Best Practices for Creating Immersive Event Experiences

The meetings and events industry has been talking about meaningful experiences for a long time, probably since 1999, when Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore first published their seminal book, The Experience Economy. We all understand the transformational power of a great experiences, and how they impact and influence the guests at a meeting, event or incentive program, be they large or small.

This conversation about the power of experiences has only intensified as social media created platforms for each of us to capture, curate and share our experiences. For instance, Instagram now has 1.2 billion global users sharing 95,000,000 videos and photos a day, and Facebook has 3.3 billion active monthly users sharing 350,000,000 photos and videos each day. The interesting fact is most of these images and videos aren’t of things but rather, are of experiences.

When we capture, curate and share our experiences, we get to define and redefine who we are and who we desire to be.

Turning event design into experience design

Those of us in the event design business are always under pressure to stage experiences that positively impact our guests and having a good definition provides an effective guide. I asked one of the “fathers of experience,” Jim Gilmore, to define the word. He shares, “An experience is a memorable event that engages a customer in an inherently personal way. But unlike a service that is delivered on demand, an experience unfolds over time.” Now, I insert guest where he uses customer, but the definition of being memorable, inherently personal and unfolding over time certainly works.  

But really, what can we, as experience designers, do to up our experience game?

Know the purpose. Have a very clear, singular purpose for your event. Defining the “why” is a great way to zero in on what you really desire to accomplish. Simon Sinek’s golden circle is an excellent exercise to help find your event’s true goal. Use that clear purpose as your design North star and align your event accordingly. Additionally, use your “why” to remove all the unnecessary elements that dilute your true goal.

Follow the attendee's path. Have a clear understanding of your guest’s path and use their journey as a catalyst for fresh thinking. Remember, an experience unfolds over time. I like to encourage event organizers to design the journey, not just the destination. There are numerous opportunities to enrich the overall guest experience by designing in pre- and post-event elements. Creating a detailed journey map opens your line of sight to experience what your guest encounters on their path to your event. Pose the question, “How do I remove experiential friction?” For example, have you personally gone through your event’s registration process?

Use best principles. In this business it’s easy for us to get caught up in “best practices” and deploy them over and over. When it comes to humans, things are a little different. We all know humans are interesting characters, but perhaps there are some “best principles” that we can use to spark new and fresh thinking. Here are a few that might help stimulate some new ideas: 

• Make the personal connection. The core to designing a rich, frictionless experience is all about walking in the shoes of the guest. We touched on it above. You will discover unseen opportunities when you have a personal and empathetic connection with the people for whom you are designing.
• Keep things simple and coherent. This increases the chances of creating long-term memories. Our brains are always evaluating how interesting a message is vs. how difficult it is to process it. We prefer messages that deliver the greatest interest with the least amount of effort.
• Tell stories. Compelling stories can trigger empathy and action and, therefore, memory. Storytelling is a powerful tool for designers to use to capture people’s interest, whether at a rational or emotional level, and it helps people retain key messages.
• Encourage awe. By activating strong, positive emotions, you help increase participants' generosity, helpfulness and compassion, while decreasing entitlement.
• Novelty shakes things up. The human brain is very efficient (some might say lazy) about making associations and creating mental shortcuts, also known as “autopilot” thinking. Use novelty to break this pattern and awaken a different way of thinking. Interrupt the ordinary to capture attention.

Consider using these simple, yet effective, human-based principles to prompt new thinking by challenging yourself and your event design team to think differently. How can we simplify processes and remove friction? What story can we tell to create a memorable moment? How might we use status to drive certain behaviors? What awe-inspiring experiences can we stage? What are our guests expecting? How might we interrupt that?

And always keep the three elements of purpose, path and principles in mind when you design an event. When you can define these and then implement event design that aligns with them, you will take your events to a new level.

Greg Bogue, chief brand and experience officer for Maritz, is a recognized event design leader in the meetings industry. He takes the latest developments in neuroscience and applies them to transforming the guest journey and experience to create a bigger impact.