the power of strategy€¦ · opportunities for colleague, b2b and consumer engagement like no...

The Power of Strategy How to take events to the next level

© 2018

We consider ourselves lucky to work in events – an industry that creates hands-on, total brand immersion and provides amazing opportunities for colleague, B2B and consumer engagement like no other communications channel.

However, the effectiveness of events is sometimes undervalued when faced with the squeeze on budgets and timescales, or where less strategic focus and consideration is taken when we are talking to our internal colleagues as opposed to consumers.

Yet every single event-based interaction provides an opportunity to create enthusiastic advocates who can support the mission of your brand.

Is event strategy the way to capture success?

2 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

In an industry that seems to move at a million miles an hour, we sometimes need to step back and take a more considered, planned approach to event creation.

An event underpinned by strategy will not only help to achieve brand ambitions, but is also key in helping make project ‘pinch points’ (like time and budget) much more efficient.

Normally at this point, you’d then be invited to ‘call us on the number below’ to find out the answers to the above. But at fresh, we’re so passionate about making all events strategic, that throughout this whitepaper we’ll highlight the benefits of this approach and reveal key pointers to follow – so you can help your agencies as much as they help you.

So, why isn’t every event as effective as it could be?


Exploring strategy within the world of events


We wanted to explore how strategy is being used within the wider world of events, so on top of our own experience

we carried out research, speaking to over 150 senior stakeholders

across the events industry.

We wanted to understand the views and challenges facing clients, who are asked to deliver the widest range of events imaginable. This snapshot of opinion, when combined with

our own experience, has provided an interesting reality check, revealing what many teams are coming up against when trying

to deliver the most effective events.


A strategic approach to event planning uses research, insight and measurement to produce a clear proposition – this is then used to help develop a more effective, focused and business-aligned event across every touch-point from ideas through to delivery.

We understand from working closely with our own clients that some organisations are beginning to effectively use events as a channel to help achieve their business strategy.

First, let’s clarify what we mean by a strategic approach to event planning

“Strategy is a must-do. It’s important to get the whole business behind the overall message, vision and direction, engaging them in a compelling way to bring everything to life.”

Kirrie Kendall, former Head of Internal Communications, Dixons Carphone


But we’re not there yet…As our survey proved, many more brands are yet to apply a strategic approach:

On top of this, the same marketing rigour is not always applied to internal colleague events as it is for consumer-facing activity. If delegates are fully engaged, they’ll become the strongest advocates for your brand – so we must ensure there are no missed opportunities to join-up brand objectives and events into one strategic approach.

Only 25% currently include strategic objectives as part of their agency event brief, with 21% in need of support to draw up an events strategy with clear objectives.


Exploring the benefits of strategic events

Based on our research, the following points highlight the main benefits that event managers and their businesses can expect to

gain when adopting a strategic approach to event planning.


Time is something many event teams feel is continuously being squeezed.

Strategic planning can help to produce brilliant results in shorter timescales, creating time efficiencies that take some of the stress away from the individual planning the event.

If an agency can help to establish a single-minded brief in collaboration with the client, which aligns and supports the business objectives, it can save time in a couple of ways;

Firstly, it helps avoid lengthy discussions around the brief with your agency, toing and froing to confirm the detail needed. Secondly, you’ll be able to gain swifter buy-in and sign-off from senior colleagues who will see the direct link between the event and how it supports business goals.

1. Save time

57% of respondents surveyed said they wished they had more time before rolling out events.


We know how important it is to protect and make the best use of your budget, and that avoiding event-based financial cuts altogether can be a challenge for event managers.

A strategic approach helps to focus the brief around objectives that support the wider aims of your organisation – ensuring events remain a key part in the communication of the overall business strategy.

This helps to demonstrate the value and cost effectiveness of any activity. It gives an event a clear role in supporting business-related objectives and avoids the inefficient, habitual running of an event because ‘it has always been run that way’.

As procurement departments demand greater ‘value’, it also helps you to steer them away from choosing an agency based on low cost alone. Allowing you to instead focus on the importance of picking an agency that can deliver most effectively against the business objectives and budget.

