Derrin Brown

A great live site makes strangers feel like teammates, and a bad one makes you wonder why anyone left the couch. Georgie is joined by returning guest Derrin Brown to pull apart what the FIFA World Cup is teaching us about customer experience in Australia, from the joy of communal watch parties to the frustration of councils and venues that still treat fan engagement like an afterthought.
 
 They get specific about what works and what doesn’t at places like Fed Square, AAMI Park and Parramatta Square: crowd flow, sound, screens, family-friendly design and the simple decision to keep games on when the crowd clearly wants to stay. Derrin shares behind-the-scenes insights from major tournaments, including how “rule books” can help or hurt, why measurable standards beat brand-name checklists, and how Qatar approached alignment with a single clear mandate.
 
 From there they widen the lens to the full fan journey: host city logistics, public transport realities, tipping culture surprises for international visitors, and the messy truth of third-party vendors who can make or break an event precinct. 
 
 If you care about event management, placemaking, hospitality, or CX strategy, hit play for practical ideas you can use immediately. Subscribe, share with a mate who loves a live site, and leave a review, then tell us: what one change would most improve the fan experience in your city?

Georgie Stayches, host of The Art & Heart of CX, brings a human lens to how businesses design Customer Experience (CX). She explores how every little detail impacts how a customer interprets, experiences and recalls a situation - from our senses to the built and natural environments - and how this can impact brand loyalty, word of mouth marketing and revenue.

Each episode she invites a special guess from all works of life and industries to share what they consider the art and hear of CX.

Want to hear more from Georgie? Her keynote presentations inspire audiences with real-world strategies to elevate CX, understand human behaviour and build lasting audience loyalty. 

Find out more at georgiestayches.com 

Transcript

World Cup Community And Collective Memory

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Art and Heart of CX. I am very excited to welcome Darren Brown back by popular demand for season two. So, Darren, welcome.

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Thank you, Georgie. That's really kind of you.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Well, and Darren and I, like the first episode, had to um make sure we didn't do all our talking before we actually hit record on the podcast. And Darren, I know from the we recorded an episode last year and we went on all sorts of tangents, and we've since met up at AIME and chatted about events there and that intersection of customer experience at events. And of course, one of the biggest events, excuse me, in the world going on at the moment is the FIFA World Cup. Are you tuning in?

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Oh, am I ever? Absolutely. And you, Georgie.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I am, and I have a new favourite TV show, which is just scrolling Instagram to look at the fan engagement videos. Oh. Because I feel this World Cup more than any other World Cup has really, I don't know whether I want to say tapping to leveraged or brought to life that human element and that sense of community.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Georgie, but is this not a statement of the collective amnesia that befuddles us post every World Cup? Because this is a repeated action. Well, I I believe it. I believe every four years we embrace this incredible bringing together of our cultures, our communities, our diasporas in celebration of the world game. And then after the World Cup, we all just forget.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Well, see, I'm going to challenge you on that because that is the commentary on a lot of the reels on Instagram, is people assuming it's Americans who've posted them, because a lot of the stuff I'm seeing is out of the American towns. And people saying this happens every four years, you just are new to the World Cup. I dispute that because I do think this World Cup seems to have more than previous ones. And if I look back on certain World Cups, you know, there was one that was a lot of hooliganism, let's just say, in the Germany World Cup in 2006 was a very different fan engagement. Qatar was very different because of the nature of being a dry country and it had its own challenges. I obviously the world comes together, but this one I do think, and I follow every World Cup, I always go to the live sites. This one does feel different.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Yeah, I mean, and that's great, right? I mean, I think the true test will be let's see. Let's let's let's reconvene and talk post-world carb to see excuse me, if the collective amnesia has taken hold. And what I really mean is like, you know, where I live in the city of Parramatta, the Parramatta Council, yeah, my my wonderful diaspora there, is it's clear to me that the live side is ad hoc. It's clear to me that it probably wasn't budgeted in the in the previous year's forecasting. And unfortunately, while well attended for the first two Socceroos games, and it will be on Friday as well. I know you'll be shocked by this. They only show the Socceroos games. So would you believe there's more communities than just the Australian supporters in the diaspora? So what extraordinarily happened at the last game against the USA, 5 a.m. on a Saturday, there was a good turnout in Parramatta

Parramatta Live Site Gets It Wrong

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Square, and as soon as the game was finished, they the crowd gathered to watch Scotland v Haiti, I think it was, and they switched it off. I mean, that is customer service failure. And to me, what it says is it was put together by people who don't understand the game, don't understand community engagement, don't understand what it is, the problem they're solving. Yes. And we might recall that the City of Paramount event ops manager Michelle Carter has been in ICAC as part of number four on the pink ops team. So, yes, that's uh that may be true then. What am I submit my Yeah?

SPEAKER_02 4:16

I was just searching actually while you were talking around whether Fed Square were playing all the matches. Obviously, for the Socceros one, there's very special arrangements in place.

SPEAKER_04 4:27

Some of the live sites are, but not all of them. No. And like Fed Square is a wonderful asset for Melbourne. But have you did you go to Fed Square? No, you went to the stadium.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

No, I've been to Fed Square previously.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

For the live site.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yes, in 2006, I watched all of the Socceroos matches, bar the one versus Italy, which we still don't talk about. I watched that on Ligon Street, um, which of course is the Italian capital of Melbourne. So, yes, I didn't go there on Saturday morning. I went to Amy Park. Yeah, because I think I knew Fed Square would fill up so quickly, and it did, you know.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

I I I I looked at the imagery and I got sent a lot of content because I do live sources, and you know, I set up the ones in Qatar for the Football World Cup there, which was wonderful. It was a wonderful event and an incredible investment in tourism, actually. And it's been proved like the World Cup. Why do you stage a World Cup? It brings more tourists, and there's been it's demonstrable now that there's been a lot of repeat tourism into Qatar. The theory being like, oh, we're here for the World Cup, it feels safe under the umbrella of that. Qatar's not that bad. There's lots of interesting things to do in terms of tourism and and experiences. What I saw from Fed Square was it was really militarized, like you know, barriers and things and that's yeah. And I thought to myself, hang on, there's one screen in a big area, but they're not using the whole area of Fed Square. Why wouldn't you put two screens or three screens to pull the crowd away rather than congesting them? And then maybe commission an artist to do an artwork interpretation on the video screen? Or is that too much?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

That might be too much. But it's interesting you talk about the sort of military style of Fed Square because for those listening who might not know Fed Square Federation Square, it's a public space in Melbourne. It's not like Martin Place in Sydney where it's long, sort of straight, open area. It is odd-shaped, it's on an angle, it's got quite uneven paving, but it is the heart of where we all go now. Because we lost the city square when they started to do the Metro works. So it's always been really open. And I've watched, I mean, Oprah's been to Fed Square, you know, Robbie Williams has done pop-up. So it's not, they've had a lot of big things at Fed Square. A couple of months ago, well, no, quite a few months ago when ACDC were playing in concert and their support act, Amel and the Sniffers, who, if you didn't know them, you didn't know them, but if you knew them, you knew we're going to do a free concert at Fed Square. It got out of control and they had to cancel it before it started because of safety concerns. And some of the soccer at Fed Square has been synonymous with flairs, sort of antisocial behavior. So a ruling decision was made by Fed Square, which is a government, you know, one of those sort of part entity things, that they would not show any soccer at Fed Square because it wasn't safe.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

And so all it would not be a live site. And there was uproar, and the Premier of Victoria came out and said, no, it will be a live site. But what they cinder. Yeah, and and there's varying views within the event community about this because some feel that this the venue made the decision based on safety for everyone, including their staff. Yeah. And if a venue can't make a decision on their own venue and what they put in place, then we've got issues if they're overridden.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

