Is event strategy the way to capture success? In an industry that seems to move at a million miles an hour, we sometimes need to step back and take a more considered, planned approach to event creation. An event underpinned by strategy will not only help to achieve brand ambitions, but is also key in helping make project ‘pinch points’ (like time and budget) much more efficient. We wanted to explore how strategy is being used within the wider world of events, so on top of our own experience we carried out research, speaking to over 150 senior stakeholders across the events industry. We wanted to understand the views and challenges facing clients, who are asked to deliver the widest range of events imaginable. This snapshot of opinion, when combined with our own experience, has provided an interesting reality check, revealing what many teams are coming up against when trying to deliver the most effective events.

1. The Power of Strategy
How to take events to the next level
© 2018

2. We consider ourselves lucky to work in events – an industry that
creates hands-on, total brand immersion and provides amazing
opportunities for colleague, B2B and consumer engagement like
no other communications channel.
However, the effectiveness of events is sometimes undervalued
when faced with the squeeze on budgets and timescales, or
where less strategic focus and consideration is taken when we
are talking to our internal colleagues as opposed to consumers.
Yet every single event-based interaction provides an opportunity
to create enthusiastic advocates who can support the mission of
your brand.
Is event strategy the
way to capture success?
2 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

3. In an industry that seems to move at a million miles an hour, we
sometimes need to step back and take a more considered, planned
approach to event creation.
An event underpinned by strategy will not only help to achieve brand
ambitions, but is also key in helping make project ‘pinch points’ (like time
and budget) much more efficient.
Normally at this point, you’d then be invited to ‘call us on the number below’
to find out the answers to the above. But at fresh, we’re so passionate about
making all events strategic, that throughout this whitepaper we’ll highlight the
benefits of this approach and reveal key pointers to follow – so you can help
your agencies as much as they help you.
So, why isn’t every event
as effective as it could be?
3 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

4. Exploring strategy
within the world
of events
4 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

5. We wanted to explore how strategy is being used within
the wider world of events, so on top of our own experience
we carried out research, speaking to over
150 senior stakeholders
across the events industry.
We wanted to understand the views and challenges facing
clients, who are asked to deliver the widest range of events
imaginable. This snapshot of opinion, when combined with
our own experience, has provided an interesting reality check,
revealing what many teams are coming up against when trying
to deliver the most effective events.
5 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

6. A strategic approach to event planning uses
research, insight and measurement to produce a clear
proposition – this is then used to help develop a more
effective, focused and business-aligned event across
every touch-point from ideas through to delivery.
We understand from working closely with our own
clients that some organisations are beginning to
effectively use events as a channel to help achieve
their business strategy.
First, let’s clarify what
we mean by a strategic
approach to event planning
“Strategy is a must-do. It’s important
to get the whole business behind the
overall message, vision and direction,
engaging them in a compelling
way to bring everything to life.”
Kirrie Kendall, former Head of Internal
Communications, Dixons Carphone
6 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

7. But we’re not there yet…
As our survey proved, many more brands
are yet to apply a strategic approach:
On top of this, the same marketing rigour
is not always applied to internal colleague
events as it is for consumer-facing
activity. If delegates are fully engaged,
they’ll become the strongest advocates
for your brand – so we must ensure there
are no missed opportunities to join-up
brand objectives and events into one
strategic approach.
Only 25% currently include
strategic objectives as part
of their agency event brief,
with 21% in need of support
to draw up an events strategy
with clear objectives.
7 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

8. Exploring the benefits
of strategic events
Based on our research, the following points highlight the main
benefits that event managers and their businesses can expect to
gain when adopting a strategic approach to event planning.
8 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

9. Time is something many event teams
feel is continuously being squeezed.
Strategic planning can help to produce
brilliant results in shorter timescales,
creating time efficiencies that take some
of the stress away from the individual
planning the event.
If an agency can help to establish a single-
minded brief in collaboration with the
client, which aligns and supports the
business objectives, it can save time in
a couple of ways;
Firstly, it helps avoid lengthy discussions
around the brief with your agency, toing
and froing to confirm the detail needed.
Secondly, you’ll be able to gain swifter
buy-in and sign-off from senior
colleagues who will see the direct
link between the event and
how it supports business goals.
1. Save time
57% of respondents
surveyed said they wished
they had more time before
rolling out events.
9 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