2. Make better use of your budget

70% of survey respondents stated that budget was an element they wished they had more of before rolling out events. In addition, 21% of respondents had seen projects being dropped with budgets cut completely, as the events weren’t seen as business critical.


An efficient, effective event that supports the agreed business strategy and achieves its goals will receive Exec level support. Strategic planning gives you the power to demonstrate that brand ambitions are being supported by your events.

With this in place, your budget and purpose for future events will have an on-going, critical role as part of the marketing and communication plan.

This highlights the potential cost when events are not positioned as a tool to support the wider business strategy.

3. Achieve senior team buy-in

21% of respondents stated they had experienced event projects being dropped as they weren’t seen as business critical.


A large number of internal stakeholders can often be involved in decision making, creating a long and arduous task for event organisers when gaining sign off.

Ideally, the event approach will be single-minded, provide clarity on the objectives it hopes to achieve and clearly support the greater business strategy.

Taking a strategic approach to writing the brief and agreeing the core proposition will ensure this is achieved and should lead to clarity of event purpose and easier sign-off.

4. Gain stakeholders agreement


True attendee engagement will always remain a top priority, but how can you ensure engagement levels remain year-on-year even if the event format stays the same or the budget is reduced?

Audience insight should play a crucial role in delivering content that is relevant to them, and therefore engaging.

Whilst this is encouraging, there is definitely the need for more delegate insight to feature in the future.

A strategic approach allows you to find out more about the mind-set of the delegates, these key insights can then help to highlight what people want from the event, and ensure everything from the venue choice to speaker content is created with their engagement in mind.

Our teams at fresh also always refer to a set of flexible ‘engagement principles’ when defining event content ideas. These are based around a number of psychological principles that provide a framework and direction for events – proven to achieve greater audience engagement and higher impact.

5. Ensure your audience is completely engaged

Our research has shown that 53% of respondents chose to work with an agency based on their insight and knowledge of their business.


6. Deliver total brand immersion

Delivering true brand immersion can be an effective method in achieving engagement, which often leads to creating true brand advocates.

Events provide the perfect platform to immerse delegates and consumers in your brand, creating unique experiences and strong connections.

Brand immersion can be created through ensuring brand insight is gathered and fed into the initial event brief.

This is then reflected through fantastic brand based creative and content leading from the brief, which brings the brand to life through the live event environment.

Demonstrating a need for further focus on an insight-based approach to help achieve effective immersion.

Our survey found only 35% of survey respondents had chosen an agency based on their insight and knowledge of their brand and business.


Proving effectiveness is a vital part of every event organiser’s job, with the insight from feedback helping to guide future event development and secure budgets.

As one event stakeholder at a blue-chip brand said:

However, some measurement variables are much more valuable than others. Measuring delegate enjoyment along with logistical considerations only provides a limited amount of insight for a business.

Producing clearly-defined, meaningful measurement variables that align with strategic goals are far more valuable and can help prove the worth of the event.

This demonstrates an opportunity for those who don’t measure often, or who don’t measure the right variables, to prove the true worth of their events through a more strategic approach to evaluation.

7. Prove effectiveness through measurement

“I have to fight for every penny and the budget is cut every year. We’ve got to prove value through colleague feedback and make sure senior stakeholders see the value for themselves.”

Our survey showed that 73% of respondents always measure the effectiveness of their events, 25% only occasionally do and 2% never do.

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A few simple pointers for creating strategic events…


01Align with your business strategy

Ensure clarity on the elements of the strategy the event will support. This will position the event as a crucial part of the marketing plan and help to achieve your brand’s ambitions.

Define strategically led objectives

These should be relevant to the event, the role it plays as part of a bigger campaign and how it supports the wider business goals. Clearly defined objectives will ensure effectiveness can be proven post event.

Gather audience insight

Delve deep into the mind-set of your audience to understand their wants, needs and motivation. Use this insight to focus on how you can best engage with them. Your agency will be able to help carry out audience research and develop this insight.

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04Plan ahead

Following steps 1-3 will all form part of creating a clearly defined, single minded and strategically focused brief. Work closely and collaboratively with your agency partners as they can help provide an external perspective and ensure the brief is single minded with a strategic focus to achieve your brand’s ambitions.


