GE Healthcare mirrors the magic of its RSNA presence with real-time interactive features.

Creating a successful event website is about bringing the immediacy of real-world brand experiences to life online.

Click here for more information about GE Healthcare and the RSNA conference.

The annual RSNA conference attracts potential diagnostic imaging customers from around the globe. And it’s an important event for the GE Healthcare brand (80-90% of the company participates).

To make sure its employees and customers stayed connected, the company peppered its website with Twitter, blogs and custom-built features that catered to attendees’ individual needs.

“We wanted to take advantage of what’s going on in social media and decided to put a lot of different components into the site that would cause people to join the conversation,” according to Jim Salinsky, marketing communications manager at GE Healthcare, in EVENT MARKETER. Salinsky would tweet real-time interviews he conducted on the show floor and breaking news to transport the live experience online. “People that couldn’t come to the show said they could experience it just like anybody else by visiting the website.”

The company also allowed customers to customize their show experience both on- and offline. Via its On The Show Floor interactive map, customers could zoom in on specific product areas to pick and choose what products they wanted to learn more about.

Customers unable to visit the booth could still take a deep dive into product features while customers at the show could print a hardcopy to make better use of their time at the booth. Customers could also personalize their experience by selecting the My RSNA feature. Users created a profile then added products to their page and, for those going to the live event, scheduled sessions to attend during the show.

The 2008 RSNA website saw triple the traffic compared to previous years. Before and during the event, the website received about 2,000 page views per day. In the first two months the site was live it generated more than 31,500 page views. The website is still being used to give potential customers access to product information.

Next month, more than 650 health, science, and technology companies will exhibit at the RSNA 2009 meeting to be held November 26 to December 4 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Philips Healthcare connects its RSNA presence to online audiences

One way health, science, and technology marketers can extend the impact of successful events is by bringing the immediacy of real-world brand experiences to life online.

In 2008, Philips Healthcare debuted a new website at RSNA. On it, customers can browse its portfolio of products and watch videos, click to see what’s new at live events and use an email tool to share their experiences with friends or colleagues.

To differentiate its website from competitors’ sites and to create a sense of consistency, friendliness and human contact from the live event to the web, Philips hired an actor to deliver its messages both on and offline. The voice belongs to Aaron Weiner, the actor hired to do the introduction on the internal and external website, as well as appear at live events.

Jeffrey Masters, senior manager-global event marketing for healthcare at Philips, told EVENT MARKETER magazine, “It’s important to our customers that we speak in one voice all the time, and Aaron is somebody they can connect with. The concept for the websites is to make this a continual context strategy, so that if current and prospective customers came to us and saw us at RSNA and came back to us at another event they’re going to see Aaron again and start to build a connection.”

Click here for more information of what's new with RSNA.


Over 650 companies will exhibit at the RSNA 2009 meeting being held November 29 to December 4 at McCormick Place in Chicago.