technology so good you don`t even notice it

TECHNOLOGY
SO GOOD YOU
DON’T EVEN
NOTICE IT
Electric Run transports thousands of participants to
a different world with the help of ACTIVE’s event
management software
Dan Hill
Founder & CEO of Electric Run
“People are really hungry
for events where they
can participate in social
& visual ways. They
don’t want to spectate
they want to participate.”
Electric Run Background
Electric Run™ is a 5K run, a show, participation art, and celebration of life. The incredibly talented Electric Run team members
have created beautiful art and light for the Coachella Art & Music Festival, DreamWorks Animations, and some of Vegas’ hottest
shows. Each course has 5-10 distinct lighting experiences which are composed of different artistic elements to convey different
moods, ranging from energetic to ethereal. Each event is unique and transports participants to a different world.
Electric Run works with ACTIVE Network to get more participants to this incredible experience, manage the details of each
event, and build strong relationships.
CASE STUDY
ELECTRIC RUN
Q&A with Dan Hill, Founder & CEO of Electric Run
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START AS AN EVENT DIRECTOR?
I was at BYU studying economics and planning to go to grad school when one of my
mentors recommended that I start a business. I thought it would be really fun to do an
event like the Hood to Coast Relay, so I started the Ragnar Relay with my dad and Tanner
Bell. The initial event was in Utah in 2004 with 260 participants. From there, the event
kept doubling and tripling in size and we saw the opportunity to expand nationwide.
There will be about 20,000 runners at our Utah event this year (our biggest) we had to
add an extra day to meet the demand. In total, the Ragnar Relay Series has
15 events nationwide.
HOW DID YOU FIRST GET THE IDEA FOR ELECTRIC RUN?
Just last year (2012) I was ready for a new challenge. I was watching what was going on
with participant events and with pop culture in the country. People are really hungry for
events where they can participate in social and
visual ways. This is the “Go Pro” generation—people
want to ‘be a hero.’ They don’t want to spectate, they
want to participate. Spectator events are starting
to struggle whereas mass participation events (like
Burning Man, Tomorrowland or Electric Daisy Carnival,
which are art and music festivals with a participation
element) are exploding. That’s what people really
want right now—to participate with friends, snap a few
photos, and post them to Facebook.
I saw all this and knew I had the opportunity to do a
really cool, nighttime event. I wanted to create a truly
professional and immersive experience that would
keep participants coming back for awhile.
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WHAT SETS ELECTRIC RUN APART FROM OTHER EVENTS?
Electric Run is a world-class music and light show that also happens to be a running
event. We’ve been able to partner with lighting technicians that have worked on some
of the world’s greatest music festivals and have also partnered with Neff Headwear. Neff
has introduced us to a crew of DJs, celebrities and musical artists that have allowed us to
layer the musical element on top of everything else. For example, at the San Diego event
we created NeffMau5 Land, an awesome collaboration between Neff and Deadmau5 that
resulted in transforming a section of the course into a hyper-stylized wonderland pumping
Deadmau5 music and special light elements. It was something unique we’ve never done
before and helped transport participants to different worlds.
HOW HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO GROW SO RAPIDLY?
It’s a combination of things. Race
directors that I’ve known over the
years have supported me and my
friends at ACTIVE have introduced me
to people around the country as well.
That’s a huge component – having
logistical experience and connections
helps us move fast when expanding
to new cities, requesting permits, etc.
On top of that, social media really
gets the word out about events, much
faster that we used to be able to do it.
We’ve created something that is very
visually engaging and people “like” it and share it with their friends. And ACTIVE gives us
the national marketing network. Emails, articles & online advertisements pushed out to
ACTIVE’s database allow us to promote through even more channels.
CASE STUDY
ELECTRIC RUN
HOW IMPORTANT IS SOCIAL MEDIA TO ELECTRIC RUN?
Our entire event was built from the ground up with social media in mind. We want
participants to be social when they register, form teams, etc. Our courses are set up
to encourage photo opps and we don’t put professional photographers on the course
because we want people to take photos with their own phones and share them online.
Also, ACTIVE’s registration software is integrated with Facebook so when people sign up,
they can post to their Walls and recruit friends.
WHO IS THE TYPICAL ELECTRIC RUN
PARTICIPANT?
Our demographics are much more of a music
scene than a running scene. But we advertise to
both audiences and through our social channels,
we see both responding. Our post-event surveys
tell us that about half of our participants have never
done a running event before. Of those that have,
the majority do 1-2 events a year and a few do 5-10
a year. The interesting thing is that we see similar
results when we ask about music event attendance.
