The typical event brief includes the purpose of the event, a timeline and important dates, a budget, attendee information, look and feel guidance, and venue preferences.
To help your chosen agency to bring the best event to life for you, here’s 5 top tips to start with:
1/ Clarify your event’s goal, the roles and responsibilities (yours and your agency’s)
Organizing an event costs time and resources, so it’s important to tie your event to an achievable goal. Depending on your goal, the event agency will make different decisions about the design, theme, look and feel, and other key elements.
Making and communicating very clear the scope of our involvement from the begging saves a lot of time and energy through the event’s implementation period. It allows the agency to allocate the right time and resources to all the tasks and, as well, makes boundaries and taking decisions clear for all.
2/ Describe the event, but let your agency be creative
To give your events team or agency a clear picture, it’s important to start with a detailed overview of the event. What does the event look and feel like? Who attends? What is the theme?
Usually, during a pitching process, not all the estimated costs are final, due to a lot of variables that can change until the day of the event. Nevertheless, this process is exactly the right time to give the agency free reign to suggest any ideas they may come up with.
The first brief should be a collaborative and engaged process where you consider all possible elements of your event.
3/ Communicate a budget expectation and an implementation timeline
Pretty much everything with events is scalable. Giving an agency a budget to work with means that they are suggesting ideas to you that are feasible and that you can achieve for your event.
All agencies price their service differently, and often it can be hard to compare similar services between agencies. By giving everyone a budget to work within it makes it easier for you to compare the ideas that come back to you.
When thinking about the budget, it is helpful to ask how much you expect to spend per attendee. Are you going to serve food and drinks? What kind of venue are you renting? Where is the venue located?
Besides the budget expectations, you will need to have a date for the event and some other important milestones along the way.
4/ Focus on the outcome, include a look and feel guide
When creating an event brief for the agency, focus on the objective and outcome you want your event to achieve. Be sure that the agency will have your business outcomes top of mind with every decision and recommendation they make for your event.
Your events agency will handle much of the event’s look and feel, it can be helpful to include guidance on the event’s look and feel. Does your company or organization have colors or logos that you would like to use? Are you going for something elegant and classy, or fun and playful? What is the tone of voice you’d like to communicate? How would you like the participants to talk about the event?
5/ Demographic info
Create a persona of your event.
Give your agency a good understanding of who your event attendees are (not only age and gender is relevant) – what makes them tick; how do they spend their office time, but also their free time; what sports do they enjoy and how much active they are or they are not; what do they eat and drink? Coming up with fun and unique ways of describing your persona/audience will give your agency a good understanding of what elements will make your event a success.
Organizing an event is a huge undertaking that requires many moving parts. It’s nearly impossible to carry out an event without a high level of organization. A perfectly planned event is rare, as unforeseen obstacles will often arise, especially in this moment of uncertainty. That’s why it is essential to create an event planning roadmap that can be shared with all members of your organization.
