Creating Memorable Event Experiences | Event Marketing Ideas — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Hey guys, it's Ben and today we're gonna cover a strategy that will make your
2. 0:04event message unforgettable.
3. 0:11Okay, quick story. Yesterday, an employee of mine, Kevin, came back from a
4. 0:16conference. I asked him about the conference because I saw a photo of him
5. 0:19on Instagram holding a skateboard. And Kevin responded, "The conference was
6. 0:24amazing, it was so good. That skateboard, I actually designed that with a
7. 0:28professional skateboarder and it was, it was so cool." And I said, "Where was it? Tell
8. 0:33me more." And he said, "Well I did it right after I heard a story from the president
9. 0:36of Vans talking about that the only thing in
10. 0:39retail that really works anymore is connecting with your audience
11. 0:42experientially through their passions and then I made a skateboard." And you
12. 0:47know he said to me, "I was really impressed with Vans." And you know it
13. 0:51occurred to me that what Vans had done really really well was build a
14. 0:55pass-along story for Kevin to tell me about. A pass-along story is a pretty
15. 0:59crazy idea. It's the idea that we as humans, we remember by recounting, by
16. 1:06telling people things. We repeat things and they dig deeper into our memories.
17. 1:10And so, as event marketers it's our job to think about how we can build stories
18. 1:15or really experiences that become stories for our audiences. And it's a
19. 1:20really important thing to consider and really more important is, how you're
20. 1:25building it. So, let's walk through a quick exercise to think about how to
21. 1:28build a pass-along story for your next event. Hopefully, you'll find this, find this
22. 1:32effective. Question one, the storyteller. Who is your attendee? Try to think about
23. 1:39that person, really envision them. Think about what makes their avatar. What is their name?
24. 1:43Where do they hang out? What is their job title? The more specific you can be about
25. 1:48this person, the better. The next question is, what I call the campfire, right. And
26. 1:53the campfire, I call it this because this is where we tell stories, right? Humans
27. 1:56have been telling stories around the campfire since the dawn of time and so,
28. 2:00you almost want to imagine a scenario where your storyteller would deliver
29. 2:04their story. It might be at the office, it might be at a dinner party, right? It
30. 2:09might be amongst their friends while they're just hanging out, like, where
31. 2:13would they tell that story? And you really want to write that piece down too
32. 2:16and kind of imagine the emotion that they're telling the story with. And now,
33. 2:20we're moving on to the actual story. Let's call that the tale.
34. 2:22And you always want to like, think about this as like candy, meaning like, what
35. 2:26could they just not resist telling their friends about. Now, here's a quick hint on
36. 2:31building a story that's irresistible to talk about. When you make people feel
37. 2:35really good about themselves or proud of themselves, that's usually it's
38. 2:39something that they need to tell someone about. So, when you're building a story
39. 2:43you want to think about what will make them feel proud to tell someone else. And it's
40. 2:48not just that a story has a couple different points to it, there's like a
41. 2:51beginning, middle and an end to any good story. So, as you're building the tale you
42. 2:55might want to think about, was there a transformation involved in this story?
43. 2:59Was it something new that they saw? Was there a surprise? People love talking
44. 3:03about something that they thought was gonna happen, but instead something else
45. 3:06completely different happened, right? Was it, was it, a superlative? Was it like the
46. 3:10best or the most that they had ever happened? Like what is peg or a storyline that
47. 3:16you can really build for them? We're gonna call that the tale. And the fourth
48. 3:20question, the fourth question is actually the most important and kind of the most
49. 3:24fun. I call this the message, but you might also want to call this the emotion,
50. 3:28right? Because the message especially in events is the emotion. And I actually, I
51. 3:35learned this from one of the earliest days of my event-planning
52. 3:38career. Someone said this to me and it was one of the most frustrating things
53. 3:41I've ever heard, but also one of the truest things I had ever heard, which is
54. 3:44that, emotions is really all that an attendee ever remembers. They usually
55. 3:50don't remember what you tell them at the event. What they remember is how they
56. 3:55felt at the event. And so that's what you want to focus on when you're building
57. 3:59this message. You want to think about what emotion you want someone to feel,
58. 4:04right? And that's question four. And emotions could be something like,
59. 4:08admiration or do they feel like you understand them, like, empathy. Do they
60. 4:14feel inspired? Do they feel excited? Do they feel loved?
61. 4:19What is an emotion that someone is going to feel, okay? So, we've gone through that.
62. 4:23We've gone through the storyteller, the campfire, the tale, and the emotion. And so,
63. 4:28once you have all those written down, here's the trick to building the story.
64. 4:31You want to work backwards. You start with number four and you work your way
65. 4:35to number one. Okay, so let's try an example of how to
66. 4:38build a pass-along story by using one of the events that I hosted a couple months
67. 4:42ago for some of our top clients. Now, our clients are some of the top event
68. 4:46marketers in the world and we brought them all together in a really cool venue
69. 4:50here in New York. And I'd gotten together with my team in advance to think about
70. 4:55what emotion we really wanted them to feel. And the emotion that we came to
71. 5:00after a lot of debate was that, we really wanted them to feel love. Love and
72. 5:05appreciation for their job and for themselves and for the craft that they
73. 5:09do. Okay, so that's where we started. How do we get them to feel love? We threw
74. 5:14around a lot of ideas for storylines that they would take away and really
75. 5:18what we landed on was that one of the most important things that we could
76. 5:21focus on was, the format of the event and kind of how their experience would play
77. 5:26out throughout the day. Okay, so fast-forward till after the
78. 5:29event, I wanted to test this pass-along story and see how effective we were so, I
79. 5:33called up a lot of the different attendees and asked them not, you know,
80. 5:38"How was the event? Or, "Did you like it?" But, instead what was the story that you told
81. 5:42when you got home? And more than that, who did you tell it to? So, "Re-tell me that
82. 5:47story," I asked them and they did. And the story's more often than not really
83. 5:52weren't about the content that they learned or a certain data point that
84. 5:56they heard, but instead they started to talk about what had happened. They talked
85. 6:00about somebody that they had met at a cocktail hour or a piece of swag that
86. 6:05was now sitting on their desk that they were really excited and surprised by. Or
87. 6:09a musical interlude that had happened right before a speaker and the violinist
88. 6:13and how amazing she was. And really, that's what they focused on, but what was even
89. 6:18better was that interwoven into each of those stories was, the emotion. And they
90. 6:22were using really interesting adjectives and over and over again we started to
91. 6:26hear words like, excitement and appreciation and inclusion and it was
92. 6:30those adjectives that we wrote down, because that was our goal, that's what we
93. 6:33were focusing on. Because remember guys, it's not about how you communicate your
94. 6:39content and what you say, but instead what people are gonna remember inside of
95. 6:44these stories is how they feel. All right, that's it.
96. 6:48Good luck with all of your next events. Please do leave some comments in the
97. 6:52comment section below and let us know what you think. And we'll make sure to see
98. 6:55you next time for the next Run of Show where we will be talking about more nerdy
99. 7:00event stuff. Talk to you guys next time.
100. 7:08If you felt like this episode made you much smarter than when you started
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