So Amy Park, which is the home of soccer, the round ball football, in Melbourne became a live site, which is fantastic. You can take tens of thousands. It doesn't have the atmosphere of that small intimate space at FedSquare. Then so Fed

Fed Square Safety And Crowd Design

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Square starts running them, announces they're going to run them. And I thought, oh, this will be interesting how they do it. And a friend of mine said to me, You should see what they've done at Fed Square. It's just black barricading, it's and it's terrible. So, well, this is interesting. And I went in and I looked and went, No, I think they've done a really good job. So, what they've done, it is really high, it's hoarding basically. Yeah, they've set it back further than what I thought. And what I will say, I think Fed Square do really good crowd science of pathways within Fed Square. So I and my friend then went and looked at it when the soccer was playing. She said, Oh, I take it all back. I think they actually did it well. So I think working with what they've got, they actually created as safe as they could.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

It's I think you would be foolish if you were a Melbourne to think that you would get into Fed Square if you didn't get there hours and hours before. So most people now know just go straight to Amy Park. That's the one they're billing as the family-friendly one. Yeah. So I mean I mean, I've never seen hoarding like this at Fed Square before. But it I think they are managing as best they can when they didn't want to run it in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

And like, you know, everyone I would like to believe is doing the best they can with operating the space. I just think we're Fed Square's been in operation for long enough now that we can see that we could put it into like modes. And when there is a large capacity, having the using the stage that's in the square, which I think is only suitable for like small to medium events, not large events. When you put it into that, when you have that mass participation in the square, it's just the wrong area to do it in because it's too downhill compressed and makes the flow quite bad. So what I'm suggesting is do a different configuration, have multiple screens, diverse it out, all to what? What are we talking about? Having a better experience is there. I was surmised to you that Amy Park, where you were, was a much better experience. It had better facilities, you were more comfortable. Perhaps they could have had more engagement with the crowd.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

It's yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And and certainly there's an industry colleague that talks about that Fed Square events should be run uphill.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

But as someone who goes to Fed Square a lot, that would feel like I think we're just so used to you know going to watching that screen.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Disrupt the status quo.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

I know, but I and it's interesting when you talk about the experience because there's almost two elements. There's the experience of going and watching the game. If you're going to Fed Square, you're going to be part of the group going to Fed Square. Absolutely. So I think your experience is different. You're going for a different experience. I don't think you're going for five screens. You're going to be in doesn't have to be five, just more than one.

SPEAKER_04 11:26

More than one will be a bonus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:29

For a better experience. And I and I go personally, I go for the collective efforts that's above. This is these are magical experiences that I encourage everyone to experience. We won't talk too much more about Fedsquare because there's other things to cover. No, no, but if like it like Tumblr Park is set up very well. Yeah. Brisbane on the South Bank has some good and and the there are many other examples that are doing all right. I guess the next level is to check which ones are and aren't showing all the games.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Exactly. No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

What again? I come back to the ICAC and the pink ladies in the city of Parramatta. The Michelle Carter lady was talking about how, oh, you wouldn't want to work for community engagement. And yet, isn't the Football World Cup all about an opportunity to really engage with our wonderful diaspora, our wonderful communities? Yes. And I think there are varying levels of success in uh in that engagement that's being shown.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yes. And I know on an episode with a previous episode with a guest, we talked about live sites and the design of live sites with the culture in mind that you're hosting the live site in. And I was saying I remember at the Asian Games in 2006 in Doha, the live sites were amazing. But Qataris don't socialise in the way that Australians would have gone out. And this is pre-the-World Cup, so in Qatar. So this is, you know, sort of the Asian Games was one of the big international events that you know Qatar had was hosting. And so, you know, there were these live sites along the Corniche, you know, deck chairs, and you'd walk past and there was not a soul there because there weren't a lot of tourists that had gone for the Asian Games.

Designing Live Sites For Local Culture

SPEAKER_02 13:11

And it just showed that disconnect with that was great. I mean, you could almost see, and I'm sure a great Australian probably had designed the live site, but they hadn't understood the customer they were designing for in that setting.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

There's a lot to unpack there, but it's similar to reminds me of when Dubai put in a metro. And the feeling was the popular discourse was like, well, nobody's going to use a metro. We just go in our cars. But it's quick, it's convenient, it's on demand, it's all that. And the same thing happened with Saudi. I mean, the Saudis are so impressive in their infrastructure development. They didn't put in like one metro line, is it? Melbourne putting in a oh no, you're doing a metro line.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Oh, we've got a few new stations.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

You're doing a metro line, it's taking a long time. Oh, has it? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. I must come down and experience it. I love public transport infrastructure. The Saudis didn't put in one line, they put in a whole network. It's pretty impressive. And people have used it and adopted it, even though the fiscal rationalist, the popular discourse would have been like, well, no, we wouldn't. Why would we use that? We don't need it. There's no need for it. You don't know what you don't know until it's experienced. With the FIFA live sites, the official ones, you get it's like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. You get a rule book. Like this is what you need.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

You have to have, you have to screen, you have to have a VIP area, you have to have a public address system. When I received the rule books working on Qatar 22 and 22, they had sort of absurd things like you need 27 Fresnel lights and 13, you know, wash lights, etc. And I'm like, what, why, what, what? And you need a liner right, it's got to be like this brand or that brand. This is nonsense. Because sound and light measurable. So I changed the rule book to say you need this many lumens present on the stage. How you achieve that? I don't really care. And the sound level, the comprehensibility meter needs to be measurable at a certain level. Yeah. I would like to think that's one of my main contributions to live sites for FIFA around the world.

FIFA Rule Books And Practical Standards

SPEAKER_04 15:13

And the company that we contracted, won the procurement bid, was Fischer Apertel. The Germans, very pragmatic, but really wonderfully engaging. And the Qataris did come out. One of the things we specified, I specified, was having addressing the families. And in Qatar, the interesting thing was about how to introduce adult beverages. And I'll confess to you, Georgie, we have a wonderful RSA system here that the Qataris have now adopted. So there we go. Bravo, Australia.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

But that's so important, isn't it? Because we are, there is this rule book for these large events that get kind of implemented regardless of what the nature of that country is or the nature of people who are going to be engaging with it. What I've been interested in watching the American one, and granted, my algorithms have trained, you know, they're quite trained, so I'm getting a certain type of reel, is that a lot of the stuff isn't happening at the live sites. Like the Tartan army in Boston is not happening at the official live sites.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Yeah, like what's not in the Brulebook is the parades.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And haven't we seen these wonderful demonstrations of humanity with these amazing the Tartan army marching to Fenway Park, the bagpipes, and they I've just seen a clip, they were doing it in Miami as well. You know, I think it was the Croatians with the hundred-meter length flag that they all carried through Dallas. The uh the Mexicans and the Korean relationship, like that is unbelievable, and there's so much history with the relationship of those two countries. That's just organic. These so there's a lot of things, it's like the fans are creating. I did a reel recently, the fans are the biggest, are the best producers of CX at

When Fans Lead The Experience

SPEAKER_02 17:00

this World Cup.

