How to Build Your Event With an Experience-First Design

Supercharged event branding is the key to year on year success

An event brand is an incredibly important method for communicating what your event is to your target audience. To make sense of many competing priorities, this should indicate what kind of experience an attendee should expect based on their first impression of your brand.

Successful event branding leads to recall value

A sound event branding strategy can impact a business or organization in multiple ways. At its core, these are the most common event branding goals:

Communicate the event’s vision
Gain recognition
Generate new interest from prospects
Attract sponsors and vendors
Create trust and loyalty

An effective brand will be memorable and have long-term appeal. When it’s all said and done, the experience and underlying message will be what guests remember, and an outstanding event brand will help attendees recall positive emotions related to your event.

Struggling with tight deadlines?

Brainstorm memorable event branding ideas.

As an event, you want all your attendees to leave with something that reminds them of the great time they had and to make sure to purchase a ticket again next year. That is when a novel experience captured through a photo or a cool hat can make all the difference. For example, it is ideal to provide swag bags and t-shirts to the team of volunteers not only to thank them but to act as a reminder to come back next year. This strategy can be applied to your attendees; you can simply build it into the ticket cost.
Here are a few ideas to spark some inspiration:
- An event swag bag or survival kit – This is a collection of items like hats, water bottles, pens, and more that can be used during the event to enhance the attendees’ experience.
- Event Experience Passport- Give each attendee an event passport and encourage them to get their passport stamped at various locations and experiences. Once they have completed it, offer a great prize they can take home with them (like a t-shirt).
- Social Media Scavenger Hunt – Leave clues on social media and ask people to take pictures with clues once they find them on social media for a chance to win a big prize.
These extra elements can impact engagement tremendously and directly impact your event brand. In turn, this extra effort up front can go a long way in securing long-term engagement and boosting future attendance.

Brainstorm memorable event branding ideas.

Visuals matter. You want every graphic you use to communicate what type of experience you are going to deliver to your attendees. If you are planning a tech conference, you may want to communicate that there will be great speakers at the cutting edge of technological innovation and that people will leave having learned a lot. In that case, you will likely want to promote your keynote speakers in your event graphics.

No matter the type of event, your graphics should follow your event’s color pallet and typography. When choosing any stock images, make sure to pick ones that are high quality and that you can use it throughout all your event promotions and advertisements.

Why Event Branding Matters

Because your brand matters. Properly representing your brand and shaping how your attendees, partners and sponsors remember it are absolutely critical to the growth of your event and your business. Take a look at the following statistics:

79% of marketers cite increased brand awareness as the main focus for B2B content marketing. (*)
A signature color can boost brand recognition by 80 percent (University of Loyola, Maryland)
45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it. (*)
60% of US millennials expect consistent experiences when dealing with brands online, in-store, or by phone. (*)

Consider Apple: When you think about this tech giant, a handful of ideas most likely come to mind. Creative. Different. Modern. Streamlined. Hip. Apple is an example of a company that has a rock-solid brand. On top of that, Apple does a great job of maintaining their brand across their websites, ads, retail stores, products and every aspect of their events. Their annual Worldwide Developers Conference is known for its creative sessions, streamlined design, hip entertainment and modern innovations.

Carefully branded websites drive registrations

Crafting a one-page website that generates countless registrations takes imagination, creativity, and some good old-fashioned common sense. You don’t just want potential attendees to be interested — you want them to be inspired to learn more, click through, and to sign up and attend your brand’s event.

In this post, we’ll explain why you need an event website and how to build one for your business. We’ll also throw in some examples of successful websites as well as a few templates that you can use to get started.

Abhishek Kapoor

Abhishek Kapoor is the founder and creative head of BrandWorks Worldwide. His is an ex-Cvent and has worked in the event space for the last 13 years, providing branding and registration expertise to many clients globally.

How to Build Your Event With an Experience-First Design Read More »

One secret that boosts your ROI on events

Supercharged event branding is the key to year on year success

An event brand is an incredibly important method for communicating what effectively to your target audience. To make sense of many competing priorities, an event brand should indicate what kind of experience an attendee should expect based on their first impression of your brand.

Successful event branding leads to recall value

A sound event branding strategy can impact a business or organization in multiple ways. At its core, these are the most common event branding goals:

Communicate the event’s vision
Gain recognition
Generate new interest from prospects
Attract sponsors and vendors
Create trust and loyalty

Struggling with tight deadlines?

Brainstorm memorable event branding ideas.

