HP Conference 2022

Client: Boehringer Ingelheim

UKSV worked with their client Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) to envision, produce, and execute a completely new hybrid event experience to bring their pharmaceutical community together during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The annual event is intended to launch BI’s strategy for the year ahead to their entire UK-based team, while also thanking them for their hard-work and dedication to the organisation. With COVID restrictions ever-changing, but still firmly in place, the hybrid-style event needed to provide a flexible yet unique experience that would engage the community and encourage interaction, even when attendees couldn’t be together in person. Harnessing the format of a British television magazine and chat show, UKSV envisioned, designed, and built a custom-made TV studio at the Celtic Manor in Wales to host a varied programme of content. Interviews, presentations, outside broadcasts, videos and guest speakers all accompanied interactive elements such as live studio Q&A’s, breakout sessions, lunches, and coffee breaks to keep engagement high. Executed rather like an episode of BBC’s ‘The One Show’, UKSV were briefed to create an event people would want to ‘virtually attend’, rather than something to just watch online via MS Teams. Each new product showcase from BI had its own dedicated segment in the schedule, much like its own TV programme, with appropriate follow up content and an opportunity for attendees to engage and interact after the initial item. Attendees were able to experience the event in a way they wanted. They had the ability to choose which segments they wanted to watch, who they wanted to talk to, or what they wanted to engage with. The result? Over 50% higher engagement compared to the last in-person event in 2019. The event met and exceeded client expectations, with attendees’ feedback including the words ‘slick’, ‘engaging’, ‘professional’ and that ‘they learned loads.’