If you prefer to read instead of watching our short video, here is the transcript of the conversation between Mike Gilvar and Mike Graziani:

Mike Gilvar: Thanks everybody for joining this edition of The Bottom Line with TTG. I am here with Mike Graziani, the VP of Creative Services, and we’re going talk today about a Virtual Studio Booth. Graz, what the heck is a virtual studio booth?

Mike Graziani: Sure. Well, a virtual studio booth is basically a little spin-off of the virtual trade show exhibit. The virtual trade show exhibit is completely digital, 3D-creation or 2D-creation, whereas a virtual studio booth is using a real physical trade show exhibit as the starting point or the backdrop for your event, and then you are simply sending that broadcast out digitally. And that can be from our warehouse location or the client’s warehouse location, or anywhere they want to set that exhibit up.

Mike Gilvar: And this is like a video streaming where people are talking about their products and services basically while being in their booth?

Mike Graziani: Exactly. This is usually targeting their particular audience, and it’s… A lot of times, invitations and marketing is done beforehand to ensure that that audience is being driven to the event and they’re logging in. It allows you to then measure some of that attendee information, and basically it allows you to control that event and you’ve got that audience pretty much captive with no distractions to tell your story and show off your products or services.

Mike Gilvar: Great. And so what are the various elements of this experience?

Mike Graziani: Yeah, a lot like a trade show. So you’re going to have an online registration component, and again, that allows you to know who your audience is and who you’re speaking to. And then normally we’re going to have a little bit of a visual eye candy as an opening whenever they log in to the event. We might have a little bit of a fly-through and just a quick recorded… And the nice thing about these pieces are that they can be any mix of live and pre-recorded bits. So the person or the company who’s putting on the event does not have to have the pressure of thinking that this is all got to be done live on camera. We can do a lot of mix of pre-recorded pieces and the viewer really doesn’t know the difference, so it takes some of the pressure off.

But you’ll have the registration components, and then we’ll do a little bit of eye candy as kind of an opening, maybe a few words, and then we can go into a general launch page that gives the viewer an opportunity to get information about certain products, services and things like that. Or maybe go into breakout rooms where we can have sessions talking about specific aspects of products or services, and then we can have kind of a wrap-up. And all of this can be provided then as recordings to those customers afterwards so they can go back and reference things. And then again, all of this is measurable, so you can determine who was in what breakout rooms, who was asking what questions, and it’s just a great way to see where people are… What things are really resonating with the audience and what might not be resonating as much.

Mike Gilvar: So it sounds pretty comprehensive. At the end of the day, what does putting on a production like this cost? What should the expectation be?

Mike Graziani: Yeah. Unfortunately, the cost, there’s no set cost to it. It can vary quite wildly, and it can depend on how advanced or how involved the production is. The number of breakout rooms that you have, those are usually all done simultaneously, so you might have two breakout rooms working simultaneously or you might have 12. And we have to have a technician and the necessary equipment at each of those rooms, so that can cause the cost to elevate quite quickly. What you’re doing in each of those sessions means then the number of cameras that we might have to have in those rooms as well as the amount of lighting and so forth, if we’ve got big product to show, various angles, things like that. So what we normally like to say as a rule of thumb is to probably look at about 75% of what you would have spent on a traditional trade show event.

Mike Gilvar: Great, great. And so what’s the bottom line, Graz, for companies looking to consider at least a studio booth experience?

Mike Graziani: Again, with trade shows pretty much being on the back burner right now, it’s a matter of staying in front of your potential clients, getting your message out about your products and services, and this is just another great way to do it. It’s a combination of the physical and the virtual, and it pretty much allows you to have that captive audience experience, it allows you to have some one-on-one contact with those clients, and it allows them to ask questions while you’re in a demo and so forth. So it’s the next best thing to having face-to-face communication.

Mike Gilvar: Great. Thanks, Graz. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we’ll see you soon on another edition of The Bottom Line with TTG.

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