SPEAKER_04 17:00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

The Norwegians with the rowing and Times Square, you know.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

It's joyous, it's the community coming together in celebration. And we won't say the words, but Australia came up with a very interesting chant about Donald Trump. You may have seen that.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Well, it got chanted at the live site in Melbourne. And my friends sort of looked at me and said, and I said, No, that's what we're chanting over there.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

So to us, good work, Aussies. I will say this as well. Again, the value of SBS, who I grew up with, is wonderful. And they there's a wonderful Santo and Ed Cavalier are doing Santa Chilara and Ed Cavalier are doing cup fever. It's a half hour each night. It's wonderful. And last night they showed the Azerbaijani uh fans because that what's happened, it's it's a it's everyone's bouncing off each other to come up with a national identity just in these parades. It's become a thing now. This is organic, and it's it's happening organically, and the Azerbaijanis came in on horses dressed like Genghis cutles. It's amazing. Yeah, it's so good. And oh sorry. No, you I wanted to say one other thing, Georgie. Just you know, the parades and all that organic activity and the Norwegians doing their things, the Azerbaijanis, etc., that's not in the rule book. No. The rule book should not be the be-all and end all of the customer experience template. It's just a base to go from. All the live sites we have don't have a rule book. There is no rule book. So, in a sense, they're all done randomly and organically. And I get frustrated by what I referred to earlier as the collective amnesia, but because it seems to me to catch us all by surprise because we're not investing in event infrastructure to cater to. Like what have we got coming up in Australia? We've got the Football World Cup now, we've got the Netball World Cup coming up, the Rugby World Cup's coming up, there'll be another Olympics, there'll be another Commonwealth games, and then next thing you know, we're back to the next Football World Cup. And we're not investing in event infrastructure to improve the experience of everybody for each of these applicable events.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

And that's really interesting. So my mind's going across it all over the place, is that well, I'll go back to the World Cup with the sort of informal fan sites that are popping up and then creating the CX. And when you were talking earlier about, you know, the tourism that comes into countries after, I think it's going to be the opposite. There's hilarious commentary about all the Americans who are now going to go to Scotland. Right. And Scotland's saying, but I hope they're not expecting us all to be walking around in kilts and singing and playing our bagpipes 24-7.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

That's wonderful. But also, hats off to the Mexicans and the Canadians. Remember, it's a three-country triptych of staging. And the experience that people are reporting from both Canada and Mexico is wonderful. So that might work there.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

And tell me, because you have worked the inner sanctum of these sorts of tournaments. I saw commentary that countries are assigned locations. So they said whoever had the brainwave to match Scotland and Boston got it right. Is that the case? Or is it just the lack of the draw of where the matches are? Because I think Scotland thrived in Boston more than they're thriving in my it's it's a the Tartan Army in Boston seem to you know understand each other.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

It's like a healthy connection.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

But is that true? Like, do countries get assigned pseudo sort of headquarters?

SPEAKER_04 20:35

No, no, they do get assigned. Well, what happens is after the qualifying rounds, you get assigned to a group, the group gets allocated to a

World Cup Cities Transport And Tipping

SPEAKER_04 20:43

city. So I wish I could say absolutely it was by design the Scottish were assigned by intention to Boston. It wasn't. It was only that the group that they were in were put into that area, much like the Aussies have been put into the North Pacific Northwest, but playing in Vancouver, that's right, yeah, Seattle, and San Francisco. No, it's not. Okay. And the other very interesting thing is that the Americans, of course, are running this very differently. Oh, that's a whole other subject, really. But yeah, the the experience, like we just take it for granted that we'll have great public transport links to the games. Boston particularly is not well set up for the for the fan experience. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

It's yeah, it's okay. Well, that's good because I was going to try and follow that. Uh trying to do some research on if they had been done by, you know, these sister cities all go well together or sister countries sort of things, but it's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

No, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

The other thing that's been interesting from a customer experience point of view of watching some of the commentary coming out of the World Cup, particularly in America, is the tipping culture. Now, of course, we don't tip like that in Australia because it's built into the wages. We tip But it's not seen as a mandatory. Whereas in America, except it's accepted that you tip a certain percent because the wages are kept lower, knowing that you will kind of tip, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_04 22:13

Capitalism in action.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

And of course, people coming from countries where tipping is not a tipping culture. So they've said some restaurants are now just adding the tipping on because they're not understanding. So that's been interesting to what you know, how does a country and the you know, the venues, the restaurants, everyone that benefits from this influx of people, yeah, how they roll out their customer experience and what those expectations are and how they deliver on them.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

And I suspect this has happened in it's developed over the time of the course of the World Cup being staged. But again, I would suggest if you and I were involved with our friend Katrina De Jersey, we would be preempting all this and taking the customer service, the hospitality sector, into a mode, a World Cup mode, because these are all known. I can't say only America. America is one of the most pronounced societies, economies where you know the minimum wage is reliant on the tips in the hospitality industry. You might have remembered in the last election the president was, you know, no tax on tips. Great. But it is a shock to us. And the fact that they didn't preempt this is odd to me, and I think a failure in planning.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

That's a really interesting point because I was chatting to someone in a previous podcast that actually hasn't been released yet, but about that sort of responsibility of particularly something like an event where, and I use the example of the Australian Open, where the Australian Open staff are amazing. You arrive, they're on the megaphones, they're welcoming, you know, they couldn't be more helpful. At every point of that arrival, you get in the gate, you know, you stand from a half a millisecond in there. Oh, do you need some help? Are you lost? I think terrific. But then you go to buy something from a third-party vendor within the Melbourne Park precinct, and the staff delivery is completely different. And so, you know, you can do you can put all this great customer experience in

Managing Third Parties At Big Events

SPEAKER_02 24:24

place, but then if you've got people part of the experience, the wider experience that you don't have control over, yeah. How do you man how do you educate them? How do you manage them? How do you bring them on the journey to get them on board with what to expect, what not to expect?

SPEAKER_04 24:43

It's interesting to hear you say that. I mean, I haven't been down to the Australian Open for a while, but it is. I hold it as a high benchmark in customer service and hospitality. And it is, it's a giant live site, right? It's a festival, it's a festival site for a month, and it's it's held up again in my mind as a really high standard. So that's interesting to hear how these things come about because there's no director, there's no central point of accountability over the experience. I I don't know if that's accurate or correct about the tennis.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

So if you've got and we use the tenants, but the Grand Prix could be the same, any big event where you have you know vendors come on, so you've got food trucks come on, you have restaurants do mini pop-ups. So you don't have control over those staff.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

Why not?

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Because, well, and that's from you know a good question. Can you have control over those staff if they're third-party contract staff?

SPEAKER_04 25:39

I I want to say to you, like look at our Kiwi cousins, our friends over in New Zealand with the, I'm gonna get the name wrong, the Miyaki agreement. It's a tourism agreement to be good, responsible citizens, not create waste and all the rest of it. It's a tourism agreement that the Kiwis have put in place to for the betterment of everybody that visits New Zealand. Well, that's macro. Why don't we take a micro and say if you're coming on as a vendor, you sign up to an agreement, a code of conduct, a an accord, shall we say, and then hold them accountable to that. These all it's difficult to manage these events. They're big and complicated. There's lots of moving parts. There's a again, I'm not sure how consistent all the management or executive team are. I know there's been a changes down there, it's normal at Tennessee Australia and Melbourne Park. But like you lose the transference of knowledge to incrementally improve to have that focus. Because I don't accept that just because you have a food truck come in and they have serve like random stuff. No, no, no. Like that's not that's a hospitality application that can be achieved. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Yes. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, and look, I will never fault this shade. I'm gonna think they do an amazing thing. And I will say it was the last day of the open. I was there, but it was just this contrast between one of the vendors and the AO staff.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah, that's not true.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

And I don't think I and no discredit to the vendor staff. I think it was the circumstance, you know, they're working under certain circumstances that the AO staff are working under different employers, different structures, different and like if you would like staff experience employees.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

We were doing it, Georgie. We would how do we eat the elephant? We'd break it up into small package, we'd have it in a zonal application, we'd have we would manage the precincts and holistically the whole experience and have an overview of it, often seen as a luxury when we're doing these festivals, but it works. Yes. The Qataris set the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

And I will say, because I mean Karen Clydesdale, head of CX, is a good friend of the podcast and off and on. So they do zone it. I think it was, it's just, and it could be the Royal Melbourne show, it could be Moonberg, it could be any event. I'm not going to pick on the Australian Open. It's just more that concept of you've got this big event, but you don't manage all the staff of this event. No different to the Olympics when we, you know, you have the Olympics and you've got the volunteers, but you've got contract staff managing the merchandise, you've got a catering staff, they're not all connected. So, and yeah, how do you sort of bring everyone on board?

