Bringing a brand story to life within a physical location is the ultimate goal of all corporate events.

Bespoke, a custom fabrication and full-service production support shop recently launched by SET Experience Group, aims to do just that. SET Experience Group is a full-service brand experience agency that also includes SET, SET Live, and ASK.

Have you ever held your incentive program – or considered holding it – in an unusual venue?  Unique, unusual, and unexpected are all words used to describe venues that fall outside the boundaries of the typical hotel, ballroom or convention center facility. Many incentive planners are looking to develop programs that can provide unique, immersive and exceptional experiences to their groups.

When disaster strikes, people need to know what is happening and how they should proceed. In late February, I attended a workshop at the MPINCC Annual Conference & Exhibition entitled “Crisis Communications: The Most Important Tweet.”

Alex Plaxen, MTA, president and founder of Little Bird Told Media, initially asked three questions of the event professionals in the room:

When a top leader makes his grand entrance to Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance with Me,” you know it’s going to be a fun conference. Indeed, Chris Cahill, CEO of luxury brands for AccorHotels, set the stage for a creative four days of meetings, talks and workshops at the brand’s seventh annual Global Meetings Exchange (GME), held Feb. 28-Mar. 3 in Montreal.

A recent industry-wide survey from iJET International showed a lower-than-expected focus on preparedness around meetings and events. The resulting report reveals that most organizations and companies in this space are not meeting minimum standards of risk management protocols for attendees.

The survey was sent to approximately 6,000 meeting planners, meeting planning companies, and meeting and event decision-makers from corporations, iJET stated. More than 400 responses were received.

Key findings include:

One of the keys to event success is understanding your attendees. Who are they, why are they registering for your event, and what do they hope to take away when the event is over? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you design an event that will exceed your attendees’ expectations.

For corporate events, it’s common to design content around your attendee personas or audience segment, but have you thought about your attendee profiles when designing the event experience?

Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is the largest meeting and event industry association worldwide. The association’s mission statement is to provide the best education, experiences and relationships to help members produce the best meetings and events.

MPI Chapters provide an education and networking link between members in a specific locality, including newsletters, directories, and monthly educational programs. Many chapters also host a yearly educational event designed to bring together local members.

New York. The city that never sleeps. The city that crams 3.9 million people into Manhattan’s 23 square miles on any given weekday. It can pose more than a few logistical challenges for corporate event planners, but at the same time, can open the doors for truly unique event experiences.

I spoke with several veteran New York City independent event planners, who shared some best practices for overcoming the challenges that make planning corporate events in New York a unique experience.

It’s no secret that younger audiences have different approaches to learning. While Baby Boomers prefer personally focused learning and classroom environments, Gen Xers are fiercely independent, self-directed and would rather learn on their own time.

As the ongoing quest for business efficiency continues, it becomes more important for larger organizations to chart their course to implementing a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP).

The Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP) moniker was created by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). An SMMP is a disciplined approach to managing enterprise-wide meeting and event related processes, activities, metrics, standards and supplier strategies to achieve business objectives, quantitative cost savings, risk mitigation and optimal service levels.