YEA! Impact
Meet YEA! Impact, a social impact agency that used RingCentral Events to take the entertainment industry’s fight against climate change to a larger global audience than ever before
Embracing a more sustainable future for the entertainment industry
YEA! Impact is a social impact agency that offers consulting, marketing, and production services to businesses that want to create social change. The company is the parent organization of Young Entertainment Activists, a hub for activism in Hollywood.
One of YEA! Impact's flagship events is the Hollywood Climate Summit, an annual four-day conference that launched in 2020 and aims to bring key players in the entertainment industry together to drive action around climate change. In addition to highlighting sustainable practices for filmmaking, the conference explores the role on-screen storytelling plays in creating a more sustainable future.
The summit connects activists, climate change groups, nonprofits, and sponsors, bringing members of the Hollywood community together to learn from one another and commit to change. The ultimate goal is to build momentum and encourage industry organizations to hold themselves accountable for committing to sustainability. Networking plays a significant role during the event, inspiring and informing attendees, plus supplying them with the knowledge and motivation to use their creative skills for good.
In 2020, the summit relied on several platforms to deliver its program to a local audience, but in 2021, YEA! Impact used RingCentral Events to add a virtual element to the event. This allowed YEA! Impact to make the event more accessible while maintaining the level of interaction and engagement associated with previous Hollywood Climate Summits. With this virtual component, YEA! Impact attracted a global audience spanning more than 20 countries.
I really liked that with RingCentral Events I could see what the future of conferences would look like [...] I could take a hike while networking with someone and participate in the conference without having to be in my bedroom.
Samuel Rubin
Co-founder and Chief Impact Officer, YEA! Impact
One of the things that we did to drive registrations was create a social media post explicitly saying that this isn't just a Zoom event and talking about all the different interactive elements that RingCentral Events offers.
Sania Irfan
Program Manager, YEA! Impact
Connecting an intersectional community of activists and entertainers
The 2021 Hollywood Climate Summit featured a jam-packed virtual agenda as well as an in-person “eco-bash” — YEA! Impact invited more than 60 speakers from the film, TV, and climate change sectors.
Presenters included activist and actor Rosario Dawson, Netflix sustainability officer Emma Stewart, PhD creative director and artist Jeremy Kamal Hartley, and Oglala Lakota poet Mark Tilsen. Speakers represented intersectional and intergenerational backgrounds, with people who’ve spent years advocating for climate justice appearing alongside younger organizations such as Extinction Rebellion.
Netflix was a headline sponsor at the 2021 summit. Many environmental organizations also had their own expo booths, including climate justice community Intersectional Environmentalist, sustainable production organization Reel Green, and volunteer network the OpenAir Collective. The summit's agenda featured musical performances, documentary screenings, and a climate change-themed role-playing game. Attendees who wanted to discuss feelings of eco-anxiety could head to the Climate Crisis Hotline booth.
Attendees were able to get to know one another on a more personal level using RingCentral Events one-on-one and group networking features.
That was the most successful part of the event. More than any panel or any discussion, 280 attendees alone were just on the networking, engaging one-on-one during either the networking hours or throughout the event.
Samuel Rubin
Co-founder and Chief Impact Officer, YEA! Impact
In addition, more than 1,000 comments were posted in the event's chat, with attendees from all over the world sharing their projects and hopes for the future. YEA! Impact highlighted some of these comments with graphical callouts during the summit’s livestream to spark further discussion. This helped pull forward stories from attendees who might not have had the chance to connect outside of a virtual environment, such as Indigenous activists who have been fighting against climate change for decades and who shared their stories with the global entertainment community on stage and in the chat.
RingCentral Events announcement feature also made the event easy to navigate, allowing event organizers to direct attendees to key presentations and partner organizations' expo booths. Speakers facilitated intimate conversation in small groups using RingCentral Events Sessions feature.
How RingCentral Events helped bring the entertainment community together around climate change
These are the RingCentral Events features that supported important conversations around sustainability during the summit:
- Stages: The summit showcased its flagship content using RingCentral Events event stage.
- Sessions: Small-group discussions took place in Sessions where attendees could connect and have intimate conversations with panelists and speakers.
- Audience engagement: RingCentral Events chat, Q&A, and polling features helped drive interactivity during the summit.
- Broadcast studio: RingCentral Events innovative broadcast studio — powered by StreamYard — helped YEA! Impact produce a customizable, TV-quality livestream where moderators could pull comments from the event chat and highlight them on screen to encourage further engagement.
- Integrations: YEA! Impact used Zapier to connect its Eventbrite and Airtable accounts for the summit’s ticketing and registration process.
- Expo: Environmental and entertainment partners hosted their own branded expo booths where they could speak with attendees and share their goals for climate change action.
Netflix was the sponsor of the summit. They had never used RingCentral Events before and their immediate reaction was, ‘Wow, this is one of the most refreshing tools that we’ve seen because you can connect with people. You can stay engaged and community build.'
Samuel Rubin
Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, YEA! Impact
Powering up a global movement to fight climate change
YEA! Impact experienced an overwhelmingly positive response to the 2021 summit, with 80% of registrants participating in the four-day event. Sponsors and partners were thrilled to connect with attendees and one another, describing it as a positive, intuitive experience. Praise flooded the chat during the event, and attendees gave the conference an average Net Promoter Score of 9.2 out of 10.
The 2021 summit was also a hit on social media, garnering more than 4 million impressions on Twitter, 15,000 views on YouTube, and more than 500,000 total engagements. A bonus? Multiple sponsors also found future employees at the event.
Thanks to RingCentral Events, the summit attracted its most global audience ever, with registrations from more than 20 countries. Many attendees were connecting for the first time, having previously been unable to join in person. The virtual component also provided YEA! Impact with invaluable event data and insights to guide their future global content and event strategy.
After the success of the 2021 Hollywood Climate Summit, YEA! Impact plans to use RingCentral Events for regular virtual and hybrid events to provide its community with more opportunities to connect and grow.
80%
Attendance rate
9.2
Average NPS
My favorite memory from the event was an Indigenous activist who was incredibly active throughout the summit [...] that made me feel really happy that RingCentral Events was allowing us, and our identities, the space to have conversations, to express their opinions, even if they weren’t on stage.
Sania Irfan
Program Manager, YEA! Impact
500,000
Social media engagements
8.5 Hours
average attendance duration
The metrics we received after the event were very positive, but what was even more positive was an immediate renewed commitment to do it again. What better indicator can you look at than if attendees are telling you, 'Give it to me again'?
Samuel Rubin
Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, YEA! Impact