Meetings Matter Chatter
Industry trends and topics pertaining to the travel and meetings industry
Meetings Matter Chatter
Creating Moments That Matter: Your Event’s Unique Story
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Sandra Collins, Director of Strategic Communications and Dan Umney, Director, Creative Services from The Collective in the UK will help us explore the power of elevated content in transforming client events. Discover how effective storytelling can enhance the attendee experience and leave a lasting impression. Dan and Sandra will share innovative ways to incorporate storytelling into your events through branding, videos, pre-reads, and more. Tune in to gain insights on creating engaging narratives that resonate with your audience, ensuring your events are not only memorable but impactful!
Hi there, welcome to Meetings Matter Chatter. My name is Jenna Baker, and I am the Vice President of Account Management at BCD Meetings and Events, and I am your host. Today I am joined by two of my colleagues who support the Collective in the UK, which is a boutique agency that we have here within BCD ME. We've all heard that content is king, and today Dan Umney and Sandra Collins are going to help us understand why. Dan, Sandra, welcome.
SPEAKER_02Hi.
SPEAKER_01Hi. Very happy to have you both.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, nice to be here.
SPEAKER_01Good to chat. Lovely to have a chance to talk to you. Thank you. So, Dan, let's start with you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so my role within the collective here in the UK is Director of Creative Services, and that role is to oversee the creative output for the studio team, essentially. So that's a diverse team of content and communications specialists, like Sandra, Director of Communications, as well as videographers, motion designers, art directors, designers. They're all working together to bring our clients' messaging to life. And I often work very closely with Sandra as we sort of blend our words and pictures elements together to tell our clients' stories.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that sounds like a very fun job. Now I have described the collective as a boutique agency within BCD. Would you say that that is an accurate way to describe it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. So we've always done fully produced events within the BCD organization, but it's such a big business and it's known for so many things out there in the market. There was a need to create something standout so that we could show up differently in the marketplace. So if we turned up to a meeting with our BCD colleagues, they could say, Oh, and this is the collective, and it feels different to the client that we're bringing in this boutique agency feel. And that's worked out really well, particularly here in the UK, where events buyers are sometimes put off by the larger entities and they like these little boutiques sort of feel. But the collective is designed to be the best of both worlds. So we're boutique in how we operate and creative and things like that, but we're underpinned by the bigger BCD business. So that gives clients a bit of reassurance.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sounds like a good formula. Now you mentioned, Dan, that you are the picture and Sandra, you are the words, right? So will you tell us about yourself? What do you do at BCD?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, as Dan said, we work very much as a team. We we often describe ourselves as words and pictures. My role very much focuses on supporting clients with their communication needs. Um, and that's a pretty broad heading because it can be about how we engage with their audience to inspire, inform, educate, or even drive behaviour before we get to a live experience. So I can look at the delegate journey from start to finish. So there'll be many interactions that need to be planned along the way, sort of during, before, and after. But then the other part of that for communications is also working with the presenters. So we very much work with them on their content and how to bring that to life and how to make it more of a sort of storytelling experience rather than you know, they come to you with a load of PowerPoint and bullet points on a slide. So, how do we take their messaging and bring it to life basically?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I know that we always say content is king, that's what you're saying, also, but why do you think that's so important?
SPEAKER_00I think content is at the heart of any project that we do. You know, creative, high-quality speaker content is essential for driving the message home to an audience, you know, whether you're imparting learning, whether you're engaging them, or whether you're helping them to build connections at an event. You know, it's vital that we hold the audience's interest because we want them to walk away feeling like they've gained from investing their time at an event and coming along to it. They should feel kind of inspired by new ideas or that they've acquired knowledge that's going to benefit them going forward. So it's all about presenting that content in a way that's going to have the most maximum impact.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so content is really about storytelling, it sounds like. And I know that people pay attention to stories, they want to get the payoff of the ending, right? So, how do you hook them in with a story at a meeting?
