meetings & eventsmeetings & events

greatminds

There’s nothing like that euphoria a planner feels after a successful event. Those months spent in meetings, the phone calls, the emails, the road-blocks and their resolutions. It all came together. The execution team was on point! It seemed like every server and technician was in all of those planning meetings and anticipated every need like clockwork.

What if I told you that there was a way to inspire that same level of executional excellence from your supplier-partners every single time? And what if I told that you’re probably already using this tech-nique to reach your event attendee audiences?

The strategy is storytelling: Each event and meeting has a story. The protagonist (the attendee) is on an epic journey (the event) that they will experience through food, lights, sounds and ideas. There are heroes (the meeting holders) and villains (challenges the attendees are facing). Attendees will laugh, they will think, they will be inspired and they will dream. And the operational teams are the writers who will shape the stories.

Too often, I see event information relayed as

a laundry list—my meeting is theatre style, 300 people, catered lunch with a panel. There’s no soul in that.

I have immense respect for my supplier-part-ners—knowing that they spend more days on site in a month than I do all year. Their cumulative experience matters. It is always worth my time to tell the story of the meeting and make them feel invested in creating a great experience for our attendees. I start at the RFP stage, writing a narrative right through the initial RFP. I brief my supplier-partners, sales and operations teams at the pre-conference meeting, when I have a full audience. On site, I spend some time with the on-site manager from the venue and brief them thoroughly on the story of the program.

In 2015, suppliers are on information overload—we all are! The planning committee works so hard to resonate with audiences but they don’t think of being accountable for inspiring high performance on the supplier side. I’m not their boss and they will get it done, after all we’re paying them X dol-lars are common preconceptions. For planners,

It is always worth my time to tell the story of the meeting and make suppliers feel

invested in creating a great experience for

our attendees.

Micki Lubek, CMP, has been

an event planner with

Scotiabank for six years.

She’s an active member of

MPI, having been nominated

Planner of the Year three

times and winning the

Meeting Magazine Literary

award this past March.

Scotiabank event planner Micki Lubek tells the tale of creating passion and commitment in your event execution dream teamBy Micki Lubek, CMP

Talk it up

an event is the culmination of many months of blood, sweat and tears. From the supplier opera-tions perspective, an event is a regular day of work. Sometimes, they execute multiple programs on the same day. By breaking through and getting their emotional buy-in through telling the story of the event, I’ve seen teams perform heroic feats. A successful event has an even happier-ever-after ending when shared.

September | October 2015 | Ignitemag.ca | 45

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