Events are a powerful medium that can bring the emotional qualities of your product and services to life and help to activate or reinforce a key message. The power of a well designed environment can directly connect your brand with the heartbeat of the audience in just a matter of seconds.
Here are six tips to help you achieve a successful outcome from your next event:
1. Choose the right venue - The type of venue/room in which you stage your event will have a large bearing on the room look and feel. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing and setting-up a room. These include: low ceiling height, pillars, chandeliers near the stage area (which can affect projection lines), power availability, load ratings of rigging points, existing light fixtures and ambient light, amongst many others. To ensure that you transform your event space into a visually pleasing place, consult with your technical event service provider in the initial stages of your event. They can help you choose the right venue and approach.
2. Leverage your communication tools - The overall environment should create a communication experience that mirrors your brand’s attributes. Everything in the room creates visual identity - your stage layout and furniture, lighting, visual displays, music choice, audio quality and theming - conveys meaning, so leverage everything to your advantage. For example, if you have created an elaborate video as the centrepiece of your presentation and you want bright, colourful and true-to-life on-screen images and quality sound reinforcement, take some time in selecting your event provider. And remember that there is much more to determining projector quality than just brightness.
3. Establish the mood you want to create - To achieve impact at your event, it is important to establish a mood of anticipation from the moment guests arrive. There are many options available to create the overall mood and effect such as, lighting your room with specific colours and/or effects. Your lighting design may utilise lights that can move and/or change colour and shape. This means that you can create different room moods to match your event objectives. Simple lighting effects such as washing the walls or up lighting drapes in warm colours can be used to create ambience. With the right lighting designer the options are limitless and lighting represents the best value for money. Another effective way to get your audience in the right mindset is to have background music playing as they enter the room. The right music removes them from the outside world and puts them in ‘event mode’ - anticipating the start of your event. It is important that the music matches the tone of your meeting and generates the right level of energy.
4. Optimise audience focus and attention - An effective stage set-up creates audience focus on the key elements of your event. A simple and effective way to make your stage a central element is to create a uniform backdrop behind to avoid visual distraction using drapes or set pieces. It also operates like a frame around a picture - drawing attention and focus towards the presenter, stage and screen. It will make for a clean, professional and distraction-free backdrop. You can also use the draping line to hang banners and use lighting to brighten up the back of the stage area. For more impact, consider more elaborate options such as custom flats, cycloramas or set fabrication.
5. Maximise audience interaction - When organising your presentation, book a room that can accommodate a slightly larger audience than you expect to attend. The more comfortable your audience is, the more they will participate, adding to the impact of your presentation. Remember when booking the venue to make allowance for your stage area and any other props, displays etc. It is also a good idea to cordon off and reserve the back few rows of seats to encourage your audience to sit closer to the presenter. This will avoid the unsightly empty seats directly in front of stage and improve audience interaction with the presenter.
6. Allow sufficient time for rehearsal - In order for your presenter to feel relaxed on stage and connect with the audience they need to become familiar with the stage environment and to learn event-critical information. This can include things such as where to stand on stage so that they are always visible, how to use any equipment such as microphones or remote controls, how to enter and exit the stage safely. Always ensure you allow sufficient time for your presenters to rehearse when you book the venue for your event. This is invaluable time in which you can make sure your event has the biggest, and most positive, impact possible. On a final note, remember, the most common mistake when creating presentation environments is shoehorning the event concept into a venue. To save considerable time and money and to deliver event success - involve your technical event service provider in the initial planning stages of your event.
Sean Grech is a business development manager with Haycom Sydney. For a free weekly series of tips and strategies to improve your communication outcomes email ask@haycomstaging.com.au with Image Improver in the subject line.
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