You work for an agency or brand, and the team has decided ‘you need an event’. You know that they’re right because you’re one of the savvy 95% that “believe in-person events can have a major impact on achieving business goals.”
However, not all Events companies are created equal, and most people don't ask whether they're looking at the right company. Event production companies are concerned with the entire remit of executing a successful event: Timeline planning, overall project coordination, space planning, guest flow, set build and management, lighting, audio visual and any other technical production, catering, security, transport, scheduling, health & safety.
There are a plethora of ways to deliver your event and a profusion of options in terms of partners. Our advice is to engage with an event production company to help you with the structural, technical and logistical aspects of your experience. To help you on your journey, we’ve put together some suggestions on what to consider.
1. Experience
Most seem to understand that event wisdom is essential in bringing together the right ingredients for delivery of great events. However there is less awareness of the potential for lots to go wrong during the process. An aptitude for spotting cracks before they become expensive holes, comes with experience. Knowing how to avoid the cracks in the first place is an instinct acquired only through decades of experience in event production.
Ask: To see some case studies and understanding their success, and how challenges have been overcome.
2. Staffing and Expertise
Event production companies rely on freelance and contractual talent. This makes them nimble, innovative and cost effective, while enabling bespoke, hand-picked teams to be deployed for specific projects of varying nature. The key thing to understand here is how good their black book is. Much like the experience question, event production companies that have been around a while can call on expertise from a large pool of talent to achieve your goals.
Ask: For some profiles of their key freelancers and understand who will work on your event.
3. Agnostic Suppliers
Event management companies’ regular supplier relationships are valuable and will benefit the project. But do consider whether their motivation when choosing suppliers is to provide the best solution for your activation, or if they are using partners that give them a kickback.
Ask: Who their favoured suppliers are for A/V, lighting, scenic build, etc. See if they have a variety of contacts. Event production companies with their own equipment can be cost-effective too, but conversely it’s worth then considering whether you’re getting tech that has been selected specifically to suit your project, or that is up-to-date.
4. Collaboration
Are they able to play nicely within a multi-agency process?
Ask: For examples of productions that have had complimentary agency involved and how they worked with them to deliver successful productions.
5. A ‘Maybe Attitude’
Whilst you want your production team to be the pragmatists, the adults, the people that eventually turn your creative dreams into reality, you need them to be optimists too. The joy can be extinguished from a project by grumpy naysayers that can’t be bothered to think out-of-the-box and develop solutions that deliver the job.
Ask: Them to show you examples of innovative thinking / solutions that have overcome challenging issues.
6. Environmental Friendliness
Caring about the environment isn’t something that should be reserved for your next marketing campaign only. Events are wasteful at the best of times, and anything you can do to minimise that negative effect on the planet will be appreciated not just by your customers, but by future generations too.
Ask: About their sustainability credentials and how they manage waste.
These tips are designed to help agency account directors or managers hiring event management companies that deliver events or experiential. Equally this list could be useful for brand managers.
Disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive list but will give useful insights and help you to achieve your event goals.