The Conference Organizer’s Guide to Branding

If events are part of your marketing strategy, how will you remain competitive? How — besides investing even more dollars — can you make your conference “must-attend”?

Branding remains one of the best ways to differentiate your events from others, and it’s a strategy many organizers nod toward, but haven’t fully exploited.

Using examples from brand-savvy organizers and best practices from top brands, The Conference Organizer’s Guide to Branding will walk you through:

• Crafting your brand promise
• Delivering a branded experience
• Refining your conference’s brand

Fill out the form to get branded.

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The Conference Organizer’s Guide to Branding

Table of Contents
I. About Branding
II. Crafting the Brand Promise
III. Communicating the Brand Promise
IV. Delivering the Brand Experience
V. Extending the Brand Experience
VI. Refining the Brand Promise

Introduction

If events are part of your marketing strategy, how will you remain competitive? How — besides investing even more dollars — can you make your conference “must-attend”?

Conference branding remains one of the best ways to differentiate your events from others, and it’s a strategy many organizers nod toward, but haven’t fully exploited.

Using examples from brand-savvy organizers and best practices from top brands, The Conference Organizer’s Guide to Branding will walk you through:

• Crafting your brand promise
• Delivering a branded experience
• Refining your conference’s brand
• Fill out the form to get branded.

In-person events like conferences have become a popular way to connect with your customers and build stronger relationships with online communities.

So popular, in fact, that Forrester Research found that in-person trade shows, conferences, and events represented 14% of marketing budgets in 2015, a 6.1% increase from 2014.

This begs the question: If events are part of your marketing strategy, how will you remain competitive? How — besides investing even more dollars — can you make your conference “must attend”?

Branding remains one of the best ways to differentiate your events from others, and it’s a strategy many organizers nod toward but haven’t fully exploited.

Using examples and advice from exceptional Eventbrite conference organizers, this guide will help you create a highly differentiated brand promise and deliver an experience your attendees will love — as well as provide some best practices along the way.

Chapter 1: About Branding

Before we continue, let’s answer a few important questions.

What Is Conference Branding?

Almost anything can have a “brand” these days. Products have brands. People have personal brands. Even pets have their own brands. (You’ve probably heard of Grumpy Cat, or Jiff the Pomeranian — he has 2.1 million Instagram followers). But what exactly is conference branding? Is it your logo? Your typeface and color palette? Yes, those things are part of your identity. But branding is much, much more than those elements we can see, hear, or touch.

According to Jaleh Bisharat, Eventbrite’s Chief Marketing Officer, a brand is “the mental shortcut we all use — consciously or subconsciously — to simplify the way we think about anything that crosses our path. When we think of Federal Express, we likely shortcut to speed. When we think of Volvo we likely shortcut to safety.”

“Products, services, people, and even conferences can articulate what they want that mental short cut to be,” she continues. “Once you decide on something authentic, that you truly can deliver on, you do everything you can to articulate it internally and reinforce it at every single customer touchpoint.”

Ask yourself, what do people think of when they encounter your conference? Do you have a brand promise that’s clear to everyone in your organization? Is it compelling? Does it make you stand out from your competition?

Attendees of C2MTL, a business conference “somewhere between genius and insanity,” may say the conference is creativity on steroids. Whereas the day after Finovate, registrants will return to work and tell colleagues they’ve been to the future.

This is the true essence of branding. It’s the collection of thoughts and feelings someone has from their experiences with a brand.

What is your brand a “shortcut” to?

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