Event Branding ~ Ideas Trumping Jargon
In my years working as a copywriter in a software company's in-house creative group, I was assigned to create concepts and copy for one of the company's flagship annual executive conferences. I worked on this conference in tandem with a talented graphic designer for several years in a row.
Innovation fatigue
The first year, I recommended that we avoid worn-out business conference themes and dig a little deeper (at the time, it seemed to me that many conferences were content to shoehorn the word "innovation" into the title somewhere and let it go at that).
We tried to take into account the current business climate and realities facing executives, and make those a part of the conference narrative. In other words, I wanted our branding for the conference to communicate that:
- We had a clear understanding of their immediate challenges.
- The conference and its presenters would be speaking specifically to those challenges.
We set out to find bold and/or inviting imagery and come up with aspirational, storytelling language that would set the invitations and websites apart from competing conferences. Then we had to sell our in-house clients on those images and words.
I searched for relevant quotations from the keynote speakers or from famous thinkers that we could use in our promotional pieces. One year, this Isaac Asimov quote was our inspiration:
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
The theme incorporated just one phrase from the quotation, but the full version was featured in many of the print and online materials.
"Perfect is the enemy of good"
There are always many cooks in the kitchen when big conferences like this are being put together, and it's almost inevitable that the many voices that weigh in will bring their own agendas and priorities to bear on themes and execution.
All of those opinions inevitably dilute your message by the time all the stamps of approval have been secured, but despite that, I believe we always ended up with themes and branding that pushed the conference beyond the same old, same old boilerplate.
