Fieldays Online
When Covid-19 forced Kiwis into lockdown in March, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest agricultural event, Fieldays announced it would not be going ahead in 2020.
Satellite had been a technology provider for Fieldays for a number of years including running the entire registration, ticketing, access-control, exhibitor portal and NFC wristband engagement for visitors to the event in 2019.
Satellite and Fieldays saw the opportunity to go ahead as a virtual event. We made a few calls, planted the seed (excuse the pun) and before we knew it — the plan was made to build and deliver Fieldays Online 2020.
A world first in 108 days
With not a day to spare, Satellite agreed to the plan for what we would deliver and assigned a project team. We needed an online hub where exhibitors could showcase their annual Fieldays deals and customers could explore, learn and grab the deals.
We needed a TV studio and a host, so we could live steam interviews and engaging content. Which also meant we needed a full TV production team of Production Manager, Camera Operators, Editors, Sound and Lighting experts, and Hair and Makeup professionals.
We needed a sales team to go out and sell the concept in to the exhibitors, and we needed a content team to prepare and load all the content.
And we needed a software development team to pull together the solution that would bring all the various pieces together.
Enabling Fieldays to go ahead after-all
Satellite worked closely with the team at the New Zealand National Fieldays Society to deliver this significant online event. The website went live in July for two weeks with 300 exhibitors showcasing their best products, services and deals — all online, supported by a familiar face in Te Radar hosting the Fieldays Online live streamed news, views and interviews.
Prince Charles delivered a personal address to those watching the inaugural virtual event from lockdown, and Jacinda Adern officially opened the event.
Total digital visitors reached 90K, coming from over 75 countries and consuming over 24 hours of Fieldays TV content.
For many exhibitors Fieldays is their single biggest marketing event on the calendar. The prospect of not having it in 2020 would have been a significant blow to the agricultural industry. Satellite is extremely proud to have been in a position to help keep the event alive in 2020 expanding the offering into the online environment and future-proofing the event for years to come.
The New Zealand National Fieldays Society recognised Satellite’s efforts, awarding us the 2020 “Outstanding Contribution” Award.
The analytics show great viewership and engagement with the explosion of international visitors and, locally, a much higher regional spread beyond the traditional Fieldays. The success of this years' event was a testament to the strong collaboration with our exhibitors and our relationships with industry leaders that got behind it despite not having a benchmark.
In this project
- Event Management
- Interface Design
- TV Production
- Website development
