Categoria: Event Planner Blog

For Events, Story Matters

For Events, Story Matters

Storytelling is often associated with entertainment, but stories are also a powerful tool for your event marketing toolkit.

Why? Because stories inspire people to take action. The right narrative can compel someone to attend your event and help them spread the word to others.

So how can you use stories to sell more tickets and registrations? It starts with understanding why they’re so effective.

Hardwired to Understand Stories

After centuries of oral tradition — telling stories around the evening fire and passing crucial information for survival — evolution has hardwired our brains to understand stories.

According to Dan and Chip Heath, authors of the best-selling book Made to Stick, stories provide mental training.

“A story’s power, then, is twofold: It provides simulation (knowledge how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act),” they say. “The takeaway is simple: Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it’s the next best thing.”

Put differently, if you want people to come to your events, share their experience on social, and develop a positive relationship with your brand — stories inspire those kind of actions.

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Putting Stories to Work

In his presentation, Storytelling: Using Creativity to Help Sell, Connect, and Differentiate, Craig Chaplin, Senior Creative Director of global branding agency Jack Morton, shared the secrets behind successful storytelling. His tips teach you how to foster creativity, garnering new ideas for your events by creating a story that sells.

Check out a sample of his best practices:

Kill Your Darlings.

William Faulkner once said, “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” No, he wasn’t advising you to commit a crime. Faulkner’s advice was for storytellers to cut the parts of their stories that didn’t serve the reader — no matter how near and dear to their heart.

What does this mean for your event? If something isn’t relevant to your audience — a session that isn’t valuable or a piece of copy on the event page that doesn’t help them — let it go.

Get Personal.

In the mid-2010s, Coca-Cola did the unthinkable and removed its iconic logo from the side of bottles and cans. The “Share a Coke” campaign personalized the beverages with 250 of the most common names and nicknames, giving customers a way to tell their own story and share an experience with someone.

Personalization stands as the ultimate way to immerse someone in the story you’re telling. So make sure to avoid sending emails addressed “Dear Attendee” and utilize technology that lets you get on a first name basis with them.

Use Hashtags.

When Petsmart toured the United States to interact with pet owners, they created the hashtag #inspiredbypets. As the Inspiration Waggin’ traveled from city to city, the hashtag acted like the binding of a novel, connecting over 100,000 inspirational customer stories.

If you’re planning on using a hashtag for your event, put some thought into it before you do. Chaplin tells us that hashtags can be a great way to facilitate conversations with attendees and encourage storytelling.

From captivating pitch techniques to creating authentic brand experiences, all aspects of the marketing and event process should be a part of a powerfully told story.

How to turn your event into a brand experience

How to turn your event into a brand experience

Audiences are no longer spectators, they expect more – to be a part of the action.

Branding an event is about keeping your key messages clear, and in the mind of your attendees.

You want them to remember the call to action and the company or product name long after they’ve left, so you can get the best return on your investment. That’s why it’s vital that any logo or naming is prominent throughout the event experience – prior to arrival, through the event itself, and at any other additional events such as dinner or awards presentations.

Your options have increased from the standard vinyl banners and signs, to now an almost unlimited palette of tools, so take advantage of the latest physical, social and digital opportunities to engage your audience.

1. Digital immersion

Immersive marketing is about creating an experience that totally captures your attention and digital techniques have all the power here. They’ve become the new black, offering a number of high-powered, large-scale projectors, projection mapping and flat panel displays that can catapult brands front and centre. LED walls, pixel mapping and digital signage are all techniques that can surprise and delight your attendees, and leave a lasting impression.

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2. Social immersion

The best way to define what makes an experience immersive is to see how it differs from non-immersive events – does the branding interrupt the flow of the event? Do the messages feel clunky or forced?

An immersive event will seamlessly and imperceptibly integrate the brand into every element of the event so capture your audience’s attention and let them create a buzz for you online.

If you can convince your audience to post the event’s content to their networks using your company or event’s hashtag, incorporating your graphics and spreading your message, then you will have gained some of the most valuable endorsement possible – word of mouth.

This sort of two-way communication encourages attendees to get involved and become an integral part of the event, thus immersing them in the event from a social perspective.

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3. Physical immersion

There’s still a huge range of applications for tangible, three-dimensional objects to support your message, and depending on your event, budget and brand they can sometimes be more effective than their digital equivalents.

People absorb and retain information from a book differently than a screen, and different people respond to various mediums, so cover your bases using physical displays as a solid reinforcement of your brand that can be touched and shared in way that an electronic image can’t be.

Consider whether or not your event requires stunt theming, or whether you can tailor these three marketing strategies listed above to create an experience that too immerses your audience in the brand and key messages of the event.

Using colour to create stronger audience engagement at events

Using colour to create stronger audience engagement at events

Have you ever noticed how some event spaces are especially relaxing and calming, while others tend to irritate or perk you up? There’s a good chance the colour arrangements in those environments are playing a big part. Interior designers have long known of the influence of colour on our emotions and state of mind—the same holds true when appealing to the senses of event attendees.

When we create a unique brand experience, we aim to produce customized experiences that deliver unique messages and tell stories. The more vivid and authentic an experience is, the more effective and memorable the outcome for event attendees. Leveraging the scientific correlation between colour and emotion can help us engage our audiences in new ways and boost the impact of our brand experiences.

Designing with the outcome in mind

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When harnessing this neuroscience knowledge, it’s important to incorporate it into your event design after thinking through the kind of reactions you want your audience to have.

How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to focus on?

When you know what emotions you want to evoke, it’s time to find just the right colour to fit the mood. A recent study by the University of British Columbia discovered that red boosts our attention to detail and performance on tasks such as memory retrieval, while blue enhances our ability to think creatively and encourages our ability to think outside the box.

Event design techniques you can try

Applying the psychology of colour theory to the environment of event design takes things up a notch and helps to ensure that you’ll get the response you’re looking for from your audience.

 

It’s important to consider what you ultimately want to achieve or evoke from the event to help you determine which colour palette is going to best help you achieve your goals.

Exploring different ways you can utilize colour to engage your audience in a scientific way is a small addition to your design plan that could reap big benefits post-event.

Think about your next event design—what colour can you connect with your theme and the way you want your audience to feel?