Blog

How a fresh discussion format made a media event seriously memorable

We recently posted about the stale nature of industry panel sessions – how they’ve become somewhat identikit formats which don’t serve to stimulate new thought.

And how we created our own to tackle just this issue – 3sixty.

Shaking up stale panel formats

3sixty applies a fresh approach to industry events. It sees a moderator and four initial ‘anchor’ participants at the centre of the room, kicking off a discussion topic. There is no passive audience, instead the other invitees are seated around this ‘core’. At any point, they can raise their hands to challenge or feed into the debate, and take the place of one of the initial centre attendees when signalled by the moderator.

We applied 3sixty to one of the most persistent controversies in modern media planning: Has streaming killed traditional broadcast TV, and how must the industry reallocate energy and capital as a result?

Take us to the Island

Sabio hosts its annual industry CTV Summit for industry experts, innovators and opinion formers. The latest took place in Ibiza, and instead of involving a standard panel discussion, Sabio were keen to bring more energy to the room.

In deploying 3sixty to a session of twenty industry insiders, the discussion dynamic challenged the participants to explore likely unfolding strategies – an approach which allowed people to lean on their professional skills and knowledge as a starting point. It also encouraged people who may not have known each other professionally to mix, mingle, and get a sense of each others’ specialism.

Genuine insights

The collective insight from the debate yielded clear priorities for CTV direction over the coming years:

• Measurement Integration: Fragmented metrics between linear and CTV remain the largest barrier to efficiency; solving cross-platform attribution is more urgent than debating platform dominance.
• Hybrid Planning: Linear and streaming should not be planned or bought in isolation; operational teams must merge legacy broadcast knowledge with programmatic execution.
• Value over Inventory Volume: As inventory proliferates across FAST and ad-supported tiers, premium content environments that guarantee verified attention will command higher yield, regardless of delivery mechanism.
  This specificity was another aspect which 3sixty draws out of the room – the balance of people taking part and their various expertise combine to create focused outtakes and ways for the industry to evolve.

Proof of format

The Ibiza live event demonstrated how much value is potentially lost when events rely on outdated formats, and what can be gained by colouring outside of standardised industry lines. But don’t take it just from us. DJ Agahi, MD Global at Sabio said, “Incorporating 3sixty into our Ibiza Summit provided an exceptional shot of energy and enthusiasm, especially for an audience of senior leaders who attend a lot of events. These are people who know what good looks like. 3sixty cuts straight through any panel fatigue, and gets right to the heart of real, future-focused solutions. If you want high-value prospects actively leaning in rather than constantly checking emails, this is the format to deploy.”

Check out the video below to see the energy in the room when 3sixty is in action.