Artistic Expression and Experiential Interaction - The Keys to Setting an Engaging Mind-frame for Guests
This is a simple, but important, notion. Whatever your internal goals are for your event, your attendee’s journey needs to be No.1. Every. Single. Time.
Whether your attendees are your customers, your employees, or your competitors, every opportunity your brand has to shine should be taken. And not just taken, but enhanced and made special. This might sound self-serving, but stay with me. A bad event (boring, poorly planned, status-quo) creates bad will for your brand, while a good event (innovative, artistic, experience driven) can act as a true separator between you and your competitors.
The live experience is a reflection of so much more than the content on stage or the people who you have presenting it. It’s your brand’s opportunity to showcase current products and services as well as your future-focus. It allows you to highlight smart partnership alignment between your brand and others. It pushes brand loyalty in a direct way and hopefully only reinforces ethos. Well...it should do all these things, and if it is not, consider yourself lucky for all the growth opportunity.
Think about the best events you have been to. Now filter those into your own approximate budget size. What do they have in common? I’d wager the best ones had an artistic vision and interpretation of the brand / brand ethos & an experiential moment / activation that allowed you to consciously, and subconsciously, form a more powerful connection with the brand. Consciously because you likely thought the activation engaging...enough to post about it personally or let people know you are some place doing something with the brand. Subconsciously because you will almost certainly reference the activation, or even try to mimic it yourself, some time down the road. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, after all. Either way, those are powerful behavioral queues and they engender long-lasting brand impact.
So do yourself a favor, and promote/invest/challenge your teams to incorporate more artistic expression and experiential interactions. Your attendees crave it, your events array could use the differentiation, and your brand needs it. The investment will pay off, as long as you are tracking and assigning the right metrics. Strive to be different and embrace uniqueness.