4 tips and ideas for organising an original professional event

An event for your employ­ees, a sem­i­nar, a con­fer­ence, or an evening gath­er­ing for cus­tomers and prospects … pro­fes­sion­al events are essen­tial and a dri­ving force for busi­ness.

Whether to cel­e­brate, uni­fy, express thanks, build loy­al­ty, or announce a new prod­uct, the rea­sons for hold­ing a pro­fes­sion­al event are many. Each requires prepa­ra­tion, organ­i­sa­tion and a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion. And yet, there is some­times a feel­ing of deja vu, a lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty.

In this arti­cle, we give you 4 tips and ideas to make your cor­po­rate event a suc­cess!

Sum­ma­ry

1. Use a venue that’s out of the ordinary

Make an impres­sion on your employ­ees and/or cus­tomers by wel­com­ing them to a place that has nev­er been seen before, that’s unusu­al, orig­i­nal or unex­pect­ed!

For an internal event

Get­ting out of the office for an inter­nal event is guar­an­teed to be ben­e­fi­cial, whether it’s for team build­ing, a work group or oth­er rea­son. More and more venues, not orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for cor­po­rate events, are now host­ing them, includ­ing lofts, stu­dios, bars/restaurants, cafés, gal­leries, etc. We’re also see­ing new cowork­ing and co-meet­ing spaces mul­ti­ply and rent out their spaces. A par­ty or cor­po­rate event in these types of set­tings will ensure a warm wel­come, in a new envi­ron­ment out­side the office, to get employ­ees out of their dai­ly rou­tine.

For a customer event

Wel­com­ing cus­tomers in a loca­tion that’s excep­tion­al, orig­i­nal or far from the ‘cor­po­rate’ image is also a way of mak­ing an impres­sion and demon­strat­ing the atten­tion you pay to cus­tomers and/or prospects. The venue itself should reflect the com­pa­ny or the event. This is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a theme based on the venue or, con­verse­ly, to look for a venue that echoes the desired theme.

The brand image can play a role: if this is based on inno­va­tion, cul­ture or sport, the choice of venue can be direct­ly linked to the company’s DNA and the image it wish­es to con­vey.

Ideas for original venues for your professional event

• A sports com­plex (e.g. foot­ball or rug­by sta­di­um, swim­ming pool, stud farm, ice rink, dojo)
• A themed cel­e­bra­tion venue (e.g. cabaret, retro gam­ing, vin­tage)
• A pri­vate busi­ness (e.g. cloth­ing shop, restau­rant, con­cept store)
• A cul­tur­al venue (e.g. muse­um, the­atre, gallery, opera)
• A mobile venue (e.g. par­ty bus, barge, or even a plane!)
• A place with a view (rooftop, view of a mon­u­ment or from a mon­u­ment, 360° view)

2. Lead the event

Avoid the ‘spectator’ feeling

In order to make a last­ing impres­sion, brands and the audi­ences them­selves often seek inter­ac­tion with the brand, prod­uct, employ­ees, and so on. Always keep the same aim in mind and don’t remain spec­ta­tors!

Go beyond the professional framework for an original event

Cre­at­ing inter­est, encour­ag­ing sup­port or unit­ing your team can be done through work­shops or activ­i­ties, chal­lenges and speech­es that are out of the ordi­nary and not typ­i­cal of the pro­fes­sion­al sec­tor. Don’t hes­i­tate to draw your activ­i­ty ideas from worlds that are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from your company’s.

Unify through originality

For exam­ple, com­pa­ny sem­i­nar activ­i­ties are becom­ing more and more var­ied, with activ­i­ties in all dif­fer­ent areas! Today, com­pa­nies offer their employ­ees events such as sport­ing activ­i­ties, cre­ative ses­sions, atyp­i­cal activ­i­ties such as escape games, cook­ing work­shops, beer brew­ing, music lessons, the­atre games, vir­tu­al real­i­ty … there real­ly are a thou­sand and one ideas for bring­ing your teams togeth­er.

For pre­sent­ing a new prod­uct, one option is to present the cre­ation of the prod­uct and any exper­tise behind it (e.g. crafts­man­ship, tech­nol­o­gy) through activ­i­ties that allow the prod­uct to be used and demon­strate its uses.

Use the technology at your disposal

Digi­tise your event, whether by offer­ing dig­i­tal pay­ment or inter­ac­tions through tools such as NFC chips, aug­ment­ed or vir­tu­al real­i­ty, and so on.

Brands are not lacking in imagination! Don’t be afraid to take the same approach with your business events.

3. Meet your guests’ needs

Predict and exceed your attendees’ expectations

Depend­ing on the venue, date and time you choose, you can pre­dict some of your guests’ expec­ta­tions. Exam­ples: Meal, event sched­ule, loca­tion (indoor or out­door), space required, ‘clas­sic’ activ­i­ties.
Although you can’t escape some of your atten­dees’ expec­ta­tions (com­fort and safe­ty first and fore­most), you can sur­prise them by going against what you and oth­ers have taught them to expect.

Aim high and get creative!

Orig­i­nal­i­ty can be found every­where: in meals, the con­tent of the event, the guests, the speech­es, the dec­o­ra­tion, the dress code …

Predict the number of guests

Gone are the days of man­u­al­ly fill­ing out Excel lists to keep track of the num­ber of guests and RSVPs await­ing reply. Reg­is­tra­tion, invi­ta­tion and tick­et­ing plat­forms allow for track­ing in real time. Depend­ing on the for­mat of your event, add the price of the tick­et or reg­is­tra­tion. You can con­trol admis­sions on site with auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed and down­load­able list­ing.

This allows you to retrieve all the data you need, pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion, warn­ing you of any last-minute changes, request­ing feed­back after the event, and more.

Plan a suitable budget

To prop­er­ly orches­trate the unique pro­fes­sion­al event you’ve imag­ined, you can’t ignore the need to bud­get.

Prepar­ing a pro­vi­sion­al bud­get for an event is a key step which allows you to com­pare your ambi­tions with your means as hon­est­ly as pos­si­ble.

Tip: To save mon­ey, opt for day­time over evenings, and week­days over week­ends!

4. Encourage discussion and create links

A pro­fes­sion­al event is often an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exchange ideas and meet future part­ners, col­lab­o­ra­tors and more!

It’s always impor­tant to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that’s con­ducive to dis­cus­sion, a qui­eter space, and time to set aside. Whether it’s a par­ty or a com­pa­ny event, net­work­ing hap­pens nat­u­ral­ly and helps to devel­op skills and busi­ness. Once again, don’t hes­i­tate to cre­ate unique oppor­tu­ni­ties to encour­age dis­cus­sion.

This is one of the poten­tial objec­tives in organ­is­ing your pro­fes­sion­al event, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of pre­sen­ta­tions to prospec­tive cus­tomers, recruit­ment events and the inte­gra­tion of new employ­ees. In the same way, in some cas­es, unusu­al activ­i­ties can be used to break the ice.

Organ­ise your pro­fes­sion­al event eas­i­ly with Weezevent by click­ing below:

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