Get the best out of your events agencies and optimize response time with these three key elements you have to include in your event brief.
To understand what the most important elements are, we will start going through the planning process that immediately starts when the event planners receive your brief!
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In the mind of the planner
A lot is going on in an expert planner’s mind when they are scrolling through your brief:
- they gather the main information
- they start discarding anything that is not completely appropriate
- they sort through the most obvious options and focus on the most creative ones
- they project mental images where they “see” the most complex aspects
- they might take a moment to go back and check over some points…
In practice, after they have finished reading your brief, the planner already has a series of interesting ideas to start working on after a feasibility test. This is an ideal result that enables the planner to respond to the client as quickly as possible.
So, if they do not have that information, what will they do?
Naturally, they will try calling the person in charge of the event who sent the brief. If this person does not have the answers, they will need to proceed by trial and error.
In the end, instead of receiving, as some people believe, a more creative proposal that is free from the constraints of specific details, you will probably receive some kind of plan that has already been used to create an event in the past with less personalized solutions.
Basically, a lost opportunity for you.!
The key elements to include in the event brief
Creating a detailed event brief is time-consuming because you need to make a fairly complex initial analysis.
Let’s look at what main information you should include to get the best out of events agencies. We have chosen three key elements.
1. Purpose and Objective of the event - with an example
The objective of an event and its purpose can give quite different information.
Let's look at an example.
You decide to organize an event to celebrate your company’s 20th anniversary. This is the purpose of the event.
Many activities are required to plan an event of this kind and, if the events agency is able to organize it without a hitch, the purpose has been achieved.
The objective, however, is something more subtle. It could be to use the occasion of your company’s anniversary to improve the employer branding of the company and evaluate certain employee soft skills, for example, their ability to work as a team member or their leadership qualities.
In this case, the events agency could focus on different activities.
The true success of the event, in this case, does not only depend on planning and executing a well-organized event but also on achieving the objective of the company.
2. The event participants
The number of participants is an essential piece of information, there is no doubt about that, but when planning a successful event, do not forget that it is necessary to know as much as possible about the target audience.
In fact, we can say that the organizer would like to know practically everything but will be content with knowing the age, role in the company, and where they come from.
This information should always be handled carefully so as not to work on the basis of stereotypes. This information does, however, help to imagine the expectations of the participants. Organising an incentive trip, team building activities or even virtual events for a group of forty-year-old French managers is different from a trip for twenty-year old sales managers from an Italian company.
Even knowing that the participants all have different ages and backgrounds is especially useful information for the agency.
On the other hand, there is a piece of information that is sometimes provided as though it is key information, but the planner has to use it cautiously: when the group of participants consists of only men or only women.
This information alone cannot – and should not – determine the kind of activity to suggest.
3. The budget – have no fear the anchoring effect!
The budget aspect can sometimes be a thorny issue. Indeed, in the initial phase, some companies decide not to indicate the costs allocated for the event.
It is tricky when the client has not provided an idea of how much they are prepared to invest, specifying at least a price range or ceiling. More likely, it is a way of negotiating or pitting the best events agencies against each other.
Maybe the agency wants to avoid an ‘anchoring effect’ i.e., the tendency for our brain to anchor itself to the first number it sees or hears.
In this case, companies often fear that, providing a set budget since the beginning, may bring the events agency to think that the offer should be around the allocated figure, even though in reality the event might cost less.
When it comes to corporate events, however, offers are generally detailed by individual cost item, on a day-by-day basis. You can then assess whether the offer is consistent with market values in terms of the quality, creativity, and security that the events agency is able to provide.
For the event planner, however, having an idea of the budget is essential to match all the parts of the offer, to advise on possible changes and to decide the spending limit when it comes to creativity.
Ultimately, a well-structured brief will help the company to have a clear scope, KPIs and budget and will help the events agency to prepare the best offer in a short timeframe.
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