17.01.19 / Opinion
How to appeal and engage your audience creatively
Today’s audience’s are more sophisticated and have an expectation that an event will satisfy a multitude of senses. However, an experiential event is not created accidentally. For a truly a sensorial journey you need to a careful balance between catering to an audience while encompassing your brand’s values.
This is dependent on a number of key elements and Genie, the engagement marketing specialist, has created a plethora of events over the past two decades and has distilled the process using the following elements to ensure each campaign goes beyond the experience.
Understand the universe you are creating
Event managers in venues know better than most that every client will demand a unique space and yet there are only a finite number of event spaces available. Therefore the first challenge is to view the space creatively. ‘Theatre’ or ‘conference’ style terms are ubiquitously used when considering space, but consider if your audience should be standing, if they should be moving, dancing or participating in the proceedings. How do you want them to interact within the space you are creating?
Keep it Simple
Having a simple brand message relevant to the audience will help to make the event memorable, newsworthy and ultimately worth sharing with others.
Make the event immersive and playful
The traditional approach of sitting delegates in a room and having a key speaker talking at them for the afternoon is thankfully dead. The event itself should be engaging and fun for the guests – creating surprises and the unexpected, which are slowly revealed throughout the experience. This will allow the audience to emotionally connect. Ultimately, the experience should be executed in a way that it sells itself.
Make it worth sharing
The idea behind experiential marketing is to give the consumer enough content to allow them to slip into the role of a brand advocate, that is to they say, they can picture themselves as part of the brand. So before marketing managers sink their budgets into a experiential event, they should consider the content and whether they have enough for people to share across all media platforms.
Be Bold and Be Remembered
When it comes to the event itself the most important advice for any event manager is to be bold – embrace the concept of the campaign and delight, shock and surprise your audience – take them to new heights to ensure your event is always remembered.