#MarketingEventsAwards spills: Trinax's secret sauce to achieving great marketing

During the recent #MEventsAwards 2020, creative technology agency Trinax bagged silver for Best Virtual Event (B2B). It worked with chemical manufacturing company BASF to produce a well-balanced and customised virtual event for the launch of the company's new centre. The event included a 360-degree virtual walk-through and features such as gamification, live chat and Q&A to ensure the event was holistic and impactful.

Since its founding in 2010, client expectations for Trinax has certainly changed over the years and the agency saw itself adapting to keep pace with the evolution. Joel Goh, CEO, Trinax shares with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE how its clients marketing plans changed this year and the trends he sees carrying on post-pandemic. 

This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners and finalists’ interview series for Marketing Events Awards 2020. To find out more about the awards, click here. 

What are some of the expectations your consumers now have for your brand?

Goh: The expectations of our clients have definitely evolved over the years. As a leading creative technology agency and in view of the new norm, our clients expect and want experiences that enable interactive communications on omni-channels.

As the company continues to grow, we are actively seeking and developing new technologies and solutions that will help us better curate impactful and relevant experiences for our clients. In 2020, the company has also created our very own proprietary virtual event platform that is supported by our state-of-the-art virtual event studio and a strong suite of interactive applications, to provide a holistic end to end solution for our clients.

Ultimately, it is all about our clients’ satisfaction as we strive to keep them abreast of the latest technologies, in turn delivering the highest quality of work. This keeps us highly passionate as an organisation to deliver the best experiences.

How has your marketing/your clients marketing plans shifted this year?

Goh: Traditionally, our clients often held physical marketing events such as activations, product launches and company events, and immersive experiences on a permanent basis such as a technologically advanced corporate showroom. However, the pandemic has not allowed many to effectively reach out physically.

This has resulted in the shift towards advanced digitalisation based on an omni-channel framework, and we foresee this to continue beyond the year. The two major trends are:

1. A need for an established one-stop provider of solutions and services that can power an omni-channel campaign or event that is capable of reaching out to a greater audience physically and digitally with no location and time boundaries.

2. Interactive experiences that are hygiene friendly, whilst still being able to offer a greater experience than before.

What are some of the trends you see carrying on post-pandemic, and how are you readying your workforce to be ready with these trends?

Goh: Virtual and hybrid events will definitely be here to stay. As companies start to embrace such events, many will start to realise the benefits of utilising technology for their events.

Over the years, Trinax’s vision has always been to equip our people with the most relevant skill sets and tools to work in an environment that adopts a design thinking approach, and to serve our clients with zest and profound know-how. This definitely helps us when it comes to implementing new and interesting technologies into our solutions.

All in all, we will look to continuously evolve our solutions, especially our virtual events platform, to provide the most experiential and up-to-date solutions for our clients.

What do you think makes for great marketing these days?

Goh: At Trinax, we believe it’s a balanced concoction of understanding the business objectives, putting your empathy hat on, and of course, creativity.

Firstly, it’s important to understand the business objectives so you know how to address it. Next, you need to understand what your target audience feels, and what appeals to them. Once these have all been deciphered, it is then crucial to implement the right technologies that can be as effective, impactful and creative as it can be.

Being unorthodox at times is also crucial to our business.

How are you planning for 2021?

Goh: We expect the trend of virtual and hybrid events to continue. Trinax will look to build on the momentum for our proprietary virtual event platform and solutions. As the industry continue to evolve amidst the pandemic, we will also actively anticipate the return of physical interactive experiences. These includes the likes of interactive galleries, smart & gamified redemption machines and more. Overall, we endeavour to adapt with the industry and spearhead the future of interactive experiences.