Founder Fridays Part Five: pandemics, preparation and all the possibilities

During the month of July, Alex Rogers is sitting down with our founder, Meg Alexander, to chat about her life, career and how Grae came to be. Check out our blog page for all the Founder Friday highlights.

Alex Rogers is an experience designer and community builder based in Oakland, California.

This week, we will hear from Meg on creating firsts, ways to prepare for and anticipate change, and the future of experiential marketing.

A: Your world, your work - there are a lot of new things happening right now. What is something that is getting you excited, what is something that is helping you get out of bed?

M: A good croissant and latte is something that gets me out of bed, even more so now that I hadn’t had them for a few months during the initial stages of quarantine. Cooking projects have been exciting during this time, I just got two new cookbooks that have been on my list to buy. I got to support a local bookshop and specialty goods store in the process. 

A: This global disruption has specifically had a huge impact on your industry; live events have likely changed forever. What do you think live or experiential looks like in a post COVID world?

M: I think there are a bunch of bits and pieces to this.. First of all, industries worldwide have been disrupted and are pivoting. We are particularly impressed with the crowd of production houses that we know and love that are finding ways to contribute right now to solutions. We have seen convention centers made into hospital extensions, credentials companies that have pivoted their manufacturing to create PPE, and many more that we are proud to have worked with in the past and hope to again in the future. 

There are events in a current COVID world and there are events in a post COVID world, they are ultimately different. Whichever situation we’re working in though, our process doesn't really change. We always start by talking with clients about vision, desired KPIs, and constraints. So the constraints have changed here.. we can't gather people in a physical space together, but we can create moments.

We are going to have to rely on technology more, and frankly all of the things we are now considering were important to be thinking about anyways. The environment for instance.. were we going to fly 20 thousand people around the world for the rest of all time in order to have an experience? We could have, but would it have continued to damage the world? Yes. I think what we will learn is that the ability to gather in large groups will be lessoned and will therefore happen in fewer and far between ways for more and more momentous occasions. This also means we will have to find ways to connect small groups of people across the world or country or city more and more effectively. 

I'm excited for the creative friction that COVID has provided because I think we are going to end up with better products that serve our clients more effectively in the long term regardless of if we go back to “normal” or not. Wouldn't it be great to really connect people across the world without them having to get on a plane? I know we can do it, and we are excited to work with clients to figure out the best way to do that for them, based on their specific audiences, visions and objectives. 

A: Obviously, you’ve had to confront the implications of COVID as you’ve been building your brand, but there’s also a Black Lives Matter movement happening right now. How is that influencing you?

M: It’s a great reminder of how much learning I still have to do. I’ve been incredibly lucky to work on relatively diverse teams with BIPOC leaders who are still out there doing the work, explaining why it is essential to have representation in marketing, all while also being badass executives and founders. It seems so obvious- how can you connect with or serve an audience if you don’t see their faces at the table? But here I am with an opportunity as a white woman to take action, to have conversations with my team, to make sure that I bring diverse voices to the table, to make space to learn how to help more, and do better. Personally I’m listening to people like the Change Cadet, looking at how companies like East Fork Pottery are digging in, reading about and discussing how to be anti-racist with my step-sons, considering our purchasing power, and supporting people who can do types of work that we can’t. As a company, we’re developing equitable recruiting and hiring practices, we’re thinking about the clients we choose to take on and their values, we’re examining our own biases as individuals, and we’re looking forward to helping create the world that we fundamentally believe is the only option. It shouldn’t take a Black Lives Matter movement to inspire this kind of work.

A: As you alluded to, events are extremely well planned, but even with all that planning, the nature of events is that they are built to have groups of people in uncontrollable environments and people are people, and sometimes those environments create great moments and sometimes challenging ones. How do you approach the planning process to accommodate for the unexpected and integrate it into your work?

M: Some of it is just establishing that this is the case from the get go, right? Things happen. Period. That could be a power station having an issue and losing power on-site. That could be a global pandemic as we were just discussing. There are a lot of events having to deal with that in this particular moment in time. There are some very practical things you can do in approaching an event. Making sure you have really reviewed the details on your contracts. Making sure that if you have a live stream you have backup on your power and internet solutions because the internet could go out and the ability to recover quickly is essential to the success of your product launch via live streaming. As in this example, identifying what the most important thing is to make the event successful and creating contingency plans around that moment is incredibly important from a practical perspective, but building a team that is used to doing fast problem solving on-site is equally as important. Knowing that you have a team that is innovative, full of problem solvers, that when the going gets tough they double down, to me that is the most important part of the planning process and that's why I have created a team that does just that. 

A: How do you think past client experiences have influenced your approach today, how you work with clients, and the types of things you want to work on moving forward?

M: I get most excited about new events or doing an old event in a new way. Of course we can reproduce something or do something over and over, but I get most excited when I am working with clients who are open to doing something different, improving, or trying something new, to taking that risk and that opportunity. We want to think outside the box even if it is on a trade show floor- especially if it’s on a trade show floor. If you want to capture people’s attention, you have to be different, you have to function differently. If you want people to pay attention to your new product-use it, give people the experience of touching it, seeing it, feeling it. Show them why it's so great, why it's new, and why it's different. The opportunity we have is to be different, to own identity, and to stand out. That's what we seek to do.

Interested in scheduling some time to chat with Meg about her experiences and expertise? Drop us a line.