Events play a key role in conveying your brand’s core values, offering an interactive, engaging method of talking directly to the people who matter the most to your business.
As hybrid working models expand our ability to work and network from anywhere in the world, we can occasionally forget the power of face-to-face interaction. As human beings we thrive on connection and so putting events at the forefront of your PR strategy can help you stand out from the crowd.
Whether celebrating a key anniversary, inviting media and influencers to cover a recent development, launching a new venue, or building relationships with stakeholders, events play a unique role in building and enhancing your brand’s reputation.
Celebration/Anniversary Events
Hosting a celebratory event that aligns with your company’s image and values can be great for bringing stakeholders together and creating a sense of community.
Celebration events may have an internal function, contributing toward improved staff morale and offering opportunities for colleagues to come together and recognise a significant milestone or anniversary. You can create a sense of togetherness allowing people to feel part of something larger than their individual teams.
Inviting guests from outside your business will increase the complexity of arranging and communicating details about your celebration event, but it is great for recognising key partners who contribute toward the success of long-standing operations.
Influencer/Media Events
Influencer and media events allow you to share a key message about your business in an interactive forum you can control. You can provide physical assets to guests, illustrate a piece of news, and create a direct connection between your attendees and the story you are telling.
The most effective influencer and media events have an obvious purpose. Whether that is providing attendees an exclusive insight into a new launch or product or offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into an aspect of your business operations, the message needs to be clearly illustrated as a theme that connects every activity throughout the event.
When inviting influencers, it is important to research your guests and ensure they align with the audience you target with your product or service. Inviting irrelevant representatives at best means your message is being shared with the wrong audience and at worst may create negative associations with your brand.
Curate your list of invited media and prioritise communication with key journalists to develop long-standing relationships. The best result for a brand is that a journalist not only shares news and information from this one event but remains continuously engaged and actively enthusiastic regarding upcoming developments.
Launch/Relaunch Events
Announcing a new launch, whether that be an individual product, service, or element of your business, is a great moment to place your brand at the centre of relevant conversations.
Providing journalists with a key narrative on which to hang a story is critical for securing media interest in your activity so be clear on what is new and relevant for their audience. Press releases can provide essential information about the story you wish to tell but an event can sell the story to your audience. Launch events should provide an immersive experience explaining key aspects of the new or refreshed element of your business.
Launch events often feature presentations, with a key representative from your business talking directly to guests and thanking supporters who have collaborated on a project. Speeches should be kept succinct so that invitees can interact with the new offering.
The more engaging and unique you can make a launch event, the stronger the impact will be. Whilst guests will expect canapes, drinks, and networking, you want to ensure a strong theme carries throughout. For example, if you are launching a new restaurant, you want to ensure attendees understand what makes your proposition unique to the local area and emphasise this messaging throughout keynote speeches and any assets you provide.
Sharing press packs on a USB or making them downloadable through a QR code are two effective ways of sharing information with guests. Informative materials can be easily offered in goody bags with other gifts to take away at the end of your event.
Stakeholder/Community Engagement Events
Stakeholder and community engagement events are a fantastic way of humanising your brand, introducing the people behind the logos and marketing slogans, and are potentially the most important type of event you can host.
Stakeholder engagement activities also allow you to work on challenging relationships, providing an open forum for discussion and allowing you to better hear and respond to concerns.
When curating a guest list you should ensure that key stakeholders are all included and receive the key information about the event, including location, timings, and essential logistics. Ensuring the right people are engaged will help to avoid inflaming difficult relationships by excluding people from the conversation.
Whilst local engagement activity can provide strong feedback to allow your business to adapt and respond to the concerns of residents or service users, it should also be used to alleviate and manage factually incorrect discourse. Sit-down events with a small, specifically curated group allow you to talk one-on-one and demonstrate that your brand is an active participant in the community. If your guest list is too large invitees may feel ignored which will only exacerbate challenging conversations.
Well-run events will positively enhance your brand’s reputation
Whether celebrating business milestones, collaborating with influencers, launching a new service, or engaging your local community, events provide a platform to deliver your message directly to the right audience.
Dedicating appropriate time and resources to manage events as efficiently as possible will help to engage key stakeholders, convey important information, and achieve the right coverage to build and enhance the reputation of your business.
For more information on event services provided by LLPR, please visit: https://www.lizleanpr.co.uk/events/
