What's the point of your meeting?
Event strategy consultant Sasha Frieze has a seven-step plan to help you get your story straight...
It’s been brutal: the pandemic, war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis, budget cuts – event professionals have been through the mill. But, as 'in-person' delegate numbers creep back to pre-pandemic levels, now is not the time for complacency. Just ask the US-based Entertainment Software Association, which cancelled its huge trade event, E3, in April, after big name-exhibitors started doing their own thing (live streaming their product launches) and pulled out of the show. One video game industry analyst told BBC News, the cancellation reflected the ‘declining relevance of a huge in-person trade show in the middle of June’. The lesson? If you fail to change when the world around you is changing, there’s no such thing as ‘too big to fail’. At its peak, E3 attracted 65,000 attendees.
Getting your event design process right can ensure you don’t lose sight of your purpose.
But what’s the process? What questions do you need to ask? How do you develop a bespoke event strategy? I’ve developed a process called the Event Narrative Framework that I use in workshops – seven questions designed to create a coherent narrative that communicates your event’s purpose. These are underpinned by the three building blocks of events: strategy, planning and delivery.
Events are a powerful tool for changing the world– and sometimes the challenge is knowing how to structure your thinking, collaborate with your senior stakeholders and articulate what you want to achieve.
Strategically planned events have their story hard-wired into their purpose, making it easy for people to connect, engage and remember them.
The Event Narrative Framework helps shape your thinking. Set aside a few hours, get the right people round the table, bring coffee, post-it notes, curious minds and creativity. Then begin: the seven steps to success:
1
Your participants – delegates, sponsors, speakers, exhibitors – are giving up valuable time to attend your event, often at considerable expense. But do you know why? When was the last time you really gave this question thought? Of course, some associations take their stakeholders for granted in this way. Don’t be complacent: ‘They’ll turn up. They always do’. One day, they might not. Post-pandemic is the perfect time to rethink and refocus.
You need to know how your participants’ experience will be transformative for them personally. Are they going to help change policy? Are they going to solve a particular problem related to their industry or specialty? Or is it about making valuable connections or building community? Focusing intensely on the journey you take your participants on, the transformations that your event enables is hard work – but worth it.
Spend time asking the question (what’s the journey?) in different ways to elicit different perspectives. Remember that at this stage there is no ‘wrong answer’; you want to explore the depth of your meeting’s purpose and dig deep to find its roots. Understanding the participant journey helps you tell a story that connects with your audience. And if you can encapsulate the journey into a well-articulated question that headlines the event, even better.
Working with associations, think-tanks, and not-for-profits, I have seen journeys ranging from developing a pipeline of effective collaborations, workshopping policy objectives and outcomes, creating interdisciplinary communities (I’d ideally like this one to have a little more focus) and creating toolkits to address change in the sector. Keep the journey in mind, it feeds into the outcomes later.
2
The second step looks at ‘journey’ through the lens of your organisation’s perspective.
Begin with the end in mind - use your journey thinking to establish your clear event objectives.
Why are you hosting this event? Do you want to build trust among diverse groups? Give people an identity as part of a specific community? Catalyse partnerships and perhaps the funding associated with bringing them to fruition? Post-Covid, many associations saw the ‘back to live’ opportunity as a place and space to re-energise and motivate their network.
A key sub-question is ‘why are we different?’ You’re likely to have competitor events and defining your USP, unique selling proposition, how you differentiate yourself from other players is important. Is yours the only event that brings together specific sectors or sub-communities? Is the breadth of attendees your differentiating factor? Do you have a policy perspective that you can’t get elsewhere? An important outcome of finding your why is to establish why you’re different.
3
With this in mind, let’s get clarity on your stakeholders. Look deeply into your market, map your ecosystem to understand the varied players in your world, and understand who’s a delegate, a sponsor or exhibitor, and who’s a VIP.
Creating a visual market map of your sector’s ecosystem is extremely helpful here; consider the following areas:
- Buyer side – your delegates. Think through the various categories, with example companies. Your core members are very likely to be at the heart of the buyer side
- Seller side – your sponsors and exhibitors. Organisations with a product or service to sell to your core audience, and the various supply chains within them
- Must-haves – who are the big names or organisations that you need in the room for the conversation to happen? This might be government or policy makers, academia, or other types of organisations that are specific to your sector
- Press – do you want a media presence? If you do, map out the trade press, bloggers, national and regional media
4
Next, start creating the outline of an experience that genuinely inspires change. Mapping out the various elements with your purpose and market in mind will help you create a must-attend event. And designing meaningful moments that tell your story will ensure that your event is both memorable and sticky.
Various approaches can be employed here:
- Design principles – are there any underlying principles that are specific to your organisation? Co-creation? Proportion of takeaway practical action? Level of interaction?
- Thematic – do you have key themes that the content might address in mind already? Do you want to design the content around them, or brainstorm session ideas and agree the themes from there? Or is there one substantive question or theme for the event?
- Content type – do you want a balance of keynotes, firesides, debates, panels, workshops, fishbowls, lightning talks?
- Soft and hard content – what’s the priority? Do you want to design the social requirements first (networking, social events, social spaces, opportunities for serendipitous encounters) or the hard content – the shape of the day, AGM requirements, event formats?
- You’ll also want to consider how you work with committees and how you bring them along with your strategic thinking, and- while the creative juices are flowing - highlight the rock star speakers that make your event a must-attend. Think big.
5
Leveraging your ecosystem map, start to build out a strategy for both marketing and sponsorship sales.
Use your market map to build out your Delegate Marketing Plan, your Sponsorship and Exhibitor Marketing and Sales Plan, your Audience Curation Plan and PR Plan, all with a more granular approach. Consider job-titles, seniority and geography as well as organisation type and size.
6
All the operational pieces should slot into place once you’ve worked on your bigger strategy and purpose. Can your venue choice connect to your purpose? Perhaps the social events can take place in relevant venues connected to your objectives? Can you use powerful production to share your purpose? How important is sustainability?
7
How will you measure the results and evaluate the event’s success? This crucial step helps you plan for the future, ensuring that your marquee event has genuine longevity and impact, and that you have the right stories to tell post-event. Split these into external and internal outcomes.
- External – examples include specific sector policy change by a specific date, creating a marketplace for event-facilitated start-ups or creation of particular community groups.
- Internal – examples include increased membership (specific metrics), increased journal submissions, attendance from specific sectors, social media brand mentions, percentage rebook for next year, pipeline of policy / business conversations to follow-up.
And there you go! Stick to these guiding principles and the next time someone asks, ‘What’s the point of your meeting?’ you won’t be struggling for an answer..
About the author:
Sasha Frieze is an award-winning event producer and event strategy consultant with decades of experience supporting associations, media owners and corporates. A Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Sasha is a Visiting Lecturer in Event Management at Westminster University and judges industry awards. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email [email protected]
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