There are 5 fundamentals of staging a successful event. Audio, Lighting, Vision, Staging, and Content. With all eyes on the stage, it’s one of the most important elements you need to get right because unlike AV, you can’t just ‘tweak’ it on the day. The stage is a major element when planning successful corporate events. Everyone will eventually look towards the stage, and your intent is to keep the audience focused on the message you’re delivering. While an involved audience is the goal, we know there are various factors that can make the audience lose interest – causing you to lose out on money, prospective customers, and possible partnerships. Here are 6 staging mistakes to avoid if you want to keep your audience interested and attentive. Poor Sound Quality The level of sound coming from the stage speaks volumes about your brand. We know that echoing sounds and volume should be expertly controlled with professional audio connections at frequencies that are pleasing to the ear without being too high or low in pitch. If the sound isn’t clear or makes the audience uncomfortable, you’re likely to lose attendees and your presenters. If the presenters can’t be heard, your attendees will lose interest which in turn, makes the presenters feel uncomfortable. All you’re left with is everyone in the room having a bad experience. When considering your stage design, work with a professional AV company to determine where the speakers and fold backs need to be so both presenters and audiences can hear with crystal clear clarity. Music can deeply influence the audience just as much as an expert speaker. Emotions, motor functioning and creativity are boosted by music, and we’ve witnessed its power at all types of events. Not only do people relate music to personal experiences, music ignites the entire human brain. Bad Lighting Design A well-lit stage enhances the atmosphere and mood of the room. Therefore, stage lighting should really wow your audience with dynamic style. With flat or malfunctioning lighting, attendees will be far less interested in looking at the stage. Too much white lighting can also drain the appearance of your presenters and wash out the on-screen projection content making the vision hard to see. Professional lighting always comes with flexibility. The light can fit your theme and power audience engagement by drawing focus to your presentation. Depending on the electric system at the event space, lights can be powered at various settings to create a unique environment and add texture to the room to intrigue the audience. Lack of Creative Branding Techniques If your brand isn’t presented tastefully, potential buyers will quickly consider it overkill and lose interest in your services. In fact, 52% of customers report feeling overwhelmed by companies that don’t communicate the presence of their brand effectively. We view corporate events as a creative opportunity to consistently display your brand’s logo and visual message. More than half of B2B marketers acknowledge that branding is a must for company growth. On average, a 23% increase in revenue has been credited to consistent branding. Your logo can be incorporated into the stage design and transformed into an interactive experience. Serve up your logo as part of the beverages and refreshments offered to guests, or display it as a piece of 3D art that emotionally connects with viewers. Disregarding The Line of Sight Audiences need to see and hear for a favourable event experience. Presentations, speakers, and visual branding has to be visible to everyone. Otherwise, the crowd will quickly lose interest and find better things to do – such as playing on their mobile phones or distracting the nearest person with small talk. Considering the seating arrangement and size of the event, the stage should be raised for better viewing. Opinions will always vary on the proper height of the stage. Some may say 12 inches, others might recommend 24. Every event is special in its own way. It’s best to use a professional audio visual team that will work closely with your venue and company while considering all necessary elements for the proper stage height. Better still, partnering with an AV company that’s already in-house at your venue means they’ll have a better understanding of the rooms layout and how to maximise the stage design for audience viewing. Use a Bland Stage Backdrop The backdrop attracts more attention than many people realise. Today, stage backdrops aren’t just coloured accessories for the stage. They can be textured walls in stunning 2D and 3D designs that enhance your theme or branding, or even internally lit backdrops that display print-quality images or branding. With modern technology, backdrops can now be turned into media pieces that move on the wall. If audiences look away, this moving media will lead their eyes back to the presentation. When executed properly, media walls add to the effectiveness of the message being delivered, and the visuals will help the crowd retain the information presented. Choose a Poor Seating Layout Whether you are setting up a business presentation, training classroom, hosting a full scale gala dinner or product launch, the arrangement of the seating can make all the difference. You have invited your audience to communicate a message, so it’s important that your audience is seated in the best way to achieve the maximum impact for your message! Guests want to feel involved in professional discussions and enjoy sharing their knowledge and common interests. Using the right seating style creates a deeper connection between the speakers and audience members. It also encourages any moving participants and standing listeners to walk behind seated guests. Learn The Best Strategies To Create An Outstanding Corporate Event For Your Audience
Keeping your audience engaged requires thought, planning, and creativity. We can work with your team to create a stage designed to hold interest and generate excitement. At Encore, we use our experience to transform your corporate events into interactive and memorable experiences for attendees that live long after the event concludes. Contact us for innovative event staging production and concepts that combine event creative and technical expertise. … Read More
Event Tech Trends Part 3 - How To Get The Most Out Of Mass Personalisation
Apr 10 2018
This is the third installment in a three-part series in which Chris Cavanaugh, CMO of Freeman, discusses the event technology that is shaping the future of brand experiences. In his final post, Chris talks about how brands can leverage mass personalisation to maximise the potential of your brand experience. Maximise the brand experience through mass personalisation
Written by Chris Cavanaugh, CMO of Freeman, originally posted on the Freeman blog. Catch up on Part Two: Live Streaming Can Change The Way Brands Engage With Audiences here --
We are a society that has become hyper-personalized.
