Challenge
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The 2-day Morningstar Investment Conference is a premium global event featuring eight conferences around the world from September and December each year, open to 000s of finance professionals who subscribe to attend. This year, due to the global disruption caused by the COVID pandemic, Morningstar had to move the whole programme digital and run the MIC virtually.
Use Case
To create an immersive event and deliver innovation to MIC’s attendees, VR company Mesmerise built Gatherings VR, a unique and immersive VR platform to deliver the MIC VR experience as part of the hybrid digital event. The Gatherings platform helps Conference and Events companies provide innovative experiences for speakers, attendees, and event exhibitors alongside physical and digital events. Gatherings also supports a wide range of activities including festivals, award shows, product launches, showcases, conventions, and meetings.
Key Features
With a virtual “front row” ticket to the best seat in the house, VR attendees explored an immersive open-air conference plaza and exhibitor booths, watch keynote live presentations in the VR Conference auditorium and enjoy 40 hours of on-demand content in a private breakout room during the event.
Original audio intros and background sound was commissioned and attendees experienced themed games, demonstrating the impact of ESG investment scenarios in a unique “Morningstar Sustainable City” VR game and a Bee Garden game. 7 exhibitor booths were available throughout the Conference where attendees enjoyed sponsor content and connected with the sponsor companies. Conference planning stations were available throughout, helping attendees navigate the experience and plan their calendars and, since attendees couldn’t travel to Chicago where Morningstar traditionally holds the MIC, this year everyone still enjoyed the city sights and famous skyline in VR, thanks to a collaboration with tourist body Choose Chicago.
New features for 2021 include live networking, social sharing, and multiple meeting spaces for breakouts and multi-track sessions, along with a range of presenter tools to make your keynote truly immersive and noteworthy.
Hardware
Built through Unity, Gatherings attendees received an Oculus Quest 1 headset in a branded, boxed experience, along with a “golden ticket” invite, welcome pack, and invitation to the pre-Conference webinar.
Based on a scalable platform, Gatherings also delivers a detailed reporting and analytics dashboard, providing a unique insight into attendee activity, location, content consumption, and connections.
Industry Feedback
Morningstar’s Leslie Marshal, Head of Experiential Marketing, commented “Morningstar has been hosting our flagship conference, the Morningstar Investment Conference for over 30 years. This year it’s been exciting to work with the Gatherings team to take our conference experience to the next level with virtual reality. The MIC VR experience is memorable, intuitive, and immersive, and I’m personally inspired by the future of events. Gatherings demonstrates the possibilities that virtual reality opens up for all of our lives.”
“The sleek packaging of the wireless Oculus Quest headset and controllers, with branding from Mesmerize, Morningstar, and Oculus, made a high-end statement about the expected quality of the event and built anticipation in a way that an e-mail reminder couldn’t.”
– Sue Hatch, Editor, Meetingsnet.com
“Wow! This is the best I’ve seen so far!”
– Erin Branham, President/Founder, A2 Events
COMPANY: Mesmerise
