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How to Brand Your Event

Read helpful guide on how to brand your event

Forget about your current role in event planning for a moment. Seriously, imagine you’re walking into the venue and viewing everything from the perspective of an attendee.

What attracts your eye? What mental shortcut do you use to define the ongoing event in your mind, as you check-in, walk through the venue, and listen to the speakers? Exactly. It all depends on branding. Even a one-word tagline or a memorable logo can make you envision this specific event again and again. In other words, the best event branding definition would be branding that leaves lasting memories with guests.

Why do you need to brand an event?

Event planning is not about one-day meetings, it’s about building a bridge to large audiences and nurturing relationships with guests. To motivate attendees to come to your next event, you have to be memorable. That’s the main reason for branding at events.

Why do you need to brand an event?

Features of a strong event brand

How to brand an event that resonates with attendees’ expectations? You have to make a promise that’ll demonstrate what’s exclusive about your event.

Meet 4 basic qualities that’ll make your branding promise stand out.

#1. Unique

Everyone keeps promising success-efficiency-scalability-profitability-value approaches. Think outside this tautology box, and embrace event branding ideas that’ll generate genuinely unforgettable experiences.

#2. Meaningful

No sense in presenting the logo focused on space technology to a group of medical doctors. In order to make the branding catchy – make it relevant in the first place. This means that you have to know your audience. Conduct research on the topics and themes that might be interesting to your guests, build a brand promise based on the major event line, and you’ll arrive at the right place.

#3. Authentic

Don’t fake it. People don’t trust brands that seem unnatural or present distorted data. If you want your branding to resonate with your attendees’ expectations, don’t borrow, don’t buy, and don’t make up stories. Create them!

Authentic

#3. Consistent

Make your big branding promise govern each part and detail of your event. A consistent event line will make it well balanced and appeal to the audience.

To learn how to brand your event in 7 simple steps, check this article.

The role of Brand Pyramid as part of brand identity

You can always make something outstanding out of very plain and straightforward event idea if you master the application of a Brand Pyramid. According to the popular Brand Pyramid definitions, the latter is meant to describe all stages that customers go through with a brand.

There are several variations of Brand Pyramids. Based on Millward Brown’s suggestion, they include 5 levels that are presence, relevance, performance, advantage, and bonding. Jean-Noel Kapferer developed the concept of a three-stage Brand Pyramid that encircles a Brand Prism in the center. The latter represents brand kernel, brand style, and brand themes as the core constituents of brand promise recognition.

The role of Brand Pyramid as part of brand identity

How can you use a Brand Pyramid for your event? By following its stages, you start with a simple product/service idea, capture logical and emotional beliefs that your audience has about it, and generate an exceptional brand promise vision.

How to create an event brand

Building the brand promise that will boost your event recognition takes a long way to go. However, you can take a shortcut by shaping your branding through the stages of the brand pyramid:

#1. Define the target.

In order to achieve iconic event branding, you have to know what product/service you’re promoting with this event. What’s more important, you have to evangelize your target. Deduce what its strong sides are, and think about how to emphasize them with a branding strategy. In short, fall in love with your target and embrace all the professionalism of a brand ambassador to make it scale high.

#2. Make a list of features and attributes.

Let’s say, the event you’re branding for is focused on the presentation of a new app for athletes. To build a brand, you have to understand how your target may be characterized. Does it employ the original interval training drills? Personal trainer guidance? Integration with social media? Make a list of all unique attributes and features that apply (unique being the operative word here) and take them to the next level.

#3. Emphasize logical benefits.

Now it’s time to think about the users. How are they going to benefit from using the service/product? What should they derive from their event attendance? Continuing with our athletic app example, let’s say it’s meant to make athletes more flexible in terms of doing sports, it should be cost-efficient, and help in tracking personal progress over long time periods. Highlight these points with your event to showcase the advantages.

#4. Promote emotional benefits.

The features of your branded target shouldn’t simply be useful, they should be empowering. Persuade attendees that they can be better/do better things after visiting your event and getting a hold of the new app.

#5. State your brand promise.

On the top of your pyramid, you’ll find a brand promise – a short description of what the target of your branding will give to the world. You decide how it’ll sound, but make sure it embraces all the lower stages.

Ways to brand your event

Branding includes two major stages: generating ideas and putting it to work. After you’re done with the concept for event branding, take one more creative turn to make an out-of-the-box presentation of the brand. Since the logo is going to be at the heart of the event branding, you might think about some creative ways of placing it. Check out these suggestions for displaying a logo:

  • place cards
  • chocolate candies
  • lounge areas
  • bottle stickers
  • takeaway containers
  • cupcakes
  • uniforms

Ways to brand your event

You may also create a fusion of these ideas or add your own ones, just make it meaningful and inventive!

Conclusion

There’s one key difference between good and bad branding. While the first one may be compared to embracing a face, the second is equal to embracing a mask. Gather your creativity and create a beautiful, authentic face for your event and you’ll make it truly memorable!

Need expert assistance with event planning? Get started with Gevme for free.

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