[VIDEO] How to Make Your Events Memorable

Hey, guys. Today we're going to cover a strategy.

An employee of mine, Kevin, had come back from a conference. I asked him about it because I saw a photo of him on Instagram where he was holding a skateboard. He responded, "The conference was amazing. I actually designed that skateboard with a professional skateboarder.”

I asked, "Where was it? Tell me more." And he said, "I heard a story from the president at Vans talking about the only thing in retail that works anymore is connecting with your audience experientially through their passions. So, I made a skateboard. I was really impressed with Vans.”

It occurred to me that what Vans had done well was build a "pass-along story" for Kevin to tell me about. A pass-along is the idea that we, as humans, remember by recounting, by telling people things. We repeat stories we hear and the stories dig deeper into our memories. And so, as event marketers, it's our job to think about how we can build stories, or really, experiences that become stories for our audiences. It’s a really important concept and what’s important is how you're building it.

So, let's work through a quick exercise to think about how to build a pass-along story for your next event.

Who is your attendee? Try to think about that person, really envision them, think or make their avatar:

What is their name? Where do they hang out? What is their job title?

The more specific you can be about this person, the better.

A campfire is where we tell stories. Humans have been telling stories around the campfire since the dawn of time.

You’ll want to imagine a scenario where your storyteller would deliver their story. It might be at the office, or a dinner party. It could even be amongst friends while just hanging out. Think about where to tell that story.

Now for the actual story. Let's call this "the tale." Additionally, think about this as candy, meaning, what could they not resist telling their friends about?

So, here’s a hint on building a story that's irresistible to talk about. When you make people feel really good about themselves or proud of themselves, that's usually something that they’ll tell someone about.

When you're building a story, you want to think about: what will make them feel proud to tell someone else?

And it's not just that. A story has a couple different points to it. It has a beginning, middle and an end.

So, as you're building the tale, think about, was there a transformation involved in the story? Was there something new that they saw? Was there a surprise people love talking about? Think of something that they thought was going to happen but instead something completely different happened. Was it a superlative? What is a peg or storyline that you can really build for them?

Now for the actual story. Let's call this "the tale." Additionally, think about this as candy, meaning, what could they not resist telling their friends about?

So, here’s a hint on building a story that's irresistible to talk about. When you make people feel really good about themselves or proud of themselves, that's usually something that they’ll tell someone about.

When you're building a story, you want to think about: what will make them feel proud to tell someone else?

And it's not just that. A story has a couple different points to it. It has a beginning, middle and an end.

So, as you're building the tale, think about, was there a transformation involved in the story? Was there something new that they saw? Was there a surprise people love talking about? Think of something that they thought was going to happen but instead something completely different happened. Was it a superlative? What is a peg or storyline that you can really build for them?

Here’s an example of how to build a pass-along story from events that I hosted a couple of months ago for some of our top clients. Our clients are some of the top event marketers in the world and we brought them all together in a cool venue here in New York.

I went with my team in advance to think about what emotion we wanted them to feel. The emotion that we came to after a lot of debate was them to feel love, and appreciation for their job and for themselves and for the craft that they do.

That's where we started, but how do we get them to feel love? We threw out a lot of ideas for storylines that they would take away. One of the most important things that we could focus on was the format of the event and how their experience would play out throughout the day.

Fast forward 'till after the event. I wanted to test this pass-along story and see how effective we were. I called up a lot of the different attendees and asked them, what was the story that you told when you got home? More than that, who did you tell it to? Retell me that story.

The stories, more often than not, weren't really about the content that they learned or a certain data point that they heard. Instead they started talking about what had happened. They spoke about somebody that they met at a cocktail hour or a piece of swag that they're really excited about. Or even a musical interlude that had happened right before a speaker such as the violinist and how amazing she was. That's what they focused on.

What was even better was that interwoven into each of those stories was the emotion, and they were using interesting adjectives. Over and over again, we started to hear words like excitement and appreciation and inclusion. It was those adjectives that we wrote down because that was our goal, and our focus.

Remember, it's not about how you communicate your content and what you say. Instead, it's really about what people are really going to remember inside of these stories and how they feel.