10. We know how important it is to protect
and make the best use of your budget,
and that avoiding event-based financial
cuts altogether can be a challenge for
event managers.
A strategic approach helps to focus the brief
around objectives that support the wider
aims of your organisation – ensuring events
remain a key part in the communication of
the overall business strategy.
This helps to demonstrate the value and
cost effectiveness of any activity. It gives
an event a clear role in supporting business-
related objectives and avoids the inefficient,
habitual running of an event because
‘it has always been run that way’.
As procurement departments demand
greater ‘value’, it also helps you to steer
them away from choosing an agency based
on low cost alone. Allowing you to instead
focus on the importance of picking an
agency that can deliver most effectively
against the business objectives and budget.
2. Make better use of your budget
70% of survey respondents
stated that budget was an
element they wished they
had more of before rolling
out events. In addition, 21%
of respondents had seen
projects being dropped with
budgets cut completely, as
the events weren’t seen as
business critical.
10 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

11. An efficient, effective event that supports
the agreed business strategy and achieves
its goals will receive Exec level support.
Strategic planning gives you the power
to demonstrate that brand ambitions are
being supported by your events.
With this in place, your budget and purpose
for future events will have an on-going,
critical role as part of the marketing and
communication plan.
This highlights the potential cost when
events are not positioned as a tool to
support the wider business strategy.
3. Achieve senior
team buy-in
21% of respondents stated they
had experienced event projects
being dropped as they weren’t
seen as business critical.
11 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

12. A large number of internal stakeholders can often be involved
in decision making, creating a long and arduous task for event
organisers when gaining sign off.
Ideally, the event approach will be single-minded, provide clarity
on the objectives it hopes to achieve and clearly support the
greater business strategy.
Taking a strategic approach to writing the brief and agreeing the
core proposition will ensure this is achieved and should lead to
clarity of event purpose and easier sign-off.
4. Gain stakeholders
agreement
12 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

13. True attendee engagement will always
remain a top priority, but how can you ensure
engagement levels remain year-on-year even
if the event format stays the same or the
budget is reduced?
Audience insight should play a crucial role
in delivering content that is relevant to
them, and therefore engaging.
Whilst this is encouraging, there is definitely
the need for more delegate insight to feature
in the future.
A strategic approach allows you to find out
more about the mind-set of the delegates,
these key insights can then help to highlight
what people want from the event, and ensure
everything from the venue choice to speaker
content is created with their engagement
in mind.
Our teams at fresh also always refer to
a set of flexible ‘engagement principles’
when defining event content ideas. These
are based around a number of psychological
principles that provide a framework and
direction for events – proven to achieve greater
audience engagement and higher impact.
5. Ensure your audience
is completely engaged
Our research has shown
that 53% of respondents chose
to work with an agency based
on their insight and knowledge
of their business.
13 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

14. 6. Deliver total brand immersion
Delivering true brand immersion can
be an effective method in achieving
engagement, which often leads to
creating true brand advocates.
Events provide the perfect platform
to immerse delegates and consumers
in your brand, creating unique
experiences and strong connections.
Brand immersion can be created through
ensuring brand insight is gathered and
fed into the initial event brief.
This is then reflected through fantastic
brand based creative and content leading
from the brief, which brings the brand to life
through the live event environment.
Demonstrating a need for
further focus on an insight-
based approach to help
achieve effective immersion.
Our survey found only 35% of
survey respondents had chosen
an agency based on their insight
and knowledge of their brand
and business.
14 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

15. Proving effectiveness is a vital part of every
event organiser’s job, with the insight from
feedback helping to guide future event
development and secure budgets.
As one event stakeholder at a blue-chip
brand said:
However, some measurement variables are
much more valuable than others. Measuring
delegate enjoyment along with logistical
considerations only provides a limited
amount of insight for a business.
Producing clearly-defined, meaningful
measurement variables that align with strategic
goals are far more valuable and can help prove
the worth of the event.
This demonstrates an opportunity for those
who don’t measure often, or who don’t measure
the right variables, to prove the true worth of
their events through a more strategic
approach to evaluation.
7. Prove effectiveness
through measurement
“I have to fight for every
penny and the budget is
cut every year. We’ve got to
prove value through colleague
feedback and make sure
senior stakeholders see the
value for themselves.”
Our survey showed that 73%
of respondents always measure
the effectiveness of their events,
25% only occasionally do
and 2% never do.
15 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.15 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

16. A few simple
pointers for
creating
strategic
events…
16 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

17. 01
Align with your business strategy
Ensure clarity on the elements of the
strategy the event will support. This will
position the event as a crucial part of the
marketing plan and help to achieve your
brand’s ambitions.
Define strategically led objectives
These should be relevant to the event, the
role it plays as part of a bigger campaign
and how it supports the wider business
goals. Clearly defined objectives will ensure
effectiveness can be proven post event.
Gather audience insight
Delve deep into the mind-set of your audience to
understand their wants, needs and motivation. Use
this insight to focus on how you can best engage
with them. Your agency will be able to help carry
out audience research and develop this insight.
03
02
04
Plan ahead
Following steps 1-3 will all form part of creating a
clearly defined, single minded and strategically focused
brief. Work closely and collaboratively with your agency
partners as they can help provide an external perspective
and ensure the brief is single minded with a strategic
focus to achieve your brand’s ambitions.
17 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