SPEAKER_00It's very much about, you know, good storytelling has to hook people in emotionally. I mean, if Jenna, if you think about, you know, books you've read or films you love, you know, you tend to have an emotional connection to those things that makes it more of a memorable experience. And if you can make that emotional connection, people are far more likely to remember what you're telling them. So if you tell it as a story and you bring it to life, it's better than just giving them lots of facts and statistics. So for us, it's about creatively weaving those key messages into this sort of compelling narrative, and that makes it more likely that people will connect with the subject matter. And I think you know, storytelling as well can simplify complex ideas, make them easier to understand. Overall, it's just about what's the best way that you're going to bring people in and you're going to get them to remember or change their behavior or do something different after they've been exposed to that content. So that's really where we see our role is using different media, different ways of delivering messages to bring all of that to life.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so now I'm starting to understand how the two of you work so well together. So from a picture standpoint, Dan, how do you bring Sandra's words, her storytelling words, into your side of the house?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, as as you say, in events and storytelling is often an audio-visual experience. So, you know, I say a picture says a thousand words. So, you know, how many words does like a video say? A lot more, I suspect. But, you know, depending on the story you're trying to tell, you need to convey different moods through those words and pictures they will experience. So, you know, it's down to the you know, music married to the kind of visuals that you're seeing, along with the kind of words or storyboard and scripts that kind of Sandra's put together. So those kind of things create those different experiences, and and that depends on what you're trying to create in the in the room. So whether that's sort of pride in the company you're working for, joy and celebration for an awards, hope for the future, or a kind of you know, a team togetherness, you know, those are the sort of moods that we we create through those audiovisual experiences, through you know, the different kinds of pictures, the interviews, the storytelling, the reveals. You're often trying to move that emotional dial from one place to another. So it's kind of you you set out your stall with one feeling, and then the music builds and the visuals come faster and the storytelling increases, and by the end, you're feeling something completely different, which is where you want those people to be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. So I'm picturing as you're describing this experience that you're creating, I'm picturing like an annual leadership meeting or a sales kickoff meeting, those type of big meetings with a lot of pizzazz where really they want to kick off, you know, a customer wants to kick off the year with a specific message, like you said, or maybe they have an initiative that they want everyone to be aware of and buy into. So, can you give some specific examples of how you might or how you have used storytelling for other customers to convey specific messages?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Like you say, we often have to land a big strategy message and things like that. On its own, it can often be quite a dry sort of message. So, crafting a story for an opening video, using that strategy as an inspiration is often a more compelling way to at least grab a delegate's attention and set them up for the rest of the content they're about to experience. We had an interesting one for an event in Japan last year where essentially they had two days of content, and the original brief seemed to be the same. And it's like we want to celebrate the past and we want to kick off into the future. And it was like, well, we don't want to make the same film twice. So we treated both of those quite differently. One was an animated story that grew up from the roots because it was in Japan, it was blossom trees, and it grew up in, you know, and the the blossom blew off into the to the hills to become other parts of the story. And that was very much like strategic content that would flow out of that, and we used the trees and the animation to tell that story, whereas the other part of it was more of an emotional sort of story about the you know, how to tell the story from you know the emotional side, the people who've worked in the business and how important it is. So we managed to tell two stories, which was essentially the same story but in two different ways, and make the audience feel differently about each one.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's a great way to keep momentum throughout the week. I I like that. I can I can visualize that that story. And people have an expectation that the quality of your product is going to be similar to what they would see in the movies or on television, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we you know, we're we're all professional video producers. We we plug into top quality animators, uh cinematographers, storytellers, script writers, um, designers. You know, these are these are all people with expertise in in making films, essentially. So the all of the skills are transferable between, you know, TV, bit film, you know, high-quality events. The screens we're using are just you know really high quality, bigger and wider often than you get at the cinema. So um, yeah, it's it's all similar skill sets.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Sandra, now again, if we go back to these year beginning meetings or kickoff meetings or launch meetings, those are normally several days. So Dan just described that we've got some films, different moods, maybe each day there's a different film, but um, but you need more than that, right? If you want the story and the content to sustain through the whole meeting, how can you convey that? Like how do you keep that going, that feeling?
