The right event, the right audience and the right location can make an impact that’s hard to achieve any other way. Carina Phillips asks the experts how to achieve perfection.
Trapeze artists, caricaturists and a rodeo bull – it seems you really can expect the unexpected at work-related events these days. Businesses are looking for points of difference: ways of promotion that distinguish them from the competition and draw in the target market. Creating, sponsoring or taking clients to events can help achieve this.
The only problem with corporate events is the fact that they are corporate – occasions that attendees may feel they need to be at rather than want to be part of. It can take more than the nifty skills of a close-hand magician to shake off the perception of tired formats and familiar faces. But fresh thinking is instilling focus, imagination and even fun into the time spent with colleagues, contacts and clients.
So how does a corporate event become a great event? Well, it’s all about planning and arranging an event that matches the audience and the investor’s aims. Matthew Wordley, director of events organiser Push4 Group, says: “Events are becoming much more targeted. There is so much choice that people have realised they have to make their event fit the demographic to make it work.”
Making it work means offering value in terms of time and money. The event has to offer value, especially now that networking, entertaining and advertising activities are being scrutinised and belts tightened.
“Previously people wanted to be seen at as many events as possible, and client hospitality budgets were an almost bottomless pit,” says Richard Matthews, director of Total Sport Management. But the credit crunch has changed that completely. People are now doing one or two carefully selected events in a scaled down way.
This is about public relations as much as the bottom line. Many companies don’t want to be seen behaving extravagantly during a recession. They may have the budget, but they are careful about how they spend it.
“The main driver for events at the moment is the potential to do business,” says Matthews. “Glamorous reward parties and anniversary celebrations have been put on the back burner.”
Sponsors are being particularly selective. Those continuing to spend often want carefully conceived packages for the right events with enough lead time to generate pre-event publicity – but it’s worth it, according to Matthews.
“The margins of profitability without a major backer can be so slim that almost right until the final deadline attracting attendees remains the main priority,” he says.
Getting partners and participants on board is now more dependent on creative thinking during the planning stage. “There’s a lot more scope with a bigger budget but you can still get pretty clever on less,” says Wordley. “The key is to make sure you are doing something different. You want to hit people with the right message. If done imaginatively, this gives you a good product to sell.”
At the design stage there are certain basics you just have to get right. The time of year, day of the week and time of day for an event are all critical. There are some to avoid at all costs. Summer is holiday season, November and December are busy, and book it for Monday morning and guests may forget to turn up after the weekend.
Great events take busy working schedules into account. “People are more short of time than ever before, so you need to make sure that every minute counts for the attendees,” says Kate Sullivan, account director at Equinox Public Relations.
“People expect to be educated, they want to network and they want a return on their investment, but it needs to be condensed.”
Busy guests don’t generally want to be travelling to far flung venues or navigating a difficult or slow route. According to Matthews, venues in more remote locations can suffer because of the consideration of additional transport or accommodation costs. Then again, the right event in an overlooked location means you can attract people who don’t go to the usual corporate bashes.
But a good location alone doesn’t make an event. “There are certain facilities the venue just has to provide, such as parking, good facilities, efficient staff and great food, but it also needs to have an ambience suited to the occasion,” says John Lloyd-Jones, HSBC’s regional PR Manager.
For instance, a black-tie event deserves a black-tie venue. Equally, a venue must lend itself well to the event’s overall strategy. Wordley suggests that if one of the objectives of the event is to get media exposure, booking somewhere imaginative or unusual will give you a better chance of securing coverage.
As we become more attuned to what we want from an event, venues are coming under pressure. “The choice of more four and five-star hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants and destination bars means we have all become connoisseurs and critics,” says Matthews.
For the iPod generation that often means technological wizardry. “Event-related technology has been around for a while, but it is getting slicker and more accessible,” says Wordley. “Interactive voting systems are much easier to get hold of and delegates can use online tools to communicate with each other before and after a conference, plus Bluetooth is being used to send information directly to delegates’ phones during events.”
Matthews believes audio-visual input at events can turn a traditional dinner into a memorable multimedia brand experience, saying: “When you are paying the equivalent price of a concert or a cup final ticket, the customer deserves to be entertained as well as fed.”
But people still like the same types of entertainment they did a century ago, such as a great speaker, great music or an entertaining comedian. That speaker or comedian really needs to understands the audience. Make this speaker or comedian a celebrity and you’ll be laughing in more ways than one. “A celebrity can provide the unique selling point that makes an event the one that people choose above the myriad of alternatives,” says Matthews.
Being in the company of a celebrity generates excitement in most of us, but it helps if they are in the public eye right now, and in Wales, the sportier the better. Guests would rather be around the sports star they watched at the weekend than reminiscing with the greats of old, adds Matthews.
To the uninitiated at least, the idea of putting on a great event may seem an intimidating challenge of having to please all the people all the time.
The extraordinary levels of planning, attention to detail, strategic thought and people/project management that goes into pulling off great events of all sizes are channelled towards anticipating and satisfying the needs of those who have their own definitions of “great”.
There is always one cornerstone to every event that can really can make or break the occasion. For Lloyd-Jones it’s about timing. “Small delays add up and an event can start to drag,” he says. “Keeping on track is critical to keeping people happy.”
Matthews reckons it’s the catering. “If you get the food right you can be forgiven for many other aspects of the evening, but if the food is poor it will be the one and only part that is remembered.”
Underpinning all this advice is one fundamental truth: a great event needs to be relevant to all those involved.
Also in: May/June 2009
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