SPEAKER_04 28:22

Again, I come back to like these are complicated, difficult events with lots of moving parts. Again, my thinking is you break up big things into small things and give them their own application in incrementally. The Qataris had a high bar. I mean, you know, you're going with a single point of leadership where the mandate to everybody working on the World Cup was each person that invests in the time to come into the country needs to have a positive experience. That's a really hard thing to achieve, but my goodness, it aligns everyone. Yes. And it was repeated and managed, and that was the experience. And I think it's paying off now. We can see that. We can see the return on the investment, the exponential increase in tourism that's happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

And that leads me to a comment that I seen popping up on lots of reels and posts about the live sites here in Australia and the crowds going to them. So my Instagram account, you're all welcome to follow. It's Georgie Staches underscore.

SPEAKER_04 29:30

I am a follower. I'm liking and subscribing.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

But it's interesting because I've got 1,500 followers, let's just say. So, you know, the reels have varying engagement. I did a reel on the power of community, and it was about the live side at Amy Park on Saturday, the Saturday morning where we played the US. The reel is up to nearly 250,000 views. Amazing. Six and a half thousand likes, 1.3,000 shares, 200 saves, 30 comments.

Turning World Cup Buzz Into A-League

SPEAKER_02 30:03

And so for me, it says people don't just want to be part of the community. They love seeing community come together.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

Well, I think like it's extraordinary. I just need to make reels on the World Cup, and I would be oh, but it's it's again, that's why I call it glorious. It's a glorious coming together of the community of the diaspora to celebrate on neutral ground, on on you know, to celebrate this wonderful event. It's not, it's like the football is one thing. Yes, but it's the community, it's it's also politically when we go overseas, it's soft power. This is so how these things are done, one of the ways. And like that's wonderful to hear. And I think what you're doing is you're showing people what's possible. Again, people don't know what they don't know. When people see something that's good, perhaps they'll come and participate. I mean, if we keep going, Georgie, if we're if the soccer is keep going, this is going to become an exponential problem.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Well, this is my next point because a lot of then the comments are I bet none of these people have been to an A-League game, which is the domestic soccer league in Australia. So there's this interesting push and pull of people who are loving it. And then people who are loving it but are getting, oh, well, you know, these people only come out every four years, sort of thing. Which then leads me to what is the experience good enough that we say we want to come back for an A-League game? And I think back to there's that great Walt Disney quote of do what you do well, do it so well that people will come back to see you do it again, and do it so well that they will want to bring other people to come back. And so, and I know this is something that comes up every four years when we all get enthused with the soccer and the soccer roos is how does the experience shape and feed us into then going, well, I need to go to an A-League game because it was so good going to Amy Park for the live side, or does the soccer federation just not even look at it in that sense?

SPEAKER_04 32:07

Oh, it's so depressing because it like breaks the argument in the media breaks down to this tribalism of like, well, soccer, you know, it's terrible. We love our AFL or our rugby league. They're not mutually exclusive. It's been wonderful to see the AFL players and the union players and the rugby league players out there supporting it. Like, can we mature as a society to evolve beyond the cliche discourse of the media that breaks down to that tribalism? That's one bucket. The other thing is like I'm a foundation member of the Western Sydney Wanderers. That's my team in the A League. We have our Combate Stadium. And Steve Mandras and the team there are doing wonderful community engagement work. The my children play soccer, football, they get access at no cost by being a registered player. They pay to be registered in the teams. And look, soccer's the biggest sport in the country by participation, right? It is. They get free access to the games. And like it was wonderful. It was such a brilliant parenting moment for me to bring the children towards the stadium and to hear the roar of the crowd. And my eight-year-old's like, what's that? And I'm like, that's the crowd. Like it's glorious. They have, you know, your standard children's activities, they're trying very hard. Your face painting, your active participation, kicking things through skill tests. There's a DJ, there's, you know, flames and smoke, and they they see the little clubs playing. You may have seen this. So that's what happens. That's wonderful, right? And that's great. I can't answer the question of how does that turn over? But I will also say the other bucket is look at the soccer roos. There are more A-League-based players playing in the team, then that's a story that isn't really being told. We're talking about the refugees, which is great. Yes. But like more A-League players. So if not now, then when? Let's hope that there can be support at all levels of government and the community to happen. It's unfortunate about the timing. But yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Yeah, oh, the timing of the matches.

SPEAKER_04 34:07

No, in the season. So the A-League's now finished. We won't come back until the last third of the year.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

But it's here, yeah. So I'm just thinking, and I think Amy Park did it well. So this is 4 a.m. on a cold rainy morning. Person on the megaphone was hilarious. And the MC. Yeah, the MC was terrific. It wasn't just get your bags ready, you know.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

I wonder if it was my friend Charlie Rang Rainbow.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

No, well, if it was, props to them because they they read the mood. I thought it was really good. And but once we were in there, there was, you know, a couple of big screens, but in reality, most of us watched it on the inbuilt screens. It Fed Square would have been a much better viewing spot, I would say, than well, I'm I'm gonna come back to that two screens business. Because I'm very I I like to watch everything in the same direction as other people, but and yet there's two teams.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

We could end it in a very interesting way.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

But there was nothing from an experience point of view that I thought, gee, Amy Park's a great venue. I should come back to more things here. Or well, that was such a great experience, I need to come back for an A-League match. There was no, you know, sign up to be a member of either of the Melbourne teams, or so it was interesting because I thought is I was sort of in two minds when I'm reading all these comments of, but I bet they've never been to an A-League match, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

One part is, well, no, you're right. And so how does the A-League leverage this ride every four years? But then I thought, well, you know, everyone goes to the Australian Open, but they might not watch any other tennis tournament. And it's not a bad thing either. But it was just thinking through what impact that the customer experience could be at these live sites, which would feed into yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:01

I mean, again, I I put this all down to what I came back to at the beginning of the conversation, which is that with collective amnesia, catches us by surprise. I don't know if this is accurate or how accurate it is, I think there's partly accurate. They scramble to put this on. They don't have a customer service expert working on this. There's not a whole of government. If it took the premier to come in and say, we will have something at FedSquare, like that's not good. That's not a good footing to work from. A more applied application to think, you know, how can we provide the best experience? That would be wonderful to see. And we've got time, right? There's still more weeks of the tournament. Let's hope that we can continue to do that.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

And look, I mean, FedSquare is obviously working well. We've got a friend whose local soccer club is put in on the barbecue. I think they do like 30,000 serves. It's you know, so I think and I would absolutely think the communications coming out of both Fed Square and Amy Park is excellent from a CX point of view. You know where to park, you know what to expect, yeah, you know what kind of time to get there. There, so there's some really great stuff. It's just is it the responsibility of these live science to then be a pathway into the A-League? Or maybe that's not their role. So it's you know, understanding what City.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