SPEAKER_00I think one of the things to think about with any event is that it's part of a communications journey. So I never like to think of these things in isolation. For me, it's all communication, whether it's an event, whether it's something digital, whether we're using film, whatever it is, it's all part of a delegate's communication journey. So I think you know, what's really important is to start early before they even set foot on site, because what we need to do is, you know, we could be getting them excited, but also setting their expectations of what the event will be about, teasing, you know, maybe highlights, locations, the speaker in the content. So it's it's having that red thread that runs through everything. So what Dan's team, what the rest of Dan's area is on the creative side, it's having that whole look and feel for communication, and whether that is in the simplest form of communication or something more complicated in terms of the whole immersive experience. So, what we try and do is keep that going through everything they experience from pre-event through every little touch point on site, through what they see on the main stage, through the environment they're in, through opportunities to interact, so it's two-way communication. All of those have to be built in in layers, if you like. So they all add to the whole experience. And then you use different media to do that and tell your story in lots of different ways. So every touch point should bring something new to the audience.
SPEAKER_01Dan, so Sandra just shared with us some different ways that we can keep that connection during the entire meeting through content. Are there other ways that you would do it on the picture side to sustain the feeling throughout a meeting?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, I mean, we don't work sort of in isolation. So everything that we do, you know, we work very closely with, you know, our production team as well to bring the whole thing to life as part of the experience. And then sometimes you want to change the mood. So you've had a day of business content all the way through, then in the evening you've got your gala dinner and that kind of celebration stuff. So you want to completely change that mood, but you've often got the same environment. So a good way to change that feeling is through the kind of audio-visual experience. You've got you know things happening on stage like dances and a performance that you know helps energize the crowd, but adding to that around is what you see on the screen. So we did something where we had a sort of 1980s-themed gala dinner thing a little while ago, and we, you know, we brought Max Headroom back from the 1980s, who used to be like an MTV sort of DJ back in the day. But we used modern technology that that exists now, we used AI to map the CEO's face onto Max Headroom and then made his voice into the presenter of the night. So he looked like the CEO and Max Headroom at the same time, and he was introducing different bits of the evening content throughout. And then we had 1980s graphics, 1980s music, dance performances, you know, and things like that. So all those things help set the mood and add to the tone of the event and the experience for everybody.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds really fun. What about on-site branding? I mean, you touched on it a little bit, Dan, but in terms of look and feel, I mean, you mentioned how you can kind of change the look and feel throughout the meeting, but are there certain themes that you might pull through in terms of the signage or, you know, the prematerials and things like that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, the event branding is is key to communicating your your theme, essentially. It's the one area that often gets overlooked, but if you can only communicate the purpose of your event with a still image, then that still image needs to work really hard. So it's more than just a logo, it's the visual embodiment of your theme. It makes your event look cohesive and and you know it makes you look like you know how to communicate to your people, essentially. So the most effective events have a strong theme, and that's backed up by that strong event branding. That's sort of how it should all work together so you can start to really experience what your meeting is about from the first thing you see.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So, Sandra, from a client perspective, I'm thinking, you know, there's probably some clients out there that are super creative and maybe they come up with a max headroom idea, but there's others that really probably this is not their wheelhouse. And so they're gonna need some some guidance. So, how does how do you work with clients? Like how does the process work? They engage you, how often do you meet? You know, how do the ideas come to life? How does that all come together?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it is a very mixed bag in terms of how you, you know, what you get from a client. You get some people who turn up and they've got they've got everything exactly as they want it. They're very much, you know, this is my messaging, this is how I want to say it, this is what I want to say. And, you know, you can you can make suggestions and refinements to that, but we will work sometimes with speaker coaches as well to help them that maybe you know you can film them and show them presenting their stuff and then work backwards a bit because they'll see themselves and go, oh, okay, that's not how I thought it was going to come across. So those are the ones who are it may be very definite about what they want to do. Then we have other people turn up who they've got a head full of, well, I kind of want to say this and I kind of want to say that, and you're like, okay, this is this is going to be much more of a journey. So what I like to do with them is I start by saying, let's write the script. What is it you're trying to communicate? So I think if we can get the story and we get the understanding of what they want to say, then it's our role, Dan's, and mine, to okay, how do we bring that to life? So you start with the script, the kind of long form, and then you take a creative approach to that. So you look at how do we illustrate the story? Is video a good use of doing it? Maybe it's the format of the presentation, perhaps it shouldn't be one person on stage. Should this be like a fireside chat or a panel session? You know, there are lots of different ways of looking at the best way to communicate the information, but you have to start with what the information is, and then it's up to us to collaborate with them, and that you know, that will be putting together a proposal for them, storyboarding that out so they can see how their session will work, what that will look like, how it ties back to the overall event