishes to host a Virtual ZOOM Party or any video conferencing of your choice.
We had the opportunity to host a Virtual Wine and Chocolate Tasting event for the ServiceNow Team.
Our client, ServiceNow, is a tech company based in San Francisco, California with offices worldwide, has been wanting to reward their employees a real good time and a chance to “meet” each other, (socially distanced of course) by treating them with some wine and chocolate!
These events are so fun to plan and more importantly, very fulfilling to execute. I’ll share with you an exclusive look at how it went!
PLANNING
After we received an inquiry from the ServiceNow team, we wasted no time and got busy!
Bulk of the preparation for this event happens in the planning stage. We wanted to know anything and everything they wanted and needed to bring this party to life. Including their budget.
Part of the planning process is to decide on what event they’d like to do. For this instance, they opted for a Wine & Chocolate Tasting event, because… why not?!
We decided to call this event: #WineNotNow. Has a nice ring to it, huh?!
It’s so apt because it’s a reference to the fact that we’re starting this wine event at 9 AM PDT. We have to choose this time of the day to accommodate other employees from Europe.
You know what they say, it’s gotta be 5 o’clock somewhere.
For an event like this, usually, one hour is enough, 1 hour and 30 minutes max. We don’t want our participants to stay longer in front of a computer screen for longer than they already have.
The number of participants for events like this varies. It could be anywhere from 10 to 100 participants per event. You gotta love technology, right?! Our clients can choose whatever video-conferencing application they want- but ZOOM is the most popular one.
Once those details are sorted, we drill down to more specific tasks- like marketing. We provide marketing materials for these events. Here’s what we did for the ServiceNow Team:
1. Created the event’s name: Wine Not Now
2. A hashtag for all the social media accounts: #winenotnow
3. We prepared customized ZOOM invites for the participants
4. Carefully created a personalized background: for this event, a vineyard 5. Written an online tasting guide for the activity so participants can follow along.
Along with these preparations, we also need to provide and ship the wine and chocolate samples needed for the event.
We partnered with Dr. Jessica Henderson of Chocolate Monkey, NC, and the sommelier Serge Chable for the wine sample.
Each participant got 3 bottles of wine and 9 chocolate samples to work with on this event. Isn’t that exciting?!
In the age of Coronavirus, it’s quite challenging to pull this off without issues especially when we need to ship these items to and outside the United States.
SPOILER ALERT! They all made it to our participants. YAY.
EVENT DAY (During)
It’s crunch time!
On the day of the event, we make sure that everything is WORKING and ready to go. We also see to it that everyone is on time.
PRO TIP: Be wary of time differences. Not everyone is living on the same side of the planet. 🙂
Primarily, we’re there in the background making certain that everything goes smoothly and on time. We’re guiding the sommeliers and the participants on what’s going to happen next.
Dr. Henderson has prepared a presentation for everyone explaining everything CHOCOLATE- it was a fun experience PLUS a great segue to the main event
Wine and Chocolate Pairing!
We intend for these events to be as interactive as we can. We encourage our participants to react, give their impressions, have a little Q & A with the sommelier, etc.
We guarantee a 100% good time!
Overall, this has been an amazing experience both for us and our clients. Who knew that this “new normal” can bring out such fun creativity? I can’t wait for more innovations to come and I have you join us on the journey.
Are you planning for your next team building or are you thinking about going virtual for the annual holiday party? Let us know! Click here to know more.