I think the A-League team. So, I mean, that's that's for them. Like that's an opportunity for them. But I mean, they're in the offseason. Is there any, you know, like the time? Yeah. Do they plan ahead? We don't know. We don't know. Another positive different example is in my little area is Top Ride Shopping Center, who's a you know, big corporate conglomerate. They have designed a piazza that's made for live sites. So the City of Ride activates that for the World Cup. And that's got all the all the customer service uh attributes. You know, it's got toilets, it's got food, it's got seating, it's got an experience, it's you know, it's it's wonderful. City of Parramatta, not so much, not so much. It's sort of definitely reactive, it's a trailer screen. The sound is mono at best, it's not great. The the pot the attendance is beyond capacity. They've shoved it down one end. I mean, this line of Georgie just really annoys me. They've put the bunting of Australian flags, but the soccer roos are green and gold. They reference the boxing kangaroo. I mean, again, I say to you, like somebody who doesn't understand football, yeah, potentially events or community engagement didn't design or or do this, and they're only showing the soccer roos games. It's terrible. And again, I think it's down to that Michelle Carter and the Pink Ops team who have been in ICAC that just, you know, for all the opportunities they had, this is the best they could do. It's shameful.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

It's and it's just made me actually I I wanted I do want to get to placemaking.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Oh, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

But I you just brought up something that made me sort of think around when we're talking about customer experience, there's reasons people go to things. If I want to watch it's a Grand Prix, yeah. A lot of die hard fans won't go to the Grand Prix because it's a it's a sport you need to watch on TV if you really want to get into the the fear of missing out. You want to see it all well, it's the yeah, you see the cars, you can hear the commentary, it's much easier. And with the soccer, if you really want to watch the best visual version, you're gonna watch it at home, really on your TV. Because the sound's not gonna be great at a live site. You're going for that collective.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

It can be.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

It can be, but with the crowd, you know, it's just you're gonna have people chanting. So you're going for that collective experience, and it just got me thinking. I came up to with my partner to see Phantom of the Opera on the harbour in April. Yay, which it was it's a spectacle, you're on the harbour. I have a lot of thoughts around how they do the seating. Yes, me too. There's some serious sight line issues, but you go there knowing that you're sitting outside, you know it it'll we were blessed with the stunning Sydney night, but I know opening night was torrential rain. Yeah, so you're sitting there, you're facing the harbour. We couldn't see the bridge and the um Sydney Opera House because where our seats were, we had the the staircase of the set sort of cascade down, so that was blocking us, but there's like five, six different bars there, yeah. So all night you've got views until you sit in your seats. Yeah, so from

Opera On The Harbour Infrastructure Rethink

SPEAKER_02 40:45

that experience and from a customer experience point of view, it's fantastic. But if you're going for good sound, the intimacy of a theater show, you're not going to see the best production values, I'd say, because you're outside. So it's always going to be a different acoustics to inside. I mean, the acting, you know, we think it was one of the best casts we've seen of Phantom. So not taken away from that, but it's different being outside on a water to being into the acoustics of a theater. So, you know, there's times where do people trade off their customer experience? If I know it's not going to be the best acoustically, yeah, and you know, the way the stage is set, but I'm sitting outside and there's fireworks and there's the bridge and the harbour, and this where else would you see this sort of thing?

SPEAKER_04 41:37

I mean, and and I'm and I and it's an experience, right? It's a uniquely Sydney type thing. It was inspired by Bragence over in Switzerland, where they they actually spend a year to build up the stage. And if when you look it up online, you'll see there's some spectacular applications. It was only made possible because of Lyndon Terricini's vision to recreate something like Brigantz in Sydney and then Dr. Hander's million dollars of sponsorship. It's now 10 years in. Yes. What I do know, I've got many, there's a lot to unpack with Opera on the harbour. I mean, I think, you know, it's been here 10 years. The St. George Sunset movie screen, or where the branding is now, has been rising up out of that harbor since the 90s, right? So that's there as well. They put in a temporary grandstand for uh from December to like February, and then it's packed up, and then the grass is repaired, and then the opera comes in. I mean, that's insane. It's insane. Could we could we agree now? Could we say like this is now uh an expectation that this infrastructure will be there? It doesn't need to be as brutally or unsympathetically applied to the environment. It could be architecturally integrated in. There's a gap even in the seawall where Her Majesty the Queen Queen Elizabeth after her coronation had a barge that was sunk down. It's under the water there. So there used to be a ferry wharf that was there. I believe we could actually install, you know, a rectangular platform, ferry wharf, and maybe engage the heritage fleet to do a loop between, you know, the opera house, Fort Denison, the opera on the harbor side, etc. around the harbor. That might be a good tourism, fun thing to do. And then, you know, sort of hydraulically like raise the roof up to create the stage and and then start improving incrementally the infrastructure that's in there. The grandstand that you were sitting on was bought for one dollar from, remember this, this is a blast from the past. Adelaide at one point had the Formula One. Oh, okay. So this that grandstand was in a very specific site. So it's got irregular footfall. And what happened was because of the the aspiration to the purity of opera, Lyndon wouldn't allow handrails.

SPEAKER_01 43:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

So unfortunately, we had Carlis and Party, that terrible fall that happened there. Yeah. So that was, you know, part you're not aided from the irregular footfall. The lighting is not as good as it could be. We can definitely improve the customer experience there, even though they're doing the best they can within the parameters. And the same with the sound. Actually, the sound is the pretty good. It's of an elevated level. It's it's um system sound because it's Android Weber, the really useful group working with Norwest.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

However, they're also handicapped because of Lyndon's direction that you can't have a center. So you've just got the left and right. Yes. And now after because of the really useful group, they put the front fill across the front, which was, you know, we can't be your opera's gonna just magically the sound happens, which is nonsense, right? We've all evolved from that. There needs to be, if we had the infrastructure hung there and we could all agree that hanging a central line array, if not left center and right center as well as left and right, you could it's a measurable quality. You can have glorious sound outside. Coachella, the the Hollywood Bowl has it. There are there are two examples.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

No, no, no, no. That's I I I will say the sound was great. I'm not gonna say it was patchy, but you it is very different to being in an indoor theater, a small, well not small, but and more intimate setting.

SPEAKER_04 45:26

So I think that's more the difference of I'm gonna hold you up here because I would say I have heard some of the worst dual channel mono sound or some of our bigger theatres. I'm sure it's compressed out because of a fear of like dynamics or feedback or things like that. I mean, if you set a good game structure, you can I mean I'm passionate about sound, intelligibility, and that sensory experience from a good oral environment.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Well, so okay, so here's so uh just to end off on Opera on the Hub, I will anyone who has a chance to go highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Highly recommend it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

The once again, I think the communication, the lead up was superb. Yeah, there were like five or six bars on site. Some were on ground level, some were raised up.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

There was, I thought it was really well done. We were so impressed with it.

SPEAKER_04 46:13

And I what can I say as well? I just it should not belong only to the opera. It should be community asset, it should be installed as a permanent events site in the right way. Yes. And I believe it should be opened up for the season and all the subsidized arts, whether it's the theatre companies, the symphony, and the opera and the ballet, should come up and perform there. And I think we would elevate the experience that it'd be, but it's it's it needs an actor of the highest levels of state politics to make it happen. Yeah. Well, Chris Beans, you can do it.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

The next thing I wanted to talk about was, and then we would definitely come to placemaking, is vivid. Because I was up in Sydney a month or so ago, and obviously Instagram knew I was in Sydney and kept targeting me with these ads for Harbor Cruise, Vivid Harbor Cruise for $29. I thought, sure, $29.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

Did you do it?

