Modern Marketing: Why It's the Best Time to be in Corporate Events
Gone are the days where a corporate events portfolio simply included conservative holiday receptions at the boss’ home or an annual charitable giving afternoon. The combination of the Experience Economy and the establishment of all things digital in business have blown the world of corporate events wide open, and we are here for it!
Tactical use of events and experiences to express a brand message, internal or external, evolved dramatically when the digital era rolled into place. The Internet and social media gave consumers the ability to follow their favourite brands on non committal platforms resulting in, quite literally, more eyes on the brand than ever before.
Today, it’s not only important for organizations to activate live experiences for their employees and customers in order to earn positive impressions, but it’s critical that the experiences feel authentic, tie back to its values, and make audiences feel deeply and richly engaged.
Sounds like a challenge? It is.
Sounds like fun? It is!
The modern marketing mix now includes all of the tried and true traditional marketing tactics, as well as experiential marketing, brand activations, sponsorship fulfillment and customer hosting.
Our colleague and friend Garet Cameron, Director of Partnerships & Client Strategy at One Eleven Management Group in Toronto ON, is a firm believer that an effective 360-degree marketing plan includes experiential and events as mechanisms to tell your brand story. He says;
"Sponsorship has grown to become a critical component of the marketing mix. Brands that are doing best-in-class sponsorship understand that sponsorship activity can make every other marketing channel more effective, relevant and engaging. When it comes to leveraging your sponsorship investment, events and experiential are key tactics to connect and engage with your customers, employees and fans. It’s one of the most exciting parts of designing a brand activation strategy.”
How cool is that?! Event management and experiential skill sets are being utilized now more than ever before by corporations and brands in order to round out their brand building efforts.
Event profs who are working in the corporate events space should have relationships with various stakeholders and managers in a client organization, under these (and other) departments. This is an exciting part of working in corporate - the opportunities to layer events and experiential marketing into tactical plans are only capped by the willingness of the brand to try something new and the ability of the corporate event producer to offer the right approach.
If you are an in-house corporate event professional, or a contract event producer or agency working with bigger brands, get yourselves to the right boardroom tables with brand strategists at the table and find those opportunities to activate. They are there, in abundance. We promise.
