Get Grafting Early for Event Engagement

I watch Love Island - there, I’ve admitted to being less than perfect! To be fair I have teenagers, who tend to run and hide when I initiate conversations about body image, sex and society’s fame obsession, so watching their shows with them helps that. But then I admit I also got a bit addicted to the sunshine and the inanities.

we are here to make connections

And while a lot of it is total crap, peppered with ‘it is what it is,’ and ‘I’m on a journey’, the latest catch phrase: ‘we are here to make connections,’ has got me thinking about my job as an event host.

Events are more than just a way for businesses to sell us things. They are human beings coming together with all their concerns and aspirations looking to do what we all, not just Love Islanders, do to make our time on this planet better; make connections with other humans.

reducing human beings to generic terms is dangerous

We’d be mad to ignore this fact but often we do. In the events industry, we talk about the attendee and the audience just as the NHS talk about patients, and charities talk about service users. It’s a convenient generic term, but reducing human beings to generic terms is dangerous because it makes us forget the key thing that makes them people; their humanity, their emotions, their feelings.

And we know that the way to get people to come together to talk about stuff, and then get moved to action, which is the reason events exist, is to tap into those feelings.

We do that by speaking to them as individuals, making the emotional connections the Islanders bang on about.

all business events should and will be hybrid

After 2 years of a kind of weird house arrest (Covid) we crave connections even more, hence my firm belief that the industry will grow and grow.?This is regardless of the type of event: in-person, live, digital etc., because to be honest all business events should and will be hybrid i.e. include a digital element. If we are to be fully inclusive, sustainable and grow our markets, we’d be bonkers not to, but that’s for another blog.?

People like me, emcees, we are needed because our raison d’être is to make sure those connections happen. Polls and interactive games and the like are all very well, but they will not do it all.

The event of the future, if not now, has lots of different hearts and minds, i.e people, attending in lots of different ways. If they’re not watching live in the room, they’re watching live at home while doing other things, or watching recordings at a later date, also while probably doing something else as well!

And it’s a challenge for an emcee to make all these hearts and minds feel special. So while I can’t share all my tips and tricks, here’s an idea of where I come from.

I started out in radio, and the late great Sir Terry Wogan attributed his success as a presenter to just talking to one person at a time. And every member of an event audience is also, regardless of where or how they are listening or viewing, just one person at one time.

The person in the live in-person audience is the easiest to engage because all their senses are there in the room with them and we’re meeting eyeball to eyeball. We humans like that, as we’re designed to pay attention to the closest person.

So it’s easier to make that person feel special isn’t it? The emcee can do that by picking different people out, ask them questions to their face, discussing a shared moment or experience, a quick bit of 'bants’ (Love Island speak for banter!) Harder to do with those at home or watching later right??

We want to make this person feel as special, if not more so, so we need to employ all we can to initiate this.?It takes research, it affects the language we use, the marketing beforehand, the use of social to start conversations with those physically removed from the room.?

Love Islanders talk a lot about grafting to get the girl or boy. And with events that grafting needs to start early.

Waiting until the day of the event, and then firing out lots of social requests for questions, comments, sometimes video posts, as most events do, is too late. People need to take their time, and remember those who will watch the later recordings aren’t there on the day, so you can only engage them before the event.

And it makes sense from all angles to get involved in pre-event engagement. Often the magic to a fireside chat, interview or a panel or a presentation is as a result of what comes before. When the emcee is in research mode, or we meet panellists and contributors for rehearsals and to build?chemistry.?

Sure if you’re a professional and used to events and public speaking, you can get up there and make a decent fist of it without having done any prep or had any meetings,?but if you really want to engage and keep everyone included, the preparation and pre-event stuff is vital.

It's like pre-holiday prep. You could rock up on Love Island, pasty, hairy and wearing an anorak and dad slides. But I wouldn't recommend it.