SPEAKER_02 47:03

I did do it. Wow. And I mean, for $29, I had very low expectations. $29. But it and it was interesting to experience Vivid from two different when you're walking along Circular Key, it's crowded, you're not getting the full sort of view of Vivid, you know, you're getting what's right in front of you. But you are the storytelling is quite strong.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

When you're on the boat, you get an amazing view. I mean, I've got some stunning photos of the bridge and the

Vivid Lessons On Comfort And Story

SPEAKER_02 47:39

opera house and looking to Circular Key, but you are very disconnected from it. Now, look, props to the little boat. We well, not to say little boat, the boat we were on. I mean, there are a lot few issues to start with, you know, we the wharf we were going, is it St. James's wharf around by Pier 1?

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Yeah, there was no signage that that's where the ferries were going from. So there were plenty of passengers giving that feedback. It was a very rudimentary ferry, which once again for $29, you kind of expected that. They had, you know, you you were pretty much spending most of your time upstairs. It was a 90-minute cruise, it could have been 15 minutes in reality, because all you needed to do was come out, see the overall view. We could have gone back in. We didn't there was no commentary. Oh, there was some disco songs being played in the the cabin of the boat with sort of one random LED flicking light, which you know, crit they were trying. But it made me think what a lost opportunity it was.

SPEAKER_04 48:44

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

If vivid, and maybe they do this, I don't know. Said here's commentary they gave to each of these operators who were running these, because there's a gazillion of them, you know, right running these little cruises. It would just connect the people because I felt like once we we all rushed upstairs when we got on the boat to get a good spot. Once we'd gone past the opera house, and the projections only on one side of the opera house, once you get past it, you know, all you're doing is looking at the bridge and Kirabilli house, kind of the only other two activations. And then we did Potter up to Berengaroo. But there it everyone came inside after about 20 minutes because we're like, well, we've got all that potters, and we've seen it, we're just sitting around going, is it time to go back? And I thought it's such a missed opportunity that just a simple you know, recording, you wouldn't want it all the time, but just something simple would have connected what you were seeing to what you were.

SPEAKER_04 49:42

Let's fix this, Georgie. Together we can go exactly. So I yes, and you your recorded commentary, and I say there's so many volunteers that are there's got a good volunteer participatory workforce on Vivid. Let's assign an appropriate volunteer to read a script or train them, maybe to do some engagement for Mike and all that. That would be great. That's an absolute lost opportunity. That that's really low-hanging fruit there that would could be a much better experience. But thank you for participating. This is good.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Oh, it was great. I and look, I recommend if you get the cheap ticket pop-up on your Instagram, go on it because it was worth it. Uh, and then you know, you can walk back via circuit. So it was good to see it from the two points.

SPEAKER_04 50:22

Vivid had a very significant inflection point this year because it was the first year of Brett Shahe as the new festival director, which was which was good. He introduced his one of the biggest things he introduced was a smaller footprint, although the press had to say it's still as big, it's still as big for reasons I don't understand. And he introduced daytime events, so it was great to see another step forward in the evolution of it. Having said that, you know, and I'll start with the positive. My children and I absolutely love the French company champagne on doing the chandelier acrobatic performance on the forecourt of the opera house. That was good. Felt a bit like a Sydney festival, which is good. They don't have to be, Vivid doesn't have to be one type of thing. However, the negative was one of the great things to do in Sydney for Vivid is the the public transport never keeps up with the interest. So getting a bus or a ferry or a train, they're usually at capacity. Now we have this glorious metro. So the metro really aids the customer experience. My children and I were able to take the metro in. We go to Beringaroo, you're right there, there's artwork right there. You you you walk in through the fire door gate, but it was again, I just there were some real fails. The the overriding emotion I had from the vivid experience was uncomfortable. It was an uncomfortable experience. And I'll tell you why. Would you believe families come to these things and families bring strollers? They need their own application. I believe there should be a dedicated like stroller lane, an access path. I believe both at the experience we had at the opera house, there should be a family viewing area.

SPEAKER_02 52:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

When we finally got up, my children, they uh I had a parental fail. I should have fed them beforehand, even though it's a food experience. So anyway, so we went up to try to experience the new refreshed vivid fire kitchen. There's no menu anywhere to say what's there. So you had to cue to try to get to see the menu, which was really low. You had to like really go up to the front. And my children are saying, What is there? I'm like, and I couldn't answer the question. It was uncomfortable. The other really big fail was the they had the the facades over the white tents, the white hawkers, which I loathe, but they had the facades of the alpine type thing. That's weird. Like budget doesn't stretch to everything, but it feels odd. Anyway, so they had that and they weren't like what's the term pre-pouring? So they they were cooking like my the kids agreed on it. We could have some pasta. So we're queuing up again to get the pasta, and they were cooking the pasta per order rather than you know, here's a batch of it, dish it out, put the sauce up. Sounds gross, but like there's a method of yeah, yeah. There's a there's a method of customer service in hospitality that would get this right. Now they had hospitality people doing the show, and the emphasis went to the big show stage, but not the food vending. Yes. It's crying out for like Accor or Merivale or someone to come in and run that and do these small touch points.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Yes, yeah. And well, the menu thing, and I'll come back to the Australian Open, they do it so well. The menu is always at the very start of the queue.

SPEAKER_04 53:46

As it should be.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

On the bollards as you get closer. Because the worst thing is the question. It's just oh it's really blatant. People get to the front and then they're busy trying to look at the menu.

SPEAKER_04 53:57

What do you want?

SPEAKER_02 53:58

And then everyone's queuing up. It just reminded me of my mum and I went to Rising. Uh and and it's funny when you talk about vivid, did it feel like the Sydney Festival? Because there's a few festivals in Melbourne, there's Rising, there's now or never. I'm struggling to understand the difference between them. But they had an activation at Fed Square and it was projection. So we knew it wasn't music, we knew it was just this projection. But with sound, and the way it was built was, you know, come and sit in, you know, there'll be beanbags and hangers and deck chairs, the hot chocolate will be flowing, there'll be um an indigenous barbecue that we'll all gather round.

SPEAKER_04 54:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

So it sounded amazing. And mum and I toddled off in and we got the is this it? And there was no hot chocolate to be seen at all. To the point where we sent to a fellow who was sitting in a, we did get a, there weren't many deck chairs, but we did get one, and we could hear the guys next to us sort of saying, Is this it? Like, is there a performer coming on? We said, Where did you get the hot chocolate? He'd actually walked off site to like Walker's Donuts just to get his hot chocolate. The barbecue, there was a marquee with the First Nations barbecue.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

Please don't say it was just sausages.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Well, it was just sausages, but I think he had said that in the copy.

SPEAKER_04 55:20

Well, sort of like Bush mango chutney.

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Yes, well, I'd run out of chutney. So um there but it was apparently that's indigenous. It was the most sort of I mean the flavours were actually really good, and the sausages were good, but it was it it was a marquee. There was no branding, there was no, I wouldn't have known which NGO was running the bucket. It was tucked away with no signage, and it was just this this expectation that was set in the marketing. And and we know with customer experience at the you know, the big thing is at the moment is expectation versus reality, and then the delivery of it, and it's it it just shows how if those two groups don't talk, the the it you know, it wasn't a bad night, but when your expectations are set as something, yeah, and it wasn't just us, you know, you could hear everyone sort of say, is this it? Because the projection, once it was done on a minute loop that came back, so you there was no reason to sort of stay. And it was a to me, it was a really what was a fail, as much as I love rising. This one just didn't from what had been promised from an experience point of view and and what people were coming for. And Fed Square have and rising have done some amazing things with fire and you know, have made big spaces feel quite intimate. Yeah, this was the opposite, it felt very vast.