Today’s consumers don’t just appreciate customized content — they expect it. Whether we’re shopping for clothes, planning a vacation, or browsing for a TV show to watch, we seem to have very little patience for choices that we don’t relate to.
There’s an emotional angle to all of this. Across the globe, consumers have started craving a deeper connection with the brands they use. They want to feel like they’ve made the right choice with their money, and they prefer to invest in brands that understand them and know what they care about.
Technology has made this possible. Now more than ever, there are a multitude of channels that learn our behaviors, listen to our feedback, and give us the ability to opt into — or out of — the experiences that fill our lives. The future is being dictated by what individuals want rather than what brands want for them. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of brand experiences.
This is a good thing. Brands, at their core, are all about people. Not crowds of people but rather individuals, each with their own unique set of values and emotional connection points. Personalisation based on emotional investment gives us an opportunity to forge deeper connections with our audiences.
Fortunately, live events offer a wealth of opportunities for brands not only to provide personalized experiences but also to continue learning how to make emotional connections with their audiences as well. Know your audience(s)
It seems obvious, but many brands do not actually know their audience beyond the broad strokes painted by their standard research. Today’s audiences can be much more complex than that.
By the year 2020, there will be five different generations working at the same time. That’s more generations than have ever been in the workforce at once, and it presents a new wrinkle in addition to the usual segmentation challenges we face. Each generation will have its own set of priorities, motivators, and preferred methods of communication.
Speaking of generations, as our original attendees age out, who will replace them? The up-and-coming generations will have an overabundance of experiences and channels to choose from, so it’s very likely that the same old tactics may not work on them.
If we want to attract these new audiences, segmentation will be the first step in understanding how we can connect with them. Use data to make a human connection
Now that you’ve defined your audiences, data is the key to personalisation. Once you have the data, there are many ways to customise the experience for your audience.
Turning heaping piles of information into insights that are actionable and meaningful is no easy task, but with today’s event technology, anything is possible. It starts with putting the customer at the center of the proposition, using empathy and insights to understand what he or she wants and needs, and then creating a personalized experience that delivers emotion without feeling intrusive.
There are challenges, of course. We will have to be vigilant about issues of privacy, data ownership, and usage. I find that, in this case, honesty is the best policy. If audiences are aware that you’re collecting their data in order to enhance their experience and remove the clutter, and you ensure that they are totally and implicitly aware of what is being collected and studied, then you should have no problem. Reach audiences where they are
As mass media continues to fragment, so do the ways in which marketers can reach audiences. The days of the big ad running during prime-time television are being supplemented by new devices, new streaming vehicles, and an evolving mass of new marketing channels. If you are going to employ multiple channels to get your message across, there should be continuity between those channels. It’s important to remember that campaigns are ongoing conversations. There are many avenues of communication at our disposal today, and the beauty of many of them is that they’re two-way. They allow us to listen to what our audiences are saying and gather insights into what motivates them and speaks to them on a deeper level. Allow audiences to co-create
When creating brand experiences, we can now use data and technology to design environments and make these story worlds more responsive. We’ve developed some platforms that allow consumers to control their own experience and offer real-time feedback that can shape the content of a program as it is happening.
Given that most attendees have their phones in their hand at any given time, this provides a great opportunity to get them involved in coauthoring content at your event (and feeling the ownership of it). What better way to get them to feel emotionally invested in what your brand has to say.
Keep storytelling at the center of the creative journey
There was a time when advertising and marketing relied almost entirely on the power of emotional storytelling. In recent years, storytelling has given way to algorithms, metrics, and optimization. While there’s no doubt that those things are important, storytelling has always been the beating heart of this industry.
Storytelling can be a powerful drug. A 2006 study by Spanish researchers looked into the effects of storytelling on the human brain. They found that, while statistics and facts have little to no effect on our emotions, descriptive stories have the potential to stimulate certain sensory regions of our brains, such as touch or smell. They can even generate activity in the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement.
Now more than ever, brands need stories that help stimulate audience emotions. After all, a customer who feels an emotional connection to a brand is 52 percent more valuable than one who is not emotionally connected. Few marketing channels have the capacity to incite emotion in quite the same way as brand experiences. While many can come close, a personalized brand experience is the best way to envelop an audience in the context of a story and really inspire them to feel something.
At the end of the day, personalization is about transforming the idea of marketing from a form of mass communication to a form of conversation.
We are asking people to give us their time and attention, and we should be giving them something in return. Personalization lets an attendee know that, not only are we listening to them but we are genuinely interested in their individual interests and needs. We care about making them feel comfortable, entertained, satisfied, and, most importantly, emotionally connected.
That sort of attention goes a long way toward converting an attendee from a potential client into an existing one. This is the final installment in a three-part series in which Chris Cavanaugh, CMO of Freeman, discusses the event technology that is shaping the future of brand experiences. Catch up on Event Tech Trends Part 2 - How Live Streaming Can Change The Way Brands Engage With Audiences This concludes my series on event technology. As part of our effort to keep up with the rapid pace of change, Freeman will continue to monitor and curate the latest trends. ... Read More