Goldcast

Raymon David's official title may be Senior Director of Marketing Operations, Digital Demand and Analytics at LG Electronics, but he's quick to refer to himself as "the janitor."

What he means by that is that he's typically brought in by companies to clean things up and figure out where to go next in terms of scaling—and his time at LG has been no different. So, when it came time to transition from a prior events platform to Goldcast, you can guess who was there, leading the charge!

We caught up with Raymon to discuss how Goldcast helped him run a big internal event, and where he hopes to go in the future with Goldcast as a partner.

This is one company that likely doesn't need an introduction, but we'll start here anyway!

LG Electronics is a global innovator in technology and consumer electronics with a presence in almost every country and an international workforce of more than 74,000. LG’s four companies–Home Appliance & Air Solution, Home Entertainment, Vehicle Component Solutions and Business Solutions–combined for global revenue of over KRW 80 trillion in 2022.

LG is a leading manufacturer of consumer and commercial products ranging from TVs, home appliances, air solutions, monitors, service robots, and automotive components. Its premium LG SIGNATURE and intelligent LG ThinQ brands are familiar names world over.

LG hosts a wide array of events, including webinars, live and virtual events, and tradeshows aimed at attracting business owners, solution providers, and other professionals. As may be expected for a company of its size, the company also hosts a number of internal events.

Raymon has built his career around answering the question: How do we create meaningful engagement between companies and their audiences? This North Star has led him to examine digital and non-digital touchpoints and seek out technology that can support him in fostering engagement.

During his time at LG, he has focused on how to use technology to support a scalable process that brings people into the fold. "One of the key elements is obviously a virtual experience like a webinar or event,” he says.

Yet an issue he ran into with webinar platforms time and time again was that they fell flat. The platforms and presentations felt cold to him.

"What I mean by cold is that I think we've all been conditioned to just be a participant—and that's a challenge, right? Because 75% of the time, we're all multitasking during the event. That's the other problem with being on a webinar experience. It's not Netflix, where we're captivated to watch every episode. To be honest, I'd given up because I had that same cold experience on every webinar platform, until I saw Goldcast."

Once he sat in on a webinar that was hosted on Goldcast, he could immediately sense something was different. He saw GIFs, photos, and emoticons flying across the screen. People were engaging, and he found himself engaged in turn.

The host eventually threw out a poll, and because of the pre-engagement that had gone on,everyone chimed in because they already felt like part of something bigger.

After sitting in on just one webinar run of Goldcast, he was so intrigued that he deconstructed the registration URL and immediately requested a demo. He was guided through the entire Goldcast experience, and saw for the first time that a webinar could provide the same Netflix-like, bingeable experience he'd been craving.

Although he saw the demo months ago, it’s stuck with him as a great overall sales experience. “I was so enamored by it, I asked our sales rep Mikaela to do a virtual demo using the platform to my whole team, and everybody joined,” he shares.

He remembers getting some pushback during the huddle before the demo, with people asking, "Why do we need this? Isn't this just another WebEx experience?"

After seeing Goldcast in action, however, people dropped their resistance. They were totally on board about switching to Goldcast and bringing that type of live experience to their audience.

"From there, obviously we signed up very quickly," he recalls. "I hope we won the record for the fastest sales pitch!"

The team didn't have to wait long to host their first Goldcast event. At the time, they were getting ready for an internal sales kickoff in a hybrid format, and he wanted to do that on Goldcast.

Thanks to Goldcast’s modern tools and functionality, LG was able to easily connect Goldcast with their own technology, such as LG gram, LG Direct View LED, and more during their hybrid event. In the past, other platforms were not able to do this easily or effectively. According to Raymon, “Goldcast fosters a production mindset. It provides us with a mini broadcasting environment that allows us to quickly set up a camera, pipe into the platform, and broadcast out.”

For this first event, the attendees showed up thinking it was going to be another run-of-the-mill meeting, only to discover the Goldcast difference.

"Our first session presenter was a very energetic guy," he remembers. "His energy, coupled with the Goldcast experience, was already different. It looked different from other platforms. Then, as the sessions progressed, the engagement started to pick up."

Chatting ramped up. Emojis were dropped. GIFs started to be shared. This was a huge leap for everyone who was still used to the days of boring, unengaged webinars!

By the last session of the event, Raymon was delighted to see GIFs everywhere, clapping hands popping up on the screen, and people engaging at every turn. "Everybody was full in," he emphasizes.

Going forward, he plans to use that internal experience to scale across the company. Different sales teams will host regularly scheduled webinars with their own audiences, bringing the Goldcast and LG experience to more and more people each time.

Beyond boosting engagement with the webinar experience, LG has seen the following benefits since switching to Goldcast:

• The experience of gathering data is more polished and seamless
• Uploading content into the platform is faster, agile, and easier than before
• The Goldcast team is easy to reach for support and far more responsive than any other platform
• Presenting is easier thanks to an intuitive interface and tools

The support provided by the Goldcast team has also been a big differentiator. "Goldcast is listening. That's a big difference. The team was listening and prompting me in the beginning, even when we didn't respond because we were so busy doing different things.”

One great, yet unexpected, benefit of using Goldcast has been eliminating the phrase "next slide, please" during LG virtual events. “Now, there’s one less disruption to the presenter and audience,” he states. “It is super easy for a presenter to press the next button to advance their own slides. Such a simple thing but the impact has indirectly created a better experience.”

Impactful tools and features like what he described above keep the LG team excited about the Goldcast product every time they log in.

This is just the beginning of an exciting new phase of LG webinars and events. Raymon's got a pipeline of webinars on the calendar, and he's looking forward to seeing what happens next, although he's not oblivious to the potential challenges.

Most people are used to the way that webinars have always been done. "If we start talking about a quadrant view of where solutions are on the continuum, Goldcast is way up there as being the first visionary, right?" he states. "The problem is that the pack—everybody else—is down there with the status quo of what's accepted.

"Goldcast is shifting this space, and it's an early adopter of going knee-deep into pushing engagement. Everybody else talks a game, but they're cold. They are distant. But the audience has been conditioned to that."

He saw this challenge even within his own team. People expected Goldcast to behave like Zoom, but it's not meant to. It's meant to engage people and get you to be present with what's happening in the moment.

Over time, people will adapt and their expectations will change, but any new shift brings some resistance along with it. At the end of the day, Raymon is happy to have shifted from an old, cold technology to a sizzling-hot, engaged experience platform—and we couldn't agree more!