SPEAKER_04 56:46

And all of these are we know we're burdened with the knowledge of how these things can be easily corrected and fixed, and and even in situ it could have been done. But what I've found now is unfortunately there's this culture of like everything was perfect, it's all good, let's pat ourselves on the back. I mean, the best events are never perfect from day one. You strive for the as high as you can get to 100% on the vision you have in delivery, and and it's rarely ever achieved. But the secret to this is you open yourself up to feedback, you listen to the experience, and you incrementally improve. I I'll let Rising have a pass. It's disappointing. I'll give them a pass, but if it happens again next year, then that's that's that's a failure of the organization. It is now the same with vivid, right? Same thing.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

But I mean, I did see some friends happen to be at Rising that night, and they'd been to some of the other activations and were raving about it. Right. We just unfortunately went in for one that didn't get off. And it does which you wouldn't expect, right?

SPEAKER_04 57:53

It's the disappointment is like you're rising fabulous. And the promise was good.

SPEAKER_02 57:57

The promise is good, and it does sort of pity your own, but we didn't get our hot chocolate. It wasn't about the hot chocolate, it was that sense of community and experience that had been sold. Oh, and I do kids, you know. I mean, we do PR as well. So, you know, there are times you're doing copyright for things and you're saying stuff, and then you really have to say, but are we gonna have is that exactly what we're going to have?

SPEAKER_04 58:21

And we deliver this. Don't promise what you can't deliver. And Georgie, we can acknowledge as well, not all copywriting, not all PR is good. There's levels of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

So sometimes it's so good it's better than the event.

SPEAKER_04 58:36

Right?

SPEAKER_02 58:37

That's we we've had a situation on one of the events that we work on at fetching, where we we created what we thought was a really cute tagline, which was for a French festival, which was swap your beanie for a beret.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

Come down to Queen Victoria Market, swap your beanie for a beret. It's a French festival in winter. And we had people come down, well, we had two people come down with their beanie and say, where do I swap it for the beret? And we realized, oh no, the tagline was too literal, too successful.

SPEAKER_04 59:06

Speaking of which, did you see recently? I just saw my algorithm showed me the Beanie Festival in Alice Springs. It's in its last iteration of the lady that organized it. And it sounds glorious. Like not, I I bang on about this all the time. Big events don't mean better, they usually mean more complicated and more things go wrong. Yeah. But some small events can be as equally community rewarding and engaging and glorious.

SPEAKER_02 59:31

Absolutely. And certainly the trends from a business event point of view when it comes to experience and what is sort of, I don't want to say trending, but what's becoming more and more popular is micro events within events. So it's the conference, but it's the micro events that probably always happen that they're more intentional now.

SPEAKER_04 59:51

You'd hope so, wouldn't you? I mean, if we're not learning from each other, then what are what's the point? Exactly. Um, I want to tell you one other quick story about the live site in Parramatta Square, my bug bear at the moment. You know, because it all the infrastructure we're just placed there, bad sound, bad design, just done by people who don't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

The crowd you know, no, no disrespect to which those people are listening.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

But I hope they are because it's it's this is I'm an event professional, so you you understand that these are not, these are low-hanging bars that could be incrementally improved, and there's an opportunity to do so, which is why it's important to talk about it. But what happened, the magic happened, is that the because there was no MC, there was no music, there's no anything, it's just the screen that got switched off after the soccer's game brutally. The crowd started to entertain themselves. And a member of the crowd came out and did Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi. And there was a call and response organic thing happening. Meanwhile, they had put in two installations, activations, placemaking, which was two cages, so cage football. So the brand and marketing and look of this was like children in a cage, unregulated, unhosted, unanything. I know my friend Steve Mandras from the Western City Wanderers had to kind of argue to be included. They know what they're doing. Hand over the fan engagement in the soccer football to the people that know what they're doing. Anyway, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

No, no, that's and I want to come back to the sound and light track because I think that is a really important point in customer experience. If you are someone delivering customer experience, but you don't have the full control over it. So I know for a lot of events, you know, there is reputational risk as the event management company that you're running an event, but maybe you don't have much budget. Maybe the recommendations you've been you've you are giving and the explanation of the consequence, if you don't go with that, are not taken on by the client. Right. So you end up running this event that is not what you would run, but the reputational risk is. And and it I remember talking with a hotel years ago, and we were talking about uh customer experience and that kind of thing. And they said they find it really hard, and I think this is a really interesting point

Reputation Risk In Events And Hotels

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

that a client will book a cocktail party there, let's just say. But the client says we're only going to do four canopy pieces per person, even though it's billed as a dinner break. Yeah, the reflection ends up on the hotel. Gee, the such and such hotel was good, but there's I mean, we barely got any food. And the hotel said, How do we combat that? And I mean, I don't think they can when we're only booked to serve that. And other than the hotel giving advice saying our recommendation for a two-hour cocktail function would be this food sort of thing, or if your guests are coming over this time frame, they will expect in that. But it was a really interesting point that even though they didn't have the full control over the customer experience, the reflection of the customer experience went straight to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:11

I just recently I don't normally do conferences at business events. Yeah, there are other people that do it extremely well, but I dabble in it when there's an opportunity to innovate. And I worked with a really great client that was really brave and wanted to make some rather challenging products interesting. And yeah, we always able to apply my creative alchemy to the experience. But I was working with a venue, I won't say who they were, and I so I went into this world that perhaps you deal with more than I do, and it was all the hotel, and it was all about the the minimum spend and how the the venue, the hotel was actively obscuring and not giving you accurate spend amounts. Like so you ordered your four canopies in your example, and I was asking them, but but where am I at with the minimum spend? Oh, we'll have to get back to you. They're obscuring it. Oh, but I had to, and and I what I realized as well in this world is there's the salesperson who get who you booked the venue with, who's really enthusiastic and wonderful and can gung-ho and can do everything. Then it's the operations guy who delivers on the day, who's really skilled, really great, really passionate. In the middle, there's an event organizer who I, in this experience, described as a robot. Like perhaps not the most experienced, not the most skilled. The meat and the sandwich would give us two worlds. There was a tension there, and they weren't able to provide the information.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

The other people that I worked I would say that is not the normal.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:44

Okay, that's good to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

As in you always get the information. What we do find, what I have found coming out of COVID is the the hotel industry and the event industry lost a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:57

So there's a lot more newer and emerging people in these roles. So we do find that things perhaps pre-COVID was just a given.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

We are having to double check finer details than that we've never had to check before. We've kind of seen what the trend is of those people in those managers.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:15

Not all of them. You give me hope, don't you? Because I was like, this is a this is not normal. This is this is not good.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:22

You do, and that's customer experience, I think, uh, thing that hotels need to look at of what the experience you have with the salesperson, yeah. What you have with the event person, because the event person's the one you work with the most. And then you've got the delivery on the day.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:35

Yeah, I had to go around the event person because they were so inadequate. You know, computer says no, and back to the salesperson and just get to the operation person to get the answers that I needed. And we and we we, you know, it was a it was a customer service save before it even happened. Yeah. But then you the timeline got compressed, and you're like, you know, when it came to the the lunches, the breakouts, I'm like, what did I order? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

That is unusual because usually like you get full visibility. Although what I will say is the sort of the the tension we have with venues when we're planning these events is when we get the menu and it says Chef's selection.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:16

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

And it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:19

What does that really end up being mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