theme, because this is one thing that we we find a lot is that people will come in with their content and they haven't necessarily thought how that ties into the overarching theme of the event. So part of our role is to wrangle those clients and bring them back into line sometimes because they'd be like, Yeah, but this is what I need to say, and it's like, yeah, but that isn't what we're talking about today. So, you know, we we have a bit of a shepherding role to keep them on track, to help them make the most of their time on stage, help them communicate in the best way possible. And so there's it's a very strong collaboration that takes a lot of time in terms of, as I said, that whole visual proposal, storyboard, back and forth till you get the right solution for that particular presenter and their needs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I could picture like a client might come to you and say, We're doing a year beginning meeting and our theme is new beginnings or something like that, which is pretty generic, right? So then you'll work through that with them and take it to a different point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, Dan's been doing some work with a client recently where they, you know, we know the theme of the contract conference, but it's then how how do you bring that down to every element of the agenda?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's how do you weave it into the to the content, the agenda? How do you make it make sense to the activities in the day, the guest speakers, that kind of thing? It's like they've got the theme, but they don't know how to activate it. So sometimes you know, we can take that and then take it to the next level for them and go, well, this is the sort of the sort of speaker that you want because it will be talking to the themes that you want. Um, this is how you construct the type of content you're doing in the day. You know, so it's going way beyond what something actually just looks like. It's it's creativity is all about how it communicates to the delegates and and how your theme comes across.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm sure they appreciate that. I I love speaking with experts, as it sounds like the two of you are, so it's it's nice to be guided. So, how long does that process take, though? Because Sandra, you said it can take a while, right? I mean, what what's the lead time you'd you'd ideally want for these type of programs?
SPEAKER_00Well, what we want and what we get aren't necessarily the same thing. We've had clients come to us with you know six weeks out, and it's it's then it's a real marathon, round the clock kind of thing. The more organized ones, the the sooner we can start, the better. But in an ideal situation, you would you would like what two or three months really, or if not more, to plan the whole thing. Because what you also want to do is weave that narrative into the pre-event communications. So, you know, we want to build that expectation, we want to get the save the date, the invites, we want to build the excitement. So we need to understand how that theme, how that messaging all fits together, and then yeah, it's having that content early enough. A lot of clients, their focus is on getting the venue, getting the practical things done, and then content maybe comes later. So, yeah, I mean, we've had some great clients where we've we've had maybe five, six months lead time working with teams, and you know, but their content's been quite complex, uh, right down to sort of like six weeks out, and it's it's more of a we make the best of what we can with what they're giving us within those parameters. So, yeah, I'd always say more is is better if we can.
SPEAKER_02And it's about you know, educating the clients as well about the importance of starting earlier. I think you know, the longer we work with some of our clients, the more trust we get, and often we then get to start a bit earlier. We've had, you know, one major client we've worked for for years, and bit by bit we get more and more trusted to do more work with them. And so initially they would come to us with the theme, they would even give us the look and feel, and we just execute the event. As we've worked closer and closer with them, we've started to take more of that work as they trust us to do it for them and work with them to get that done. So it's a really good process. Um, and like I say, we just need to work with our clients and educate them on the benefits of what you know we can do for them, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, what would you say are like the the hot trends that clients are really interested in these days? Because you had mentioned video, you had mentioned like immersive experiences.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it it's perhaps it's a cliche probably to say AI at the minute. Every client brief seems to say AI. AI and artificial intelligence, but what to do with it is the question. But I always try and say, take it back a step and look at what you're trying to achieve first, because it doesn't really matter what all the latest things are if your messaging is wrong. So it's like, let's take it back a step and look at what you're trying to achieve. Then we can look at what are the latest things and the best ways to bring those to life. And that may well be, you know, an AI avatar of a person, you know, who doesn't really exist talking to your audience because that's suits your topic that you're, but it could be as simple as it a simple animation because that communicates what you're trying to do the best. So it's, you know, we often get clients going, oh, what's the latest thing? What's the best thing? What's the newest thing? But in a way, that doesn't is not the most important thing until you've solved what you actually want to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's about the right tool for the job. And people often get hung up with what's new and sexy and exciting. Um, and it's like, yeah, but that's that's not what you need. It doesn't suit your audience, it might not suit the set that you've decided on, because the production will have a huge impact on the way we put things on on screen. For example, the the job we mentioned earlier in Japan, it was an enormous LED screen that was gosh, it was a hundred and something meters wide. I can't remember the exact measurements and one in Paris was 60, 70 meters wide, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, and again, you've got to think about if that's the setup, you're going with what can technology do for you in the way of delivery. So people will might get excited about having something bigger and better, but it might not necessarily work for the format they're doing it in or what they're trying to achieve. So, yeah, you have to be a little bit careful on what's trendy and exciting.
