When the organizers of Intuit’s QuickBooks Connect conference initially decided to use near-field communication (N.F.C.) technology on attendee badges for this year’s event, which was held October 22 to 26 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California, they had several goals in mind.
First, they wanted to automate the process of tracking continuing education credits for the attendees; second, they wanted to make it easy for vendors to track leads at their booths; and third, they wanted a way for attendees to gather information from vendors and sessions electronically, rather than in paper form. And then they came up with an additional function: Due to the event’s growth, Intuit had to spread the 112 exhibitors across two halls for the first time this year. N.F.C. created a fun way to ensure the more than 5,000 small business owners, accountants, and developers in attendance would spend time in both halls.
“One of the concerns around having the two exhibit halls was that one might be more happening than the other, and we’re always concerned about making sure everyone’s getting traffic and visibility,” said Bridget O’Brien, Intuit’s director of experiential marketing. The solution was an N.F.C. prize kiosk that organizers moved five times during each day of the three-day event. “We would give hints of where it was in the mobile app … driving them to the section of the exhibit hall that we wanted to, and every time you scanned it you were entered to win a prize,” she said.
Those prizes included items such as Beats headphones and Fitbit activity trackers, popular items that seemed to succeed in spurring the intended behavior. “We literally found people coming over to find the kiosk all the time. It worked really, really well,” O’Brien said. There were more than 800 scans at the prize kiosks during the conference, according to event organizers.
By using the N.F.C. technology in this game-like way, O’Brien said it helped attendees become comfortable with the new technology. “We wanted to teach that the value was beyond the exhibit hall,” she said. “We wanted there to be ‘delight’ reasons to scan, so there was the kiosk or to get pictures.” The N.F.C. was integrated into the event app, which O’Brien said had a 91 percent adoption rate this year, much higher than at the 2015 event.
The kiosk was just one part of an overall strategy to drive attendees into the second exhibit hall. Other elements included putting food in both halls, moving a book signing into the second hall, and spreading all tiers of sponsors across both halls.
In addition to the exhibit hall, the event includes workshops, networking, and celebrity speakers such as Michael Phelps, Shaquille O’Neal, Simone Biles, and Malcolm Gladwel. AgencyEA provided creative vision, event strategy, and production of the conference.
