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Content, Production Can Spur an Event’s Success

Content, Production Can Spur an Event’s Success

Careful Planning Helps Drive Home Company’s Message

BY GABRIELLA LENGUA

Special to the Business Journal

Many companies plan events throughout the fiscal year.

Whether the event is a quarterly sales meeting, trade show or annual conference, a top priority is to create the right environment and achieve your targeted, and often tangible results.

Most meetings are planned with a motive in mind, such as increasing revenue, raising employee, company morale or recognizing and honoring outstanding employees. Event planning includes venue search, site inspections, contract negotiations, registration and more. But never forget that the important elements are the content and production of the meeting.

– Drive Home Your Message

Start with a theme. At the onset, pick a theme that reflects or furthers the company’s key messages and/or goals.

A theme should be a short catchy, phrase or slogan that will offer you multiple sub-themes and messaging for a particular event and a particular audience. An example would be “No Limits,” “Turn on the Power,” “Turn Up the Heat” or “Soar Beyond the Boundaries.”

When in doubt about your event, go back to the theme and make sure what you do remains in line with it and supports it.

Are you trying to show that your company really cares for its top sales team? Create an elaborate, splashy set with major lighting.

Are you trying to show that your company has had a poor year? Go for a simpler look to show that your company is not being frivolous with money spent on this meeting. All in all, your set is a critical part of your messaging and should reflect your theme.

– Original Music And Entertainment

Music is a universal language everyone can understand and everyone can relate to. Music and good audio can go a long way toward making or breaking your meeting.

A good audio engineer, both in the studio before the show and on-site during the program, is essential for an effective live event; think of them as investments with the power to make sure your presentation is compelling. A hic-up in audio never goes unnoticed.

Music to play on and play off a speaker fills up otherwise dead air. Create elements in your meeting that mimic highly produced awards shows on TV.

Your audience is very media savvy and expects good production.

Try enhancing programs with gospel choirs, dance troupes, singers, celebrity look-alikes, comedians, jugglers, acrobats and headline performers. Just make sure that the acts you select are within your budget guidelines , nothing looks worse than a company telling its employees it is cutting back due to budget constraints, than hiring a headline performer for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

– Pick Your Talent Wisely

Be careful about the talent you choose for your program; your talent can re-shape your meeting for the better or for the worse.

When pre-selecting talent, try to see their act live. Demos never really faithfully depict “in-the-flesh” performance quality.

Finally, and probably most important to note, a program will never be a success without careful planning and preparation. The success of your meeting is based on the time and effort spent in pre-production. Amateur technical and production crews mean show cues may be missed and all your hard work trying to create an excellent, professional meeting will be lost.

Nothing is worse, or more embarrassing for the organization and the individuals presenting at the meeting than having the participants feel it isn’t running smoothly.

– Create Exciting And Emotion-Driven Visuals

A “trade secret” that many companies do not exploit sufficiently is the augmentation of standard presentations, such as Power Point, with additional audiovisual techniques such as lighting and video production. A custom-created video is a great way to grab the attention of your audience while also creating the mood and tone for the event.

Emotionally driven videos are a great tool to stimulate attendees as well as relay key messaging. A good production company will produce a presentation that targets the audience’s emotions.

Videos also are good segue and transitional elements in the presentation process. Videos combined with a live presentation, is one of the best ways to captivate your audience.

For example, one Fortune 500 company opted to integrate a “Mission Impossible” theme into its global sales meeting. Building upon that theme, a thrilling and spine-tingling opening video was produced that featured the company’s president of sales in a high-speed chase pure action and adventure with the executive “escaping” off the side of a skyscraper.

Immediately out of the video, the executive rappelled from the ballroom ceiling onto the stage, dressed in the same attire seen in the video, making the presentation from video to live appear seamless. The sales team in the audience was enthralled , seeing their leader perform heroically in the video and then live on stage offered an emotional charge that will never be forgotten.

The meeting’s tone was set, the group was energized and a successful week ensued.

– You Ought To Be In Pictures!

Another way to engage the audience is to feature attendees in video presentations. One of the biggest thrills attendees get is to see themselves up on the big screen.

Hire your production company to shoot on-site footage at your event and conduct interviews with attendees , with some quick editing, the video can be incorporated into presentations. This is particularly effective when your meeting is focused on recognizing top employees.

Companies tend to shy away from incorporating video into their meetings or events due to high costs. One way to defray costs is to have your production company script and shoot the video to maximize use for different divisions of the company. Additionally, a good production company will begin a video library of your footage , a great asset for future video needs. Some clients utilize their meeting’s pre-produced videos for other purposes after the event.

If your budget doesn’t allow for video production, consider designing your Power Point presentation in Adobe Photoshop and transporting it back into slide format. The presentation and graphics should be consistent with the rest of the presentation and should suggest the branding and theme to the audience.

Special events require a substantial investment in time, creativity and dollars to be truly successful. Location is important, but don’t waste your investment by short-changing the program and the production that can help best achieve your company’s objectives and goals.

Lengua is vice president of production at San Diego-based Multi Image Productions Inc.

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