Corporate events have a bit of a reputation for being, well, boring. We’ve all sat through those never-ending PowerPoint presentations, trying to stay awake in uncomfortable chairs. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are some innovative ideas to transform your next corporate event into an engaging and memorable experience for your audience.
Let’s dive in!
Technology
Technology can create a significant impact at your corporate event. Here are some creative ideas on how to use tech to level up your event:
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Video Walls and LED Screens: Use these to display custom content that reinforces your brand’s essence and sets the mood. Pre-produced brand, culture, and product-related content can help to create a visually stunning event experience.
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Virtual Participation: Invite remote speakers or team members to join the event virtually. This can bring unique personalities and messages into your event without the need for travel.
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Creative Projections: Utilize projection to fill large, empty spaces like walls and ceilings with textures, brand visuals, and other creative content. This adds a dynamic element to the venue’s ambiance.
Crafting Compelling Content
At some point event planning and content planning need to come together. Content is king, and at your event, it’s crucial to keep the audience engaged. Here are some ways to ensure your content hits the mark:
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Presentation content: Make sure you don’t overload your audience with slides designed by your executive team. Putting a logo in the top corner and letting your executive team design slides is not fair to your audience (sorry execs, we know some of you are better than others but let’s let the designers design!)
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Pre-produced event content: Pre produced content can include ideas like key person interviews, product sizzle reels, brand stories, event transition videos, event sponsor content and much more. By pre-producing content you can break up the monotony of speaking and presentations with stimulating content. Changing the mood, lighting and flow for just a few minutes is a great way to keep the audience fresh and engaged.
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Capture event content:: A team of 1-3 videographers capturing both presentations as well as behind the scenes interactions of attendees, ambiance and environmental shots is a great way to capture the entire essence of an event. This becomes useful for post event content.
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Post Event Recap Videos: After the event is over, produce a variety of content including special moment clips, 1-2 minute compilations for the event, and other videos that can be used for internal or social media (or both!)
Rethinking Food and Refreshments
We know! Pizza, grinders, pasta, soda and beer are the easy way to feed your audience BUT maybe we should think a bit more about the kind of fuel we provide our attendees. You have worked so hard to produce this event, so you want your audience as alert and engaged as possible.
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Healthier Options. Heavy carbs and sugars are almost guaranteed to make your audience sleepy and groggy within 20 minutes of eating. Think differently about providing a cleaner menu of foods that aren’t putting your audience to sleep for the event you just invested so much money and time into planning.
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Snacks and Appetizers. Think differently about the “snacks and appetizers”. You can still have some tasty treats available but consider having lots of water, electrolytes and fruits available. This will surprise your attendees and make them feel like they can actually energize themselves. Coffee is always a win, definitely have it available and maybe surprise your audience with iced coffee. Watermelon, lemon or cucumber water is also a fun one that will help keep your audience alert and hydrated.
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Welcome Gift Bags. Provide a gift bag upon arrival with energy bars, electrolytes, vitamin C packets or other health compliments to contribute to everyone having clarity and energy throughout your event.
Investing some time and thought into your attendees health and energy is worth the time and money.
Engaging Keynotes and Influencers
Corporate events can be boring, bringing in outside personalities and characters with unique insights or stories can be a good way to break up the energy and inspire your audience.
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Keynote speakers. High profile speakers can be a great way to get more attendees to show up, but sometimes keynotes can be expensive. You can typically find keynote speakers within a variety of price ranges. While the more exciting, famous big names can be up over 100K, you can still find very interesting people for anywhere from 8-25K. You may be able to even negotiate better pricing for virtual appearances.
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Influencers. While booking keynotes can be expensive you can also get creative and reach out to unique influencers to see if you can book them for a video call which can be streamed into the event. This may allow you to lock in more interesting people in a budget that works for you. You would be surprised what you can pull off if you just reach out!
Creating the Right Ambiance
Ambiance is one of the most important elements to creating an impressive audience experience. Ambiance is noticed either consciously or subconsciously by your audience. Here are some key considerations to make sure you get it right.
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Lighting. Lighting is very important. You don’t want people to feel like they are at Wal Mart when at your corporate event. Blue/white fluorescent overhead lighting is a good way to drain the energy of your attendees. This doesn’t mean you need a dark room with romantic mood lighting but you can consider a blend between warmer overhead lighting with brand colors emanating throughout the spaces with colored LED lights.
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Projection and LED Tiles. These are a great tool to fill space with ambiance. Anything from natural scenes and textures to branded content or digital textures can be uniquely distributed throughout your event venue to transform the ambiance of any space.
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Music. This is another subtle (or not so subtle) way to make sure the ambiance of your event stays on point. Consider the music choices for the beginning of your event as well as between presentations and during networking time. Handing this job off to a DJ may work but you may also need to collaborate more closely with your DJ to make sure the music game plan is on point with your brand and the energy you want your audience in.
Conclusion
These out of the box ideas are a great way to think more deeply about how you can create a fun, meaningful and memorable experience for your audience. Corporate events should not be boring and tiring. Make sure you do your best to bring corporate culture to the next level.
If you're looking for support to bring your next corporate event to life, consider reaching out to event production experts. A team with extensive experience can help implement these innovative concepts and create an unforgettable experience for your attendees.
HB Live has been producing corporate events for 30 plus years and is happy to help with any or all of the concepts we have shared in this blog!