As an event, you want all your attendees to leave with something that reminds them of the great time they had and to make sure to purchase a ticket again next year. That is when a novel experience captured through a photo or a cool hat can make all the difference. For example, mostly one provides swag bags and t-shirts to their team of volunteers not only to thank them but to act as a reminder to come back next year. This strategy can be applied to your attendees; you can simply build it into the ticket cost.
Here are a few ideas to spark some inspiration:
- An event swag bag or survival kit – This is a collection of items like hats, water bottles, pens, and more that can be used during the event to enhance the attendees’ experience.
- Event Experience Passport- Give each attendee an event passport and encourage them to get their passport stamped at various locations and experiences. Once they have completed it, offer a great prize they can take home with them (like a t-shirt).
- Social Media Scavenger Hunt – Leave clues on social media and ask people to take pictures with clues once they find them on social media for a chance to win a big prize.
These extra elements can impact engagement tremendously and directly impact your brand. In turn, this extra effort up front can go a long way in securing long-term engagement and boosting future attendance.

Brainstorm memorable event branding ideas.

Visuals matter. You want every graphic you use to communicate what type of experience your event is going to deliver to your attendees. If you are planning a tech conference, you may want to communicate that there will be great speakers at the cutting edge of technological innovation and that people will leave having learned a lot. In that case, you will likely want to promote your keynote speakers in your event graphics.

Why Event Branding Matters

79% of marketers cite increased brand awareness as the main focus for B2B content marketing. (*)
A signature color can boost brand recognition by 80 percent (University of Loyola, Maryland)
45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it. (*)
60% of US millennials expect consistent experiences when dealing with brands online, in-store, or by phone. (*)

Carefully branded websites drive registrations

In this post, we’ll explain why you need a website and how to build one for your business. We’ll also throw in some examples of successful event websites as well as a few templates that you can use to get started.

Abhishek Kapoor

One secret that boosts your ROI on events Read More »

Fix this one thing with virtual and hybrid events

Leave a Comment / Hybrid Events, Virtual Events / By Abhishek Kapoor

What is that one thing that virtual events suffer with?

Sponsorship Manager are complaining I offer to, liaise and work with event sponsors and exhibitors consistently and the mind-boggling complaint that we hear as of now is, “virtual events don’t work for exhibitors and sponsors”. Having dealt with more than 30 sponsorship based events somewhat recently, I can let you know that this doesn’t need to be valid

In the past 20 years, virtual events have really taken off. No longer are you required to travel long distances and invest in expensive tickets to attend an event. As a result, people can more easily take part in these events. However, there is a lot of confusion about how virtual events work for exhibitors and sponsors. To help, this post highlights the benefits of both types of events along with the pitfalls they might face at a virtual event.

Why Virtual Events Don’t Work for Exhibitors and Sponsors

Exhibitors and sponsors are the lifeblood of any event. They help to fund the event, provide products and services to attendees, and add to the overall atmosphere and experience. But when it comes to virtual events, many exhibitors and sponsors are left wondering if they’re getting their money’s worth.

There are a number of reasons why virtual events don’t work as well for exhibitors and sponsors. First, there’s no face-to-face interaction. This is a big one, as many business deals are still done in person. There’s nothing like shaking someone’s hand and looking them in the eye to seal a deal.

Second, virtual events can be quite boring. Let’s face it, most of us would rather be doing something else than sitting in front of a computer all day long. This is especially true when there’s no real reason to be there other than to listen to a bunch of people talk about things we may not be interested in.

Struggling with tight deadlines?

How to Get the Most from Your Virtual and Hybrid Events

As more and more businesses are moving towards virtual and hybrid events, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of these events as an exhibitor or sponsor. Here are a few tips:

1. Make use of social media before, during, and after the event. Before the event, start promoting your involvement and get people excited about what you’ll be offering. During the event, live-tweet or post updates to give people a taste of what’s going on. And after the event, follow up with any leads you generated.

2. Utilize video content before, during, and after the event. Video is a great way to connect with potential customers and clients, so make use of it! Before the event, create promotional videos that highlight what you’ll be offering. During the event, livestream key moments or record short clips to share on social media. And after the event, thank your customers and clients with a video message.

3. Get creative with your exhibit space. Just because you’re not in a physical space doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with your exhibit! Use virtual reality, augmented reality, or even just create a fun and interactive website to showcase your

Abhishek Kapoor

Fix this one thing with virtual and hybrid events Read More »