If you attended Content Marketing World in September or MarketingProf’s B2B Forum a few weeks ago, you likely saw our Rolling Content and B2B Bright Bulb Awards Oscar Winners visual eBooks! Both of these pieces received lots of traction, not only at the respective conferences, but also in the social media world. We love how much love these pieces have received and wanted to give you a sneak peak into what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ at Uberflip to bring these pieces to life!

Step 1: Understanding the Audience and Goal

Understanding the audience we’re speaking to through these visual content pieces is much easier than it is when creating regular content marketing collateral, such as a blog piece. Our audience for these pieces are quite simply the attendees at the conference. Our goal with these pieces is to create high quality content that engages conference attendees and influencers in a fun and playful way (much like our brand itself!). While the Rolling Content piece for CMWorld was an impromptu surprise piece, we coordinated with Ann Handley from MarketingProfs to create the Bright Bulb Oscar Winners eBook.

Step 2: Brainstorm Session

The backbone to success for these visual pieces relies on the brainstorming session the marketing team has beforehand. For the MarketingProfs conference, we decided to create a piece that revolved around the B2B Bright Bulb Awards winner announcement that occurred on the first day of the conference. The brainstorming session was essentially the longest part of the entire process – in fact, it went on for a few days!

We initially debated creating a yearbook-themed piece to match the MarketingProfs brand. Later we found out the winners would be unveiled in an Oscar-themed fashion and thought about turning the yearbook idea into an Oscar-yearbook blend…maybe something like a prom yearbook with a ritzy red carpet design (phew, glad we scrapped that one!).

We then thought to move away from the yearbook idea and explore an Oscar-focused design – perhaps a background image of an audience at the Oscars, looking up at a large screen which would feature the winners. That one was promising but it lacked the simple and clean design that our awesome UI designer, Jenny, is known for.

So finally, after a few days of back and forths and mock-up designs, Jenny came up with the idea of re-designing popular movie posters with the contest winners – an instant hit amongst the team!

Step 3: Creation

Things started to come together after we had nailed down the conceptual component. After swearing on our Flipbooks and friendship with Ann, she passed along the coveted list of B2B Bright Bulb winners and we got straight to work. I compiled the copy for the movie posters while Jenny did her thing creating the design. A few days later, we had this awesome piece of content that we couldn’t wait to share with MarketingProfs and the entire B2B Forum crowd!

Step 4: Promotion

We didn’t want to spill the beans before the winners were announced so waited to receive word from Randy (who was at the conference) that the piece was good to go live. We then heavily promoted it via Twitter and engaged with the winners to show them their page. It was a big hit! The piece was shared by winners, attendees, MarketingProfs, and even by people who weren’t actually at the event. People were having fun with the piece which we absolutely loved to see.

Step 5: Follow-up

With all the excitement surrounding these pieces, we wanted to follow-up with something that would commemorate the featured speakers and brands for their hard work and accomplishments. We sent the CMWorld speakers their Rolling Content covers on a plaque while the B2B Forum winners received a real-life print out of their movie poster. With all the hard work that went into creating the content, it’s nice to top it off the something to be remembered by.

What creative ideas have you come up with to promote an event? Share them in the comments below to inspire your fellow readers! And check out How to use Hubs for Events for tips on promoting your event through a customized Hub.

About the Author

After graduating from the HBA program at the Richard Ivey School of Business, Aaliyah launched her career as Marketing Coordinator at Uberflip! Prior to her HBA, Aaliyah also completed a Bachelor in English at Western University.

Follow on Google Plus   Follow on Twitter