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Hey guys, it's Ben and today we're gonna
cover a strategy that will make your
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event message unforgettable.
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Okay, quick story. Yesterday, an employee
of mine, Kevin, came back from a
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conference. I asked him about the
conference because I saw a photo of him
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on Instagram holding a skateboard. And
Kevin responded, "The conference was
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amazing, it was so good. That skateboard, I actually designed that with a
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professional skateboarder and it was, it
was so cool." And I said, "Where was it? Tell
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me more." And he said, "Well I did it right
after I heard a story from the president
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of Vans talking about that the only thing in
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retail that really works anymore is
connecting with your audience
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experientially through their passions
and then I made a skateboard." And you
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know he said to me, "I was really
impressed with Vans." And you know it
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occurred to me that what Vans had done
really really well was build a
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pass-along story for Kevin to tell me
about. A pass-along story is a pretty
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crazy idea. It's the idea that we as
humans, we remember by recounting, by
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telling people things. We repeat things
and they dig deeper into our memories.
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And so, as event marketers it's our job
to think about how we can build stories
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or really experiences that become
stories for our audiences. And it's a
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really important thing to consider and
really more important is, how you're
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building it. So, let's walk through a
quick exercise to think about how to
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build a pass-along story for your next
event. Hopefully, you'll find this, find this
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effective. Question one, the storyteller. Who is your attendee? Try to think about
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that person, really envision them. Think about what makes their avatar. What is their name?
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Where do they hang out? What is their job
title? The more specific you can be about
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this person, the better. The next question
is, what I call the campfire, right. And
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the campfire, I call it this because this
is where we tell stories, right? Humans
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have been telling stories around the
campfire since the dawn of time and so,
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you almost want to imagine a scenario
where your storyteller would deliver
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their story. It might be at the office, it
might be at a dinner party, right? It
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might be amongst their friends while
they're just hanging out, like, where
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would they tell that story? And you really
want to write that piece down too
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and kind of imagine the emotion that
they're telling the story with. And now,
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we're moving on to the actual story.
Let's call that the tale.
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And you always want to like, think about
this as like candy, meaning like, what
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could they just not resist telling their
friends about. Now, here's a quick hint on
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building a story that's irresistible to
talk about. When you make people feel
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really good about themselves or proud
of themselves, that's usually it's
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something that they need to tell someone
about. So, when you're building a story
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you want to think about what will make them feel proud to tell someone else. And it's
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not just that a story has a couple
different points to it, there's like a
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beginning, middle and an end to any good
story. So, as you're building the tale you
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might want to think about, was there a
transformation involved in this story?
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Was it something new that they saw? Was there a surprise? People love talking
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about something that they thought was
gonna happen, but instead something else
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completely different happened, right? Was it, was it, a superlative? Was it like the
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best or the most that they had ever happened? Like what is peg or a storyline that
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you can really build for them? We're
gonna call that the tale. And the fourth
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question, the fourth question is actually
the most important and kind of the most
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fun. I call this the message, but you
might also want to call this the emotion,
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right? Because the message especially in
events is the emotion. And I actually, I
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learned this from one of the
earliest days of my event-planning
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career. Someone said this to me and it
was one of the most frustrating things
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I've ever heard, but also one of the
truest things I had ever heard, which is
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that, emotions is really all that an
attendee ever remembers. They usually
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don't remember what you tell them at the
event. What they remember is how they
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felt at the event. And so that's what you
want to focus on when you're building
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this message. You want to think about
what emotion you want someone to feel,
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right? And that's question four. And
emotions could be something like,
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admiration or do they feel like you
understand them, like, empathy. Do they
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feel inspired? Do they feel excited? Do they feel loved?
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What is an emotion that someone is going to feel, okay? So, we've gone through that.
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We've gone through the storyteller, the
campfire, the tale, and the emotion. And so,
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once you have all those written down,
here's the trick to building the story.
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You want to work backwards. You start
with number four and you work your way
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to number one. Okay, so let's try an example of how to
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build a pass-along story by using one of
the events that I hosted a couple months
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ago for some of our top clients. Now, our
clients are some of the top event
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marketers in the world and we brought
them all together in a really cool venue
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here in New York. And I'd gotten together
with my team in advance to think about
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what emotion we really wanted them to
feel. And the emotion that we came to
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after a lot of debate was that, we really
wanted them to feel love. Love and
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appreciation for their job and for
themselves and for the craft that they
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do. Okay, so that's where we started. How
do we get them to feel love? We threw
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around a lot of ideas for storylines
that they would take away and really
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what we landed on was that one of the
most important things that we could
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focus on was, the format of the event and
kind of how their experience would play
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out throughout the day. Okay, so fast-forward till after the
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event, I wanted to test this pass-along
story and see how effective we were so, I
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called up a lot of the different
attendees and asked them not, you know,
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"How was the event? Or, "Did you like it?" But, instead what was the story that you told
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when you got home? And more than that, who did you tell it to? So, "Re-tell me that
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story," I asked them and they did. And the
story's more often than not really
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weren't about the content that they
learned or a certain data point that
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they heard, but instead they started to
talk about what had happened. They talked
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about somebody that they had met at a
cocktail hour or a piece of swag that
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was now sitting on their desk that they
were really excited and surprised by. Or
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a musical interlude that had happened
right before a speaker and the violinist
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and how amazing she was. And really, that's what they focused on, but what was even
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better was that interwoven into each of
those stories was, the emotion. And they
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were using really interesting adjectives
and over and over again we started to
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hear words like, excitement and
appreciation and inclusion and it was
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those adjectives that we wrote down,
because that was our goal, that's what we
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were focusing on. Because remember guys, it's not about how you communicate your
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content and what you say, but instead
what people are gonna remember inside of
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these stories is how they feel. All right,
that's it.
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Good luck with all of your next events.
Please do leave some comments in the
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comment section below and let us know
what you think. And we'll make sure to see
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you next time for the next Run of Show
where we will be talking about more nerdy
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event stuff. Talk to you guys next time.
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If you felt like this episode made you
much smarter than when you started
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watching it, make sure to check out other
episodes of Run of Show Weekly and don't
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