How the Luminaria Foundation and Texas Public Radio created a 9-hour streaming event to fundraise for artists affected by COVID-19.

About Viva SA 2020 Livestream

The VIVA San Antonio 2020 Livestream was a virtual event created by the Luminaria Foundation, Texas Public Radio, and the Lonesome Rose, a popular live music venue. The Luminaria Foundation had originally released relief funds for artists and musicians suffering the impact of COVID-19. Those monies were quickly exhausted and new fundraising efforts began.

The organizing committee decided a livestream consisting of three core parts would kickstart the next round of fundraising efforts. There would be a pre-show consisting of previously recorded performances from local bands. The main stream would be hosted by Garrett T. Capps, owner of the Lonesome Rose. That hosted stream would cut away to a mixture of live and recorded content from South Texas musicians and visual artists.

The goal of the stream was to showcase local artists and drive traffic to a donation page.

The Challenge

1. Creating a virtual event that contained the preshow, main show, and a clear call-to-action to donate.
2. Collect and display social media content from the dozens of organizations, bands, and artists that were participating.
3. Clear Call-To-Action for stream watchers to visit the donation page.

Additional Challenges

As with any event, in-person or digital, unforeseen challenges can occur. The VIVA Livestream had two surprise challenges.

Hashtag Disruption

In the days leading to the event there was a sudden uptick in foreign language traffic. A quick analysis found that a majority of the traffic was coming from South America. It seemed that a digital community in Brazil and Argentina had started using the hashtag for an activation. The community had a large number of members and was quickly drowning out local contributors with their content.

Livestream Crash

There was an issue with Youtube’s upload process around the sixth hour. The livestream crashed and organizers had to start a new stream which meant a new video link. This required stakeholders and participants to make a quick changeover to the new stream to keep engagement and momentum going.

The Solution

TINT worked directly with the stream project management team to support the virtual event.

1. A Virtual Event was built in the TINT Experience Builder. The event was customized to match the bright yellow and orange design of the VIVA marketing materials. Using Experience Builder’s modular design features, the team was able to include embeds to streaming video, social content, and a clear CTA button driving people to the donation page.
2. A list of all major sponsors and participants’ social handles were added to a TINT display to pull in content during the stream. With a large number of direct participants, the VIVA team was able to add handles, mentions, and hashtags to be aggregated during the event. Using the TINT Chrome Extension, the social team was able to discover and include content that did not include the hashtag or mention.
3. The CTA Button was clearly placed and that module was expanded to be even bigger, ensuring that no one missed it. Google Analytics data and UTM parameters were included to track web traffic.

Additional Challenges Easily Resolved

1. Hashtag disruption was not a concern with TINT’s easy to use content tools. The organizing team made a last-minute change to the hashtag, adding “SA” to make it more local. The connections were updated in TINT and content immediately started to flow in.
2. When the livestream temporarily paused, organizers simply added another “video block” module to the virtual event. After a refresh, the block picked up the new stream and maintained the viewer experience.