By Jennifer Beale All successful people say networking is the key to achieving goals. Given today’s ever-changing, high-tech, hyper-connected world, it’s never been easier to find the right people. But because everyone is bombarded with information and requests, it’s hard to get someone’s attention. And when you do, it can be even harder to keep it. Live events remain the best place to connect with the right people. Nothing can replace an event for getting noticed and initiating lucrative, long-term…
Event Operations
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Bringing it Home: The ROI of the Sales Conference
By Ben Moorsom When the sales conference is over and your teams are back in the field, are they applying what they learned? Selling is one of the toughest jobs in any organization. It requires the right mix of motivation, personality and skill to persuade a potential buyer to commit to a deal. And it’s a grind — pursuing leads, relentlessly following up, making them the right offer, all while keeping a close eye on the competition. It’s not for…
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Thinking in Concepts: Integrating a meeting theme from start to finish
From the spring 2018 issue of Corporate Meetings & Events Now that designing events has graduated to a degree of sophistication well beyond a simple colour scheme, there are countless ways in which to integrate a theme into a corporate event. People now talk about experiences, the new means of integrating a theme into a corporate event. Attendees are no longer satisfied to sit down at a dinner offering the three traditional courses. They want more, and that more can…
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Under the influencer: Planners are missing out on next-gen social media marketing
It’s the age of the influencer. Social media marketing has created a strata of social media users that leverage their online followings — some as small as 1,000, with others in the hundreds of millions — to strike deals with brands and organizations to not just promote their products, but to lend them some VIP verve and spark a conversation. It’s the celebrity endorsement evolved, and it’s marketing that’s tailor-made to engage audiences and follow through on brand awareness, the…
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Space case: Three principles for guiding spatial design for meetings and events
By Sheri Moore Today’s meetings and events planners face pressure on many fronts. That’s why our job is consistently ranked amongst top five most stressful jobs by Forbes. This trend is likely to continue as the industry is disrupted by technology, industry trends and market demands. For a long time, we have been expected to be magicians that can create unique experiences and affect spatial design that’s tailored to guests’ expectations, regardless of group size, profile or diversity of thought, and all while exceeding…
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Using the power of story to forge an emotional connection
By Ben Moorsom With the IMEX focus being on purposeful meetings this year, it was apparent, after attending many sessions and talking with all sorts of folks in our industry, that if we’re going to engage our audiences we must be really strategic with events and meetings. When we build experiences, we can better shape event design and flow in order to improve many areas of an event, including engagement, retention, restoration, understanding, energy and beyond. Neuroscience and psychology can play…
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All in the details: What to include in your venue contract’s event description
By Heather Reid Most venue contracts only capture the basics: the event name, the anticipated number of attendees and the official program dates. Unfortunately for most venue contracts, that’s insufficient. John Foster, a hospitality lawyer and certified hospitality marketing executive, says planners need to include a detailed event description section in their venue contracts that goes beyond the basics to include the particulars. It’s critical toward ensuring that planners, salespeople and venue staff are all on the same page, that…
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How to use real-time polling to enhance your corporate event
I was introduced to live polling in my first year of university during Psychology 101. Sitting in a lecture hall with 300 people, I responded to questions the professor put to the class by answering on a small remote, which immediately registered my response along with everyone else’s on a screen at the front of the hall. Polling was a quick way to engage us, and it encouraged us to pay attention. It’s a two-way street, too: He often used…
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Inclusive by design: Creating the perfect environment for all event attendees
By Mariela McIlwraith As event planners and designers, we create the environment in which our participants live, learn, share and innovate. In creating these environments, we have an opportunity to design them to be welcoming, inclusive and accessible in a way that encourages full and dignified participation for all. It’s not only the right thing to do — it’s also good business sense to expand your audience, improve the quality of your events, and strengthen your reputation. Here are some easy…
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Mindful meeting choices: The details that make the difference
Logistics are the bread and butter of a meeting planner’s diet. It’s easy to get distracted by the shiny objects of 21st-century planning – event apps, virtual reality, meditation breaks – but it’s well-executed basics and details that allow those elements to augment the show. Having attended my fair share of conferences, I can attest that it’s the little things that make or break an individual participant’s experience. Request a vegetarian meal and receive a surf-and-turf plate instead, pick up your name…
