Dedicated to promoting diversity in the advertising industry, the first 3% Conference in 2010 took place when three percent was the percentage of women in creative director roles. Two hundred people attended that first event in San Francisco. By 2019, the Chicago event drew 1,300 attendees and the percentage of director-level minorities and women had reached 29%. Buoyed by this progress, conference planners were gearing up for the biggest 3% Conference yet when the pandemic turned the event industry upside down.

That’s when the 3% Movement and the Proper Planning team, a full-service event planning company, decided to take bold action. Rather than host the 3% Conference on their planned date in November, they moved the event up to July. So while many events were postponing or cancelling, they seized upon new opportunities to put on their largest conference yet. They realized that with a virtual venue, they were no longer tethered to a date by a venue reservation. At the same time, they recognized that much of their planned content was relevant to the historic moment that was summer 2020. But moving up their largest conference by several months is no easy task. The challenge for the Proper Planning team was finding proven, reliable conference planning software that could support this ambitious goal.

That’s were Hubb came in. Lynn Edwards, the founder of Proper Planning, had been working with Hubb for years and knew their virtual event software was both robust and ahead of the curve. “There were a lot of software companies touting platforms that were untested and created by people without industry backgrounds. Hubb has planners on their development teams who understand how users want to use the platform,” said Edwards. With Hubb at their side, the 3% Movement and Proper Planning was able to create an impactful and immersive virtual event and attract new, big-name sponsors.

Edwards and her team were able to virtualize everything from a networking lounge to vendor booths to presentations with breakout rooms and one-on-one sessions. “The Hubb platform helped us to easily create whatever kind of connection people were looking for,” said Edwards. Oh, and remember how the year before, they drew 1,300 attendees. Well for the 2020 3% Conference, they attracted 15,000 people, more than ten-times the record setting mark. 

If you want to learn more about how Edwards and the 3% Movement knocked their 2020 3% Conference out of the park, you can hit play on the video below, or even better, head on over here to view the case study itself.