18. Immerse attendees in your unique brand
Bringing your brand to life within the event will help
immerse attendees and give them something to truly
buy into and believe in. It will also differentiate the
event and create an experience unique to your brand.
Evaluate effectively
Define clear evaluation and measurement criteria
for the event. This must tie into the business
strategy and objectives set at the beginning of
the event process, to prove effectiveness both
strategically and operationally.
Ensure meaningful creative
Your creative should align with the strategy in
the brief to create maximum engagement and
effectiveness. Every element of content and creative
should have an active and meaningful role to play as
part of the event.
05 06
07
18 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.18 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

19. A bit more about fresh
19 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

20. At fresh we work hard to make amazing things happen, we are
passionate about producing engaging, effective events and love
to support our clients in working towards a more strategic event
planning approach.
We call our strategic approach Joined-up thinking and this has
helped us deliver many incredible, highly effective events for our
own clients. Here’s a snapshot guide to being Joined-up…
20 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

21. Our approach starts with gathering insight to better understand
the brand and its event needs, the audience mind-set and the
business strategy focus. Based on this insight, clear objectives
are defined which reflect the needs of the delegate or consumer
audience, support the business in achieving their strategy and
event goals, and bring their brand to life.
Think
Create
Make
Showreel render
With clear measurement in place to support the
relevant objectives, our teams work together to
bring the entire event to life. This ensures that
across all our specialisms, effectiveness can be
closely monitored and valuable learning can
be drawn for all future events.
A clear single-minded proposition is then defined,
based on the focus for the event along with creative
principles to guide the event content and output. This
is then used to develop a creative thread and ensure
all ideas are aligned with the objectives, whilst
maximising delegate engagement.
21 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

22. Dixons
Carphone
The Power of One
The challenge
Following their 2014 business
merger, Dixons Carphone’s aim
was to successfully join their
brands together as one united
business with a central focus
for the future. To support with
this, fresh was approached to
create the first Dixons Carphone
Colleague Conference.
22 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

24. Our task
Our task was to ensure the event was
inspiring and engaging for colleagues,
creating a feeling of one team, motivated
to succeed together. We also needed to
create an ongoing campaign, which would
inspire managers to cascade messages back
to their store teams, and which would work
across future Dixons Carphone events.
There were a number of challenges to overcome:
• Insecurities around what the
merger meant for colleagues
across the business
• Colleagues were aligned with
their own individual brand’s
focus and strategy, not yet
thinking or acting as one team
• Ability to motivate those
attending to carry the united
message back to their teams
in store
24 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

25. Our approach
We carried out research to further understand
the new Dixons Carphone brand, strategy and
cross-business colleague mindset to ensure we
proposed the most effective approach.
As part of our research, we discovered that:
So this needed to be central to our approach
and creative theme.
50% of mergers fail due to lack
of an aligned team and central
vision. Merged organisations
that focused on supporting all
colleagues to think as one team
were more successful
25 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

26. Theme - The Power of One
The Power of One heroed the importance of working
together as a united team and the powerful impact that
creates, whilst motivating and inspiring colleagues to
deliver the new aligned business purpose.
As part of the ongoing journey of transformation this
theme translated into:
The Power of One – for the very first Dixons Carphone
Colleague Conference in June 2015.
The Power of Little Things – to support wider store
team cascade, with the notion that many little changes
have a large effect.
And
The Power of One Re-energised - for the Christmas
party event to reinvigorate colleagues as one team
later in the year.
For the Colleague Conference we devised an event
journey, which focused on engaging colleagues across all
touchpoints, from invite through to feedback, and brought
to life the Power Of One creative thread.
26 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

27. For the final evening the space was yet again transformed, with all of
the entertainment representing a journey through the elements.
27 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

28. The activity was deemed a huge success by
clients, colleagues and the wider business.
A post-event survey confirmed the impact of
the Power Of One message with colleagues,
who overwhelmingly felt positive about the
merger and clear on their role within it.
The response to the cascade was fantastic
with managers returning to store and carrying
out the activity with energy and enthusiasm.
Kirrie Kendall, former head of internal
communications, Dixons Carphone,
commented on the creation and delivery
of ‘The Power of One’ conference:
The results
83% of colleagues confirmed
that the key messages
from the event were clearly
received and cascaded back
to their wider teams.
“Massive thanks to the fresh
team for fantastic commitment
and support that led to our
amazing event. Feedback was
overwhelmingly positive.”
28 The Power of Strategy. How to take events to the next level.

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0161 495 4300 | whereamazingthingshappen.co.uk
© Copyright 2018
Katie Clark
Director of Client Relationships
katie.clark@freshemail.co.uk
07889 757 714