Author: Adam Sherlock
In case you didn’t know, I spend a lot of time at events. And I mean a lot. International congresses, exhibitions, product launches, conferences, brand activations, roadshows, awards nights, and on it goes.
Different audiences, different objectives, different budgets and many (many) different definitions of success. What’s not different is what happens afterwards. Or more accurately, what doesn’t happen.
One way we describe our role is helping organisations be seen, heard and remembered by the people who matter most. After enough of these, you start to notice that “remembered” is the word that resonates most and maybe the one we spend the least amount of time on.
People rarely talk about the things we’ve spent months planning. They don’t mention the theme, the app almost never comes up, and I’ve yet to hear anyone reminisce about a floorplan (maybe when we have gone in the round!). Don’t get me wrong, these things are vital and getting them right matters enormously. But getting them right is the baseline. An expectation.
What a delegate recalls is the conversation they had with someone they didn’t expect to meet. Or the speaker who challenged their thinking and gave them a fresh perspective to put into action the following week.
I still fondly recall a keynote speech from Sir Clive Woodward around ‘Teamship’ at a recent conference we planned. Having such an inspirational figure talk about what makes a great team stuck with me and still helps form my leadership style daily.
Have we as an industry become so focused on creating experiences that we’ve forgotten what we’re really trying to achieve? Memories. And should we, as the partners our clients brought in to help, be pushing this further up the agenda?
Creating something memorable isn’t about adding more content, more technology or more features. Some of the most memorable events I’ve been part of have been surprisingly simple. The teams behind them knew exactly who the event was for and what they wanted people to leave with, and everything else flowed from that.
Think about the events you’ve attended over the years. The ones that stayed with you probably didn’t have the biggest screen or the newest tech. Something clicked, and that’s what you remembered way after the doors closed.
Have we as an industry become so focused on creating experiences that we’ve forgotten what we’re really trying to achieve?
The irony is that as events have become more sophisticated, a lot of them have become more similar. Often, it’s the same formats and same ideas presented slightly differently. Which is a strange place for an industry built on creativity to end up.
So I think one question matters more than almost any other when we start planning. What do we want people to remember?
It sounds deceptively easy, but it changes every decision that follows. The conversation stops being about what else we can add and starts being about what’s really needed. This could mean that in the next KO meeting the first question on the brief is why will this be memorable for our delegates? What are we doing to encourage that?
Because once the presentations have finished and the stands have been packed away, what people take away is rarely the branded mints and absurdly large LED screens.
It’s the impression that stayed with them. Being seen and heard is the straightforward part. Being remembered is what needs work.
If there’s an event you still talk about years later, I’d like to know what made it stick.
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