And if I'm running a conference, I want to know exactly what's being served there. A because we're paying for it. Yeah. But B because I might be running an off-site dinner. So if I'm serving chicken at the dinner, I don't have chicken heavy lunch. It's and we also know our delegates. We had a venue where there was they the chef selection, we finally got out of the chef what he was serving. And we looked at it and went, that's not a morning tea item. It was cake.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

But we knew it wouldn't work. And it came out like a cake you would see, not it was huge wedges of no one ate the cake. And we sort of said, we told you, you know, that wasn't going to work. Trust us, we we work with us. And we work, we know a lot of event agencies that the first thing they do when they sign a contract is say, or when they're negotiating with the venue, is we want a front-up meeting with the venue.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:17

Sorry, front up meeting with the chef.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:19

With the chef, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

Excuse me. Because we want to be able to talk with the chef.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:26

Just take a drink of water. Well, I'll fill in for you. Like that was you're reflecting what I experienced. I did another business conference event as well, and exactly that chef's selection. I was like, but I wouldn't accept it. I was like, but but what? He must know. Like I I love cooking. I've worked work in hospitality. Like, no, yeah. And I'm like, I want a protein and I want a vegetarian at least. And like, let's balance that out. Because what you described, Georgie, is is so impactful on the on the guest experience. Absolutely. On the customer experience. Yes. Like the food speaks. And you know, you you're curating a journey that's going through. You don't want people feeling too heavy. You want, you want to provide options, you want to deal with the dietaries, all the rest of that. And one of the things that I did, maybe slight riff off innovation, and the stuff, even the staff, you know, who are all students, the Colombian, Chilean students, and I I put the barista, so you know, you pay extra for the barista made coffee type thing, but I put it in the bump in. We had a day to bump in the event, yeah. And I put it inside the expo hall where the activity in an exclusion zone release. And the students were like, oh, we've never done this, but this is weird. The impact that had to motivate the staff was massive. And then I made sure I'm passionate about coffee, as you may know, if you follow me. And you know, I put in, I made sure there was enough barista experiences and varied the coffee menu as we went down. So as the afternoons came in, we got more into like ice beverages and mockers and and and hot chocolates, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing that was really impactful, and again, it came down to like this obscure obscuring of the minimum spend. Oh, you know, you get to these, the lists, the hotels have the list, you pick, I'll have a bit of that and a bit of that. I'm like, what's what's sort of left? What have we got? And what will add to the? Oh, we'll do a juice bar.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:11

And then but then the juice bar was put out, but it wasn't, they were again, it was the students mixing it, not mixing, oh, you'll love this. So the the cocktail function that we had, you know, we wanted to curate some wonderful cocktails that were done. And and I made the comment, like, oh, and you'll have a great mixologist, right? And there was you know, silence, just uncomfortable silence. The venue said, Oh, they're pre-mixed. I was like, what? Like, what? And yet, next to the restaurant where the cocktail function was at, there was another full service bar.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:47

And I'm like, Yes, this is is this are you're not you're not surprised by any of this. I'm not I'm like, I'm shocked by it. I'm like, this is not good. Thankfully, a service recovery, a preemptive service recovery before it even happens.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

Yes, but it is, you know, yeah. No, I'm not surprised by any wow, but it is. I think hotels are you there's good ones and there's ones that probably have some gaps in customer experience. And I'm conscious of time. But I'll tell, you know, and once again, this is from a sex point of view when you think of your clients. So, you know, to hotels, your clients aren't just your the delegates, you know, your clients are so we'll you know, we've got an event, we've got a conference at a venue that we, you know, it's been booked in, it's been signed. They're not trying to win the business, but we went and did a site visit. We could barely get a discounted rate to stay there, and it was somewhere we needed to stay. So we didn't stay there, we stayed at another venue. We had to actually ask, could could you get us a cup of coffee? That was it. It was the most bizarre experience. I recently did a site visit at another venue in.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:53

Can we pause for a moment? So you're saying you're So we've all flown at least two hours. You're booking the book it, so they don't need the business. Oh, this is terrible. And they wouldn't provide you a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:05

No, they finally did.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:07

That's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:08

It was, and it was only that I said, because we had we said we'll sit down now for a meeting with the venue. And I and we weren't even given a room. We had to sit on these couches in the foyer. And I said, Well, shall I get the drinks? And then they said unwelcome. Yeah, they said, Oh, we'll get the drink. It was all very bizarre. Pop that against another site visit I did recently at Novotel Wollongong. I'll give a shout out to them. Yeah. So once again, we'd signed the contract. It was myself and the client. We just wanted to do a walkthrough.

Venue Gold Standards And Final Picks

SPEAKER_02 1:11:39

We got given, well, I booked, they gave us an amazing you know, industry rate. They upgraded my room. They emailed ahead of time and said, Do either of you have dietary requirements? And then they gave a little gift pack for us to take at the end of the site visit that had suites in and they wanted to check dietary. The the polls apart, correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:00

Huge, and that's Ben Creek and Adrian Williams, Accor Group. They run a really great hospitality.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:07

Yes. So and I'll I'll do a good one too because I can't just draw the negatives. Manuela at the QT Hotel in Perth, who on the pre-event, Perth, it's Perth Long Way, you know, did a site visit, but then we're coming in, we had a couple of days before we we bumped in. We had a she would you like to come in and see the venue? Go what cocktail can we get for you? I mean, just cost them nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:29

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:30

And and the other thing that the Novotel did, every room we went into, that put the client's logo on the screen.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:36

Isn't that great? It didn't look for anything so simple. Just wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:40

Well, we still haven't got to placemaking, but we will get maybe we'll have to do another episode for that. But dear, and a big thank you for coming in for another episode. It's and particularly talking about football on live sites. And we've got a few more matches that to watch. Maybe not with maybe with the soccer roos, maybe not, but with the World Cup in general. So it'll be interested to see what the engagement is.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:03

I've got to ask you. So what's your prediction on the soccer roos? How far will they go? That's question one. And the second one is who do you think's gonna win the World Cup?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:11

Well, I can't. Do you know I used to be I used to be able to answer that, and I can't now because I have not been following the other teams enough. I don't think the socceros are gonna go as far as we all think they are.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:24

Right. I think we've never got out of the round of 32. So we haven't got to the round of 16. I think I'm right in saying that. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:34

We've got from the group stage.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:36

From the group to round of 32, but not before that. If we equal that, we're on path.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:41

If we get into the round of 16, it's the best achievement we've ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:44

Yes. Look, it's I mean, this is the first soccer route stream. I don't know anyone. Oh, you still play as no, I know now. You will, but I just have dropped off the radar a bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:54

Yeah, Aaron Kunda's your Matt Cutter is so well.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:58

I mean, I know Popovic because I'm of his vintage. Tony, yeah. Back in the day. But look, it'll be interesting, and of course, this episode will be playing after we have played the Paraguay match. So it'll be interesting as won the Paraguay. As we go on, um what that engagement with fans is.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:16

But and what meant to win the World Argentina.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:21

I'd like to do it. Argentina, yeah. That's a complete fiss.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:24

I I do you know what? I would like England to get a fair way through because I just feel like they've been wanting that trophy to come home for some time.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:33

Well, it's so dynamic. This next few days we'll do we'll finish the groups, which will then indicate the path.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Correct, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:41

So it's a lot to watch, a lot to experience, more to come.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:44

Perfect. Well, a big thank you for joining this episode of the art and heart of CX. And I look forward to our next episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:52

Your art was great, and we put a lot of heart into it, didn't we? So thank you, Georgie. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:57

Thank you. Very artfully put. Until next time.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:00

Cheers.