Event-led as a Business Strategy for your Organisation

What is event-led?

‘Event-led’ is a term commonly used to describe the use of planned events to achieve certain objective(s). It could be a combination of different events or just the use of one single event over a temporary or fixed term period. Almost every organisation in the world had employed events for their businesses, or to use it to support an area of their businesses. Others had participated in at least one external event as a corporate in a single year. In a corporate setting, being event-led is not uncommon or unknown, however, what is missing is the conscious thought of an Event-Led Strategy that provides the holistic view of using events as a vehicle to drive organisational goals and the actual management of it.

What is an event?

Just what is an event? Mind you that we are talking about planned events here. I am sure everybody knows what an event is, but truly, what does it actually do? At least, let’s talk about it in the business level.

1)     For Direct-Marketing; Events such as tradeshows and exhibitions are great ways to meet potential clients directly in the right setting and at the right time. From the marketer’s point of view, it is a great method to generate quality number of leads over a short time.

2)     As direct vehicle of revenue; Many events generate revenues directly or involved a number of suppliers required to deliver a certain on-site event experiences. Common ones are such as tentages suppliers, stage and backdrop suppliers, AV and lights suppliers, to F&B caterers etc. The list goes on and on across a whole chain and network of different businesses. Hence, professional organisers are often hired to provide the specialty and fine-touch that creates lasting impressions to event attendees.

3)     Knowledge-exchange; Technology advances had made the world more connected, but it had also made direct human to human interactions much much lesser. Is direct interaction required, or just something that is now undesired in this fast-moving world? I am not sure, but in the business world, would you spend company’s money to purchase for your company without actually meeting in person to talk about the product or services? All the more, events such as industry conferences, press conferences, forums, town halls, product launches etc. are becoming even more important in an age where knowledge and time is of the essence.

4)     The sanity of it all; We have not talked about how events came about, have we? Why does it even exist and who came up with the first ever event in the first place? Can we trace history back to uncover about event origins? What does event studies say about this? Perhaps some million years down, we could answer this. Or perhaps right now, we could think of event as a natural human need; pretty much like food is to satisfy hunger. Which levels of Maslow’s hierarchy does it fall into then? Something to think about in another point of time. Nonetheless, Events is an escape from everyday routine. It is necessary and totally sane to attend one. Don’t believe? Try arguing this --> Humans crave for events because it is stimulating for the soul.

The Event-led Strategy

Businesses had employed events for some time in their organisation. So why now do we start thinking if we have an event-led strategy or not? What difference does it make? A well-planned event-led strategy provides a holistic view of all events happening in the corporate for a certain time period. It could be for one year. It could be for four years if that is the duration between leadership structural change. In an event-led strategy, we think from the whole and narrows down to each individual event, then to actually laying out the finer essentials. Over the specific time period, we could consider what is the objective of the organisation, what is happening in the organisation, what is the priority then for the huge number of events we have, which should actually happen first considering windows of opportunities and potential threats and challenges, how much budget do we have in total, which event to spend more or less on, which event do we actually need to lay more focus on etc. and so one and so forth. A possible simple strategy could go:

Organisational Goals for the time period = (Event Objective Vs Priority Vs Budget)/Event 1 + (Event Objective Vs Priority Vs Budget)/Event 2 + (Event Objective Vs Priority Vs Budget)/Event 3 …

Hence said, strategy could change after end of the time period and a new one could be strategized after that with completely new goals, priorities and budget. Again, all these are considered from a holistic viewpoint which eliminates the biases from a single angle say if; in the status quo, different events could be planned from different departments in an organisation. A training event could be planned from the Organisation Development Department which carries a certain objective. A town hall corporate event could be planned from the Corporate Administration (or commonly the Corporate Services) Department. Again, the department have another set of objectives. Likewise, the Marketing Department could be planning to participate as a tradeshow exhibitor. See the trend here? Different objectives, different priorities and different budgets. Is a department ready to contribute excesses from planning an event to another department? How are event objectives measured from within each department and from whose objectives would it be; is it the department’s objectives or organisation’s objectives? How about priorities of departments vs priorities of the organisation? What is the agreement level between each department in terms of objectives vs priorities vs budget? Do know by now, that we don’t know many things here. A fuzziness exists which simply explains why it is hard to measure an event, why an event is always successful yet statistics may show falling attendee participation or satisfaction levels etc. Without an Event-led Strategy, we probably do not truly know if an event is even maximising returns (not just in monetary terms), or spending just enough to meet goals, or if an event is actually driving an organisation forward, simply because of the failure to see things in a holistic manner.

What now? Should we have an Event-led Strategy?

That said, having an event-led strategy may not be suitable for just any organisation. Think about your key trade-offs; How many events do your organisation plan and participate in a year? What are the returns and expenses from such events? What is your organisation structure level? Can the organisation spare to have another Department who can lead in this Strategy? What does past event statistics tells about your operational efficiencies? Is it really positive? What are the potentials from each event returns vs actual? Does random checks on event expenses reveal poor spendings in certain areas? Have a think through these questions.

Concluding remarks

What are your thoughts after reading this article? Talk to me. Share something productive. ??

Does your organisation already have an Event-led Strategy? How does it differ?

Would you be keen for your organisation to have an Event-led Strategy? How would you start?

What other benefits for an Event-led Strategy can you think of?

What are your personal key take-aways from this article? Any inspirings? I certainly hope to learn from you.

I hope you like this article. Share it. Spread the knowledge. ??