Events are one of the most vital parts of public relations – bringing people together to share a unique and memorable experience creates the perfect opportunity for brands to develop strong connections with their various audiences, whilst simultaneously building excitement about their products. After two long years of having Covid-19 restrictions that have limited events to mostly a digital space, we are finally seeing events make a comeback in the real world and we couldn’t be more excited!
PR agencies are able to create various different styles of events that are fit for purpose; from live performances and entertainment to product launches and tastings and even webinars (often reserved for business audiences these “post-COVID” days). Ultimately, the direction will depend on what your brand is about and what you are looking to achieve through the campaign. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to determine aspects of your events such as the guest list, location, media coverage outcomes, and so on. If you are doing a product launch with the purpose of finding more distributors for your product, then you know you need a business-to business campaign. Here, your aim is to improve your network and bring in more opportunities to work with people in the industry, so you might want to limit your guest list to people who can help you achieve this and focus on achieving media coverage in sources that are industry specific. Since the people invited to this type of event have pre-exciting knowledge about the industry, the product launch can focus on covering more technical information relevant to the audience about what makes the product a must have.
However, if you are looking to have a launch event to build consumers’ excitement over a product then inviting relevant influencers to your event, might be the most effective way to reach your targeted demographic. In this case, talking about very technical or industry specific information during the event might not be as engaging. Instead, you could focus on creating an experience that will encourage guests to showcase their online following what they are up to, such as clever entertainment, props and hashtags.
So far this year we have had the opportunity to organise a number of exciting product launches (Wilde non-alcoholic beer, Wagga Wagga Monopoly Board, and a new expression of Westward Whiskey), a trade event (for DISCUS, promoting new spirits from USA), a webinar discussing the post Covid workplace (for our client Future X Collective), and some bespoke one on one events that provide a much more intimate and personal experience with a brand (inviting influencers to Hunter Valley Gardens for their family event Mega Creatures, and a preview of a Mother’s Day paint and sip event for super premium gin Silent Pool), all of which we will discuss in upcoming weeks. Now you might be wondering, how do you decide what type of event would best fit your brand? Here are some thought starters for you, based on years of experience!
1. Know your audience: Are you a B2B or a B2C type of brand? by understanding who your audience is and what draws their attention, you will be able to decide what the best location for the event is and what sort of activities, food, beverages, and other arrangements you need to organise. For example, as part of our campaign to raise the profile of the Hunter Valley Gardens and drive traffic to the website, we organised visits by influencers to the Christmas Lights Spectacular and the Mega Creatures Night Safari. Since the target audience of our clients are families, the influencers visited during school holidays and the displays they were able to post about were very popular amongst this target market.
2. Know your product: being aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of your product is going to allow you to curate an event that makes your brand stand out, so it becomes something memorable for the audience. For our Evian Live Young campaign which we executed in partnership with experiential agency BEcause, we were looking to highlight the brand’s vision that youth is a positive universal value, whilst building awareness of the Australian ‘Live Young in the Backyard’ Evian initiative. Therefore, carrying out the event during summertime gave us the advantage to reinforce these positive associations with the product, and in turn impact the highest consumption period in a positive way.
3. Know your business: understanding where your brand stands by assessing the resources that are available to it will give you a great advantage when deciding what type of PR event is going to be most effective. If you are a small business looking to launch a product, spending your budget on influencer marketing might produce better results than booking a well-known (and expensive) location for a launch.
Now that you know this, you might be thinking that organising a PR event is an easy task… After all, who knows more about your brand than you, the owner of it? But it is not that simple. There are certainly limitations to what the naked eye can see and if you are not willing to look further, you could be missing out on great opportunities to increase the reach of your campaign. Here at Agent99 PR, we have years of experience in this field, which has allowed us to perfect our research methods and build a strong list of contacts from different industries so that we can curate and engage through the right events for our clients. Our role as a PR agency is to make this process as simple for you as possible, as we deep dive and gather as much information as we can about your consumer and put it to use strategically and tactically to create the perfect event for your launch!
Some might think that having a large and extravagant event would translate into instant profits, but this is not always the case. The public relations industry has seen a strong shift towards digital communications as the rapid evolution of technology and social media has drastically changed the way we interact socially and professionally. Now, when organising events, PR agencies take into consideration the potential online reach of guests, as this might increase the number of people that get to see what the experience was like. This increase of potential online exposure means that we must invest most of our time and effort in making sure that the event is memorable and surpasses the expectations of the guests. If done correctly, guests will feel inspired to capture and share their experience with their online followers which will continue to promote the brand or product even after the campaign is finished.
In this new series of blogs, we will share with you some of the events we have launched over the past few months. This way, you will be able to get great insight about the different forms of PR events and how they are created to promote each brand as effectively and efficiently as possible.
With everyone excited for restrictions finally coming to an end, it is the perfect time to build excitement about your brand or product, so please get in touch with us if you would like assistance curating your next event.
Agents Hollie and Valentina
