Interview with Márcia Ferreira
“The technical production area was the most fascinating.”
Mainvision’s communication direction is the position she currently holds, but till she got to the events area, Márcia Ferreira´s career had other stops, namely the coordination of a multinational company´s financial department.
But it was the communication area that most attracted her. “In that area I began with the window dressing and then I took more and more trainings. Some years ago, the academic area of events was a path with many curves: to have academic training in events I had to graduate in Marketing and Communication, then I did a Master in Communication Design to be able to do a thesis in Event Design. Today it’s all much more straightforward, fortunately!”, she tells Event Point. This investment in training allows Márcia Ferreira to combine her work at Mainvision with that of a teacher at Escola de Comércio de Lisboa, teaching Technical Production of Events and Marketing and Communication.
In the events sector she started as an event organiser at Connect. This experience made clear that it was in the technical part that she felt like a fish in water.
“The technical part was the one that fascinated me the most, perhaps because it’s the one I consider to have the greatest impact on an event, the one that has a direct link with the ‘wow’ effect that an event can and should have. The fact of knowing the organizers’ pains, because I felt them all, is still a facilitator for us today.”
The list of outstanding on-site events is wide, and they miss making them a lot, but if she had to highlight one, Márcia Ferreira points to the first digital event held at Mainvision’s studio. “Not only for the event itself, which was amazing, but also for what that event represented: the audacity we had, in such a short time, to transform, reinvent, overcome and present to the market a concept with the quality we managed.
It was remarkable because we were at the time experiencing a naturally unstable and insecure period where risking and investing was not exactly a net decision, but for us there was no other option: it was to go or to go, because we knew that the attitude of not reacting and giving up could last forever”, she says, summing up: “that first digital event tasted like overcoming”..
At Mainvision she is considered “the most demanding client”, but even the rigor she always imposes in what she does, does not exempt her from having some episodes in which the unforeseen happened. “Doing events for 12 years, we’ve already had some difficult situations, but they were solved thanks to the team we have. I would say that there are two ways to minimize problems: having a top team, because it’s the people who make the companies, and betting on planning because I think our area is where Murphy’s law applies the most”, she warns.
And a more hilarious moment?
“Still as an organizer I was in contact with José Cid to articulate his participation in a corporate event. My client insisted on negotiating the amount to pay him and José Cid at one point told me: Marcia, I’m going to ask you a favour, tell your client that I’m celebrating my birthday soon, and that I would love Madonna to come and sing at my party. But I have no money to pay her. So she’s not coming. It’s not exactly hilarious, but it was a relaxed learning experience that I’ve had for life, and I remember it so often, because of the number of times it happens, mainly in our area.”
15 MIN
Interview with Márcia Ferreira
“The technical production area was the most fascinating.”
Mainvision’s communication direction is the position she currently holds, but till she got to the events area, Márcia Ferreira´s career had other stops, namely the coordination of a multinational company´s financial department.
But it was the communication area that most attracted her. “In that area I began with the window dressing and then I took more and more trainings. Some years ago, the academic area of events was a path with many curves: to have academic training in events I had to graduate in Marketing and Communication, then I did a Master in Communication Design to be able to do a thesis in Event Design. Today it’s all much more straightforward, fortunately!”, she tells Event Point. This investment in training allows Márcia Ferreira to combine her work at Mainvision with that of a teacher at Escola de Comércio de Lisboa, teaching Technical Production of Events and Marketing and Communication.
In the events sector she started as an event organiser at Connect. This experience made clear that it was in the technical part that she felt like a fish in water.
“The technical part was the one that fascinated me the most, perhaps because it’s the one I consider to have the greatest impact on an event, the one that has a direct link with the ‘wow’ effect that an event can and should have. The fact of knowing the organizers’ pains, because I felt them all, is still a facilitator for us today.”
Missing face-to-face events
The list of outstanding on-site events is wide, and they miss making them a lot, but if she had to highlight one, Márcia Ferreira points to the first digital event held at Mainvision’s studio. “Not only for the event itself, which was amazing, but also for what that event represented: the audacity we had, in such a short time, to transform, reinvent, overcome and present to the market a concept with the quality we managed.
It was remarkable because we were at the time experiencing a naturally unstable and insecure period where risking and investing was not exactly a net decision, but for us there was no other option: it was to go or to go, because we knew that the attitude of not reacting and giving up could last forever”, she says, summing up: “that first digital event tasted like overcoming”..
At Mainvision she is considered “the most demanding client”, but even the rigor she always imposes in what she does, does not exempt her from having some episodes in which the unforeseen happened. “Doing events for 12 years, we’ve already had some difficult situations, but they were solved thanks to the team we have. I would say that there are two ways to minimize problems: having a top team, because it’s the people who make the companies, and betting on planning because I think our area is where Murphy’s law applies the most”, she warns.
And a more hilarious moment?
“Still as an organizer I was in contact with José Cid to articulate his participation in a corporate event. My client insisted on negotiating the amount to pay him and José Cid at one point told me: Marcia, I’m going to ask you a favour, tell your client that I’m celebrating my birthday soon, and that I would love Madonna to come and sing at my party. But I have no money to pay her. So she’s not coming. It’s not exactly hilarious, but it was a relaxed learning experience that I’ve had for life, and I remember it so often, because of the number of times it happens, mainly in our area.”