So I would say it’s more of a lifestyle crowd than a
running crowd, but it’s a mix. What’s happening with
running is fascinating. It’s not just runners anymore,
it’s everyone.
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE ARE PARTICIPATING AS A GROUP?
About 80% of our people are participating as a group or team. That’s one thing that
ACTIVE’s technology has been really helpful with. It’s really easy for people to sign up as a
team and then they can use the social media integration to invite friends to join them.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE ACTIVE?
I chose to work with ACTIVE because I feel that they are team players. I knew that if I
worked with ACTIVE they would do whatever was in the contract and also knew that there
would be an additional 15 things they’d do that would be game changers, without me
asking. And they have.
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I’ve seen various registration technologies out there that have seemed very hit and miss.
And I’ve seen registration technology providers who are also event producers, which is
scary to me. I don’t want another event producer with access to all of my data. ACTIVE is
a public company and knowing their ethos, I trust that my data is going to be treated with a
high level of confidentiality and professionalism.
HOW HAS ACTIVE HELPED YOU
MARKET ELECTRIC RUN?
As we expand one of the big burdens
is figuring out how to market in new
cities. We look at ACTIVE as our air
support. We know we can always
market to ACTIVE’s database in every
city we go to. It’s our initial marketing
foundation and then we start to hunt
down other ways to get the word out,
but at least we always have ACTIVE.
It’s really easy for people to sign up as a team & then they
can use the social media integration to invite friends to
join them. That’s a place where the technology has been
extremely helpful.
Dan Hill, Founder & CEO of Electric Run
HAVE YOU BENEFITTED FROM ACTIVE’S MARKETING SERVICES?
I get approached by an event registration portal once a week and I tell them ‘free wouldn’t
be cheap enough.’ The value that ACTIVE brings in marketing grossly outweighs the
expense. No one else has those marketing channels and we’re building our event series
on the back of that.
CASE STUDY
ELECTRIC RUN
WHAT OTHER BENEFITS DO YOU GET FROM ACTIVE?
We built our own system at Ragnar and you don’t realize how hard it is to keep a website
online when you’re getting bombarded with traffic. With Electric Run, we have days where
thousands of people sign up in a few short hours, and that includes registration as well as
eCommerce and all the compliance
issues that go along with it. ACTIVE
adds tremendous value because
they handle all of it—the registration
system stays up and is secure, even
with the huge volume coming in.
And then there are issues you wouldn’t
even think of. We collect money way
in advance for our events and banks
hate that. We ran into that all the
time with Ragnar. We tried several
different banks and each one wanted
to hold back a portion of our registration revenues because our events sold out a year
in advance. That’s a huge cash flow issue for a company that most people don’t even
think about. That’s eliminated with ACTIVE – the money just gets deposited in my account
every week, with no hassle at all.
HOW HAS ACTIVE’S TECHNOLOGY HELPED YOU MANAGE YOUR EVENTS?
Good technology you don’t even notice. That’s the biggest thing for me – we don’t think
about it and we never talk about it. It never comes up in meetings, it’s not a stress, and it
takes zero management. The event registration technology is one less thing we have to
worry about. We don’t have a chief technology officer here, we just use ACTIVE.
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF THIS INDUSTRY?
There are more and more of these fun runs and obstacle events popping up that may not
be well managed or have a sophisticated event director behind them. People don’t realize
how difficult and expensive it is to produce a high-quality event. I think participants are going
to get a lot better at discerning the good from the bad and will only want to do good events.
The events that prosper will have smart event producers. A lot of events will shut down
and some new high-quality events will emerge. But over the long run, events are going to
become much higher quality and there won’t be much
room for poorly run events.
I also think people will continue to want to do things
that allow them to participate and have awesome
experiences. Experience is the new luxury. Having a
Ferrari isn’t cool now. Cliff diving and filming it is cool.
It’s about doing something really rad and then posting
a photo or video online. I think ‘experience’ is going to
last a really long time.
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR ELECTRIC RUN TO BE ABLE TO SELL MERCHANDISE?
Being able sell merchandise (glow lights, glow sticks, face paint, etc) within the registration
path has been really incredible—we sell more through this channel than we do on event
day. It’s an awesome service for the customer because it’s a single transaction and they
don’t have to scour the web for a reputable company that sells this stuff. And for us it’s a
great revenue stream.
It’s really easy. We make it part of the check-in process, so we don’t have to deal with
shipping. We want it to be easy for people to wear the glow gear because the more
colorful and unique the event looks, the more it spreads virally.
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We hope we can keep changing it up and making
Electric Run a legit experience that people want to
come back to year after year.
Find out how we can help your event:
ACTIVEendurance.com