SPEAKER_02But we're always, you know, we always want to use the latest stuff, you know, holographic technology or the AI pieces, but um we just don't rush to that first, I guess.
SPEAKER_01No, that makes sense. I mean, honestly, I think it would be cooler to be in a room with an enormous screen and you know, all this sound and you know, music or whatever, as opposed to just having a AI, you know, yeah, chatbot or something. So I I guess it just depends on yeah.
SPEAKER_02Virtual reality is still a thing and you can have more and more people, but then that depends on the size of your audience, and you can only really have sort of 10 people at once experiencing it. So if you've got small little breakouts, it could work well for that, but then it's quite a significant investment in time to build a bespoke VR environment for people. So if you're only gonna be able to show 10 people every now and again, is it worth the investment? Sometimes it is because then you know it might be technology you could take around the globe to different meetings for the same client, then it's worth the investment. But you know, other times it's probably not because you're only gonna use it once. So you just need to balance some of this cool stuff, even if you really, you know, really want to do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So sorry, when you when you say that you can only have VR for 10 people, what is that? What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, you know, it used to be a very one-on-one experience. So you you know, you it wasn't great for events because you only had one person looking in into the experience at the time, but now you can have more than one person, you can have groups of people within the same experience at once, um, which is quite good. So you can see their virtual characters wandering around in whatever it is you're trying to experience. Perhaps like it's like a new retail experience for a you know, demonstrating that to your delegates because you're a retail client. Like, this is the store of the future, and they can all walk around it. That kind of thing would be great, but it's still only a limit to how many people can do it at once.
SPEAKER_01Got it. All right, so it sounds like the sky is the limit in terms of options, but we've got to get our story right because if we don't, then that will just not land. 100%. Big waste of money.
SPEAKER_02Yep, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, very good. Well, I'm sure our listeners would be interested in understanding how they can engage you for your creative services. If if they wanted to, what would they do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so um, you know, just reach out to me or Sandra if you if you want to know a bit more information or just like to have a chat and want to talk through any potential creative solutions, or if you've got other contacts within the BCD family, they can kind of you know show show you the way to us to have a chat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or they can email say hello at bcdme.com to find you.
SPEAKER_00And you can follow us on LinkedIn. We have a collective page on there, so we're often showcasing things that we've done and uh images we've been places we've been, what our people are up to. And as Dan said, you know, there's there's lots of information. If you want to get in touch with us, we can give you more of an insight into our services and how we work with our clients. But we'd love to love to have a conversation, keep lines of communication open. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01All right, so my last question, I always ask this question, but for those who like the Cliff Notes version, Dan, what's the one thing you'd want them to take away from the information you've shared today?
SPEAKER_02I think it's just to reiterate that people don't remember what you tell them, they remember how you make them feel. And creativity is the key to unlocking emotion.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Absolutely. I often leave meetings and don't remember what the content was, but I do remember if I had a good time and uh if I was motivated. So absolutely, but I'm sure that's because you two weren't doing the content. So of course, if you were doing it, I would definitely remember it. Well, Dan and Sandra, thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us today about content and how it really can shape an event. I hope that you've inspired our listeners to engage, follow you on LinkedIn, and really think about engaging you early, I should say, to bring their content dreams to life. Thank you both so much for your time today. Thank you, Jenna.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having us, Jenna.
SPEAKER_01That's all the time we have for today. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to our podcast. I'm Jenna Baker. Thanks for listening to Meetings Matter Chatter.