Behind the scene of the Content Summit

January 2022. 

Domitille, PlayPlay’s VP of Marketing drops a bombshell.Domitille: 

Melissa, I need you to organize the 2022 Content Summit.

Melissa: Mmm… Sure?Domitille: By the way… we’re also launching the US edition this year!

Melissa: *Breathe, breathe, breathe* 😮‍💨

October 2022.

Ten months later, we’re finally able to take a deep breath and look back on what it meant to organize THE event of the content galaxy. And what an event it was.

Launching this unforgettable gathering for content marketers was a hell of a journey, full of challenges, panics, laughs, and achievements. We’ve learned a lot along the way. At PlayPlay, we firmly believe that knowledge is better when shared, so without further adieu, here’s all that happened behind the scenes at the Content Summit 2022. 

Are you ready?3, 2, 1… Take off!

"I've never scored a goal without getting a pass from someone else."

Who'd have thought soccer player, Abby Wambach, would give us the motivational quote we needed to launch the content event of the year?

Wise words, Abby. Every great adventure begins with a great crew, so we got our best marketing talent on board to organize the Content Summit.

• Domitille and Mélissa, our mission captains
• Arnold, the artist
• Florent, the techy in the shadows
• Antoine, the automation (and now Goldcast) king
• Baptiste, the ads guy
• Olivier, the lead magnet
• Antinéa, our Content queen (big fan of Mamma Mia)
• Léa, our very own Steven Spielberg

2022 was actually the second edition of the Content Summit. Luckily we could lean on some of the critical successes from our first event. From communication plans, content assets, and technical issues to attendees' comments, budgets, and speakers… we created a whole Content Summit playbook on Notion.

So for the 2022 edition, we "just" had to duplicate it… right?

Well, sort of.  

This year's big difference was launching the summit in a new country with different expectations and needs. Like reaching a brand new galaxy.

Domitille told Melissa “sky’s the limit” when looking for the Content Summit’s guest speakers… No pressure, then!

In fact, when you launch a rocket, you want to have on board the best experts on Earth… And the success of your mission clearly depends on their awareness, the content they share and the way they share it.

With this in mind, here’s how Melissa set out to go above and beyond to find eight industry experts for both France and the US:

• Looking up the best-in-class marketing experts, she was already following on social media (Anthony Kennada, Caroline Mignaux, Nina Ramen…)
• Searching for leaders at companies already acing their marketing game (Notion, ClickUp…)
• Reaching out to creative leaders in the team’s networks (Antoine Filliaudeau, Alison from Zoom..)
• Asking her social media community for a Content Summit speaker wishlist and reaching out to the marketers at the top of the list (Ashley Faus, Alli Tunnell…)👇

While looking for speakers, diversity was one of our top priorities: gender parity — 50% of our speakers were women — and job level for both inspirational and practical recommendations.

How we got them on board

We aimed to harness each speaker’s expertise for an entertaining, insightful event talk. We shared a couple of formats to consider for their session (presentation, roundtable, fireside chat…) and a timeline.

Once they agreed, PlayPlay’s Content Team came up with questions and prompts to prepare an engaging discussion while helping the speakers find an angle for their presentations.

How we came up with our CEO’s keynote

The 2022 design challenge was to improve execution, consistency and impact.

First, we set up some guidelines to coordinate the production of assets:

• Visual content: we listed all the assets we needed to create, such as websites, social posts, ads, videos, etc.
• Process: we defined briefing, creation and feedback processes with templates.

Once we completed the guidelines, we had to produce visual assets on the go. Extra requests popped up here and there, but the team was prepared for the workload and delivered at pace.

A website is what visitors see first, so it had to be top quality to maximize conversions.

This time we didn’t start from scratch. We revamped the 2021 Content Summit website with better UX and branding upgrades.

We partnered with Pelo Studio again this year: they created the first version of our sign-up website. We still had some missing info a week before the event, but Florent and Arnold stepped up to adapt and finalize the site.

Here are some improvements we made:

• We bought the domain content-summit.com.
• We implemented a multi-step form to improve UX.
• We created a referral form at the end of the subscription.
• We added a video recap of the 2021 edition, featuring comments and feedback on the event.

For security matters, NASA experts would advise not to put all the eggs in one basket. So we varied our acquisition channels.

First, social media.Did you see the Content Summit Big Bang on LinkedIn? Probably, if you’re reading this post.We managed to make some noise on social media, helped by our fellow PlayPlayers (employee advocacy boosts reach on a huge scale) and by the speakers themselves. Here are some examples of our promo posts on social media:

Some posts we did:

• The video introducing the event, made with PlayPlay
• Carrousel and video introducing the speakers
• D-day gifs

Second, emailing.We launched 3 batches of invitation emails, each with a different angle:

• the line-up
• the variety of content topics on offer
• social proof from last year (number of attendees, quotes)

Third, paid acquisition such as Linkedin Ads and Facebook Ads. Our leads were more qualified on Linkedin because we could target a precise audience. This meant a better price per marketing-qualified lead.

The best-performing ads featured our high-profile speakers — showing their faces and company logos.

Finally, we launched a referral program. When attendees signed up for the event, they were offered a recap of last year’s event in exchange for the email addresses of friends or colleagues.

Step 3: Create an out-of-this-world experience

Why we decided to change our hosting platform

After countless hours: we decided to go with Goldcast:

• Better value for money compared to alternatives
• The platform is ultra-customizable in terms of look and feel
• Top marks for user experience
• Native integration with Hubspot

On top of that, Goldcast doesn’t require external tools for streaming — you can connect to the platform as easily as a Zoom meeting. It really simplified our behind-the-scenes management of the live sessions.

Best practice number 1: rehearsals. Every rocket needs test launches before firing into orbit.

We planned rehearsal meetings with each speaker in a test environment, to make sure everything would run smoothly.

To avoid live technical hiccups, some virtual event organizers pre-record their talks. Not PlayPlay! We’d been bold throughout the journey, so why stop there?

Interactivity is a key element of any event, so we needed to record the Content Summit live:

• Attendees can ask questions live and get immediate responses.
• Attendees are more engaged and feel a sense of community.

We also optimized the office internet connection speed:

• Notifying other PlayPlay employees to work at home, if possible.
• Using ethernet cables to connect our 2 presenters’ computers.
• Using different browsers.

Practice makes perfect — and the Content Summit went off without a hitch!

How we used automations to save time

Although we celebrated the end of the Content Summit, it wasn’t over just yet… We had a whole follow-up strategy planned, based on repurposing content from the talks.

• Recap email for every talk, featuring replays and FAQs.
• ‘Thank-you’ emails to attendees, including registrants that didn’t attend
• Invite to fill out a review of the event .

In case registrants couldn’t attend every talk, we decided to produce:

• An event recap, in PDF format and on the blog.
• Blog post recaps for each talk.
• A newsletter sent in October.

A final word from our Captain, Thibaut: “Amazing team work from our marketing team. I’m so impressed… and so proud to see how, once again, you embodied our values every step of the way…”

• Committed: dedicated to producing THE content event we’d dreamed of.
• User First: always looking to offer the best experience for attendees.
• Ambitious: targeting best-in-class speakers and a huge number of sign-ups.
• Creative: brainstorming awesome ideas to promote the event and follow-up.
• United: staying at the office together until 1am on a weekday!

The end?

Absolutely not!

See you in the Content outer space in 2023!