What event could be more important than the Cannes Film Festival to a French film group as iconic as UGC? Every year, it's about meeting the who's who of the entertainment industry. To do so, every night of the festival UGC welcomes its distinguished guests in the famous Villa UGC. Let's see how they use Digitevent to manage this beautiful event.

Initial stakes ...

For years now, Villa UGC has been a must-see place in Cannes for influential figures from the world of cinema. With the event's continued success, strategic and organizational issues emerged:

  • Allow each member of the organizing team to manage their guests at any time, avoiding duplicates and respecting the rules of invitation.
  • Managing different tiers of invitees (from the guest for a specific party to the super-VIP)
  • Maximizing participation in the event
  • Controlling access and making the reception more fluid
  • Be notified of the arrival of some VIPs
  • Utilizing data

Management of the guest list by the organizing team

Before the festival, a member of the organizing team was able to add an initial database of potential participants to Digitevent via an Excel file import.

Several custom fields are created to be utilized during the festival: Typology (VIP, super-VIP, blacklisted ...), Name of the inviting person, Commentary, Mobile phone ...

During the festival, the project manager at UGC shared access rights to his team members to manage the event on Digitevent. They are responsible for distributing and managing invitations on the water during the festival. They can add or modify a participant, restrict the invitation to certain nights only, allow an attendant, etc. Each update is done in a few seconds and can be done from any device, computer, or smartphone.

Maximizing participation in the event

Before the festival, a member of the organizational team was able to add an initial database of potential participants to Digitevent via an Excel file import.

Before each evening, an SMS and a reminder email (with the dress-code, the access plan, etc) is sent. Recipients are filtered via Digitevent to target privileged guests. In addition, message variants are designed to customize the communication to each guest. Anglophones receive a message in English, and specific content is sent to actors and journalists!

Controlling access and making the reception more fluid

A personalized RSVP ("Please Answer") is sent prior to the Festival to refine the list of those who have planned to attend. This allows the operational teams to see and access upcoming meetings. Likewise, this makes it possible to exclude absentees from subsequent email information campaigns (evening information).

When a VIP comes accompanied, the host can easily check that the guest has the right to come with an escort. If this is the case, the guest is counted as present and his/her details are recorded for subsequent events.

Tablets synchronize automatically. If the connection were to be interrupted, the registration would not be affected and the data will re-synchronize as soon as the connection is recovered.

Be notified of the arrival of some VIPs

The organizers are notified by SMS in real-time when some of their guests are signed in at the entrance of the event. They can welcome them in person and not miss their arrival. Some guests also receive a welcome SMS automatically.

In addition, it is possible for each organizer to consult the arrival status of any guest at any time. They can also have a view based on specific criteria, in order to answer questions such as: "Which journalists are currently present?"

Utilizing data

In events, as in any profession, practices must improve over time. At Digitevent, we believe in the importance of data to make the right decisions.

Beyond the saving of organizational time, here are some lessons that have been learned by UGC following previous editions of the Festival. First of all, they were able to analyze the attendance of the evenings, according to the days and typologies of guests. This has made it possible to better predict the flows and to control affluence. Arrival statistics have also been linked to data from caterers and other providers.

Finally, the data made it possible to qualitatively evaluate the attendance and to provide details to the operational staff in contact with the guests throughout the year. It was helpful to know who came, how often, how many people, who did not respond to the invitation, etc.