3 Keys to Successful Live Awards Events on Zoom

We usually host the Amplifon Awards for Brave Britons in The Army and Navy Club on Pall Mall. It’s a prestigious lunch event with a great atmosphere. This year of course we had to think again and go Zoom.

What we came up with was a virtual show that captured the feel of the live event by bringing alive the mix of heart-warming, heart-breaking and inspirational human feats that are at the heart of the awards. On reflection there are certain things we’d do differently — you can always improve — but there were some clear lessons learned which are worth sharing.

Live v Recorded

In the planning phase we toyed with the idea of pre-recording vast segments. This would have guaranteed us slick production values and mitigated the risk of things going a bit Harry Hill. But we felt this approach would sacrifice too much of the raw energy and power of the original. We decided to forego a few nights sleep, throw away the safety net and trust in the professionals. Which brings us to…

The Perfect Host

Everyone knows that Zoom, Teams and Skype calls can and do throw up some technical challenges. And when you’re holding an event with a disparate group of strangers, who are scattered across the globe, you have to recognise that you’ll need a fleet-footed host who won’t let tech issues phase them. We enlisted one of the best, Rachel Burden from 5Live and BBC Breakfast. She was incredibly professional, holding our show together with ease and was able to carry out live interviews with all our winners in a very natural way. She made it look easy, but it was a masterclass from a highly skilled presenter.

Technical Support

We also brought in a production company Bigtank. They filmed Rachel, made sure the sound levels were good and mixed in professional graphics with her visuals. Yes, we wanted it to be live but we wanted to give our guests a special and memorable experience too. We felt it was important to strike a good balance between quality production values and an authentic live event. But doing it on a platform like Zoom meant getting support from the professionals.

The results were good and importantly the feedback from both guests and our client was really good. We did experience techy challenges initially, but they were expertly handled by our host and the production team. Of course, the real heroes were our guests. The Amplifon Awards shines a light on some of the UK’s inspiring, courageous and brave people. 

Claire Gilligan, from Amplifon said: “Viva worked incredibly hard to keep the spirit of the Brave Britons event alive, despite the fact we had to make it a virtual ceremony this year. From the offset the Viva team had a very clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, and they assembled a great team to make sure it happened. 2020 has been a difficult year for all of us but from a brand perspective the Amplifon Awards was once again one of the bright spots on our company calendar.”

PR Gold:

To date the Amplifon Awards for Brave Britons 2020 has achieved:

• 240 media mentions – including national and regional TV, radio and newspapers.
• 15 million reach