When it comes to starting a business, everyone thinks about the things they’ll need like a good brand strategy, a logo, business cards, and other supporting materials. They don’t think about this for a corporate event. With corporate events slowly coming back I wanted to chat about how branding can work for a corporate event because it’s just as important for events as it is for an individual business.
Let me start with my definition of a corporate event. I’m specifically talking about larger events where people from different individual businesses gather to network, learn new things, and often shop for new vendors or industry-specific solutions. This includes conferences, larger seminars, webinar series, industry conventions, and industry-level galas/awards banquets.
These events often take on a life of their own, which is why they need separate brand strategies. Your business might be the premier widget manufacturer whose values are things like respect and innovation, but the conference you’re hosting or helping to sponsor might be the industry party of the year and that’s going to change those values to something like fun and education.
Larger events are also going to have a very different audience than the one you normally speak to in your regular marketing so you need to understand them. Specifically, who they are and what they need from this event. Understanding this and having a strategy is place behind scenes will let you create more effective advertisements and information for this audience as you start to roll out the event.
As a side note, smaller events that are held in an office such as a lunch and learn or client appreciation party should retain the host business’s values as it’s a marketing event for them.
Now, I know one thing to be true of events, especially larger ones, which is that something always goes wrong at what feels like the worst possible moment. You should have a crisis strategy in place, but if you don’t or something outside the plan comes up then having an event-specific brand strategy will help you and the rest of the planning team create a solution much more quickly. Mostly because it will help keep all the decisions centered on your values and goals.
By having special values and event-specific objectives in mind as you plan the logistics, the visuals, and the marketing along with the rest of the details of the event you’ll end up creating a cohesive experience for attendees. A good experience for them means a successful conference in the books for you!
by-the-way, if you’re ready to take your business (or event) to the next level through clear and unified branding book a 15-minute no pitch consultation call today by clicking here