Immerse attendees in your unique brand

Bringing your brand to life within the event will help immerse attendees and give them something to truly buy into and believe in. It will also differentiate the event and create an experience unique to your brand.

Evaluate effectively

Define clear evaluation and measurement criteria for the event. This must tie into the business strategy and objectives set at the beginning of the event process, to prove effectiveness both strategically and operationally.

Ensure meaningful creative

Your creative should align with the strategy in the brief to create maximum engagement and effectiveness. Every element of content and creative should have an active and meaningful role to play as part of the event.

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A bit more about fresh


At fresh we work hard to make amazing things happen, we are passionate about producing engaging, effective events and love to support our clients in working towards a more strategic event

planning approach.

We call our strategic approach Joined-up thinking and this has helped us deliver many incredible, highly effective events for our

own clients. Here’s a snapshot guide to being Joined-up…


Our approach starts with gathering insight to better understand the brand and its event needs, the audience mind-set and the business strategy focus. Based on this insight, clear objectives are defined which reflect the needs of the delegate or consumer audience, support the business in achieving their strategy and event goals, and bring their brand to life.

Think

Create

Make

Showreel render

With clear measurement in place to support the relevant objectives, our teams work together to bring the entire event to life. This ensures that across all our specialisms, effectiveness can be closely monitored and valuable learning can be drawn for all future events.

A clear single-minded proposition is then defined, based on the focus for the event along with creative principles to guide the event content and output. This is then used to develop a creative thread and ensure all ideas are aligned with the objectives, whilst maximising delegate engagement.


Dixons Carphone The Power of One The challenge

Following their 2014 business merger, Dixons Carphone’s aim was to successfully join their brands together as one united business with a central focus for the future. To support with this, fresh was approached to create the first Dixons Carphone Colleague Conference.


Our task

Our task was to ensure the event was inspiring and engaging for colleagues, creating a feeling of one team, motivated to succeed together. We also needed to create an ongoing campaign, which would inspire managers to cascade messages back to their store teams, and which would work across future Dixons Carphone events.

There were a number of challenges to overcome:

• Insecurities around what the merger meant for colleagues

across the business

• Colleagues were aligned with their own individual brand’s focus and strategy, not yet thinking or acting as one team

• Ability to motivate those attending to carry the united message back to their teams in store


Our approach

We carried out research to further understand the new Dixons Carphone brand, strategy and cross-business colleague mindset to ensure we proposed the most effective approach.

As part of our research, we discovered that:

So this needed to be central to our approach and creative theme.

50% of mergers fail due to lack of an aligned team and central vision. Merged organisations that focused on supporting all colleagues to think as one team were more successful


Theme - The Power of One

The Power of One heroed the importance of working together as a united team and the powerful impact that creates, whilst motivating and inspiring colleagues to deliver the new aligned business purpose.

As part of the ongoing journey of transformation this theme translated into:

The Power of One – for the very first Dixons Carphone Colleague Conference in June 2015.

The Power of Little Things – to support wider store team cascade, with the notion that many little changes have a large effect.

And

The Power of One Re-energised - for the Christmas party event to reinvigorate colleagues as one team later in the year.

For the Colleague Conference we devised an event journey, which focused on engaging colleagues across all touchpoints, from invite through to feedback, and brought to life the Power Of One creative thread.


For the final evening the space was yet again transformed, with all of

the entertainment representing a journey through the elements.


The activity was deemed a huge success by clients, colleagues and the wider business.

A post-event survey confirmed the impact of the Power Of One message with colleagues, who overwhelmingly felt positive about the merger and clear on their role within it.

The response to the cascade was fantastic with managers returning to store and carrying out the activity with energy and enthusiasm.

Kirrie Kendall, former head of internal communications, Dixons Carphone, commented on the creation and delivery of ‘The Power of One’ conference:

The results

83% of colleagues confirmed that the key messages from the event were clearly received and cascaded back to their wider teams.

“Massive thanks to the fresh team for fantastic commitment and support that led to our amazing event. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”


the power of strategy€¦ · opportunities for colleague, b2b and consumer engagement like no...

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