I have a friend who likes to play a game when traveling. When she meets strangers, she challenges them to draw her state or country, and she draws theirs. 

I’ve tried and it’s humbling to learn how little you know about your own geography, to say nothing of others’. 

It’s a great reminder about the importance of details in events. The event is your home state. You think you know it. But if you don’t know it well enough to draw it blindfolded or on a cocktail napkin at a dimly lit bar, you don’t know it. Under the pressure of an event, you’ll forget. Anything not seared into your memory is liable to be forgotten or fail.

So how can you know all those event production back roads, backwards and forwards? You have to have seen a lot.

Look at the details outward-in, then inside-out

I feel our team is quite special in the vast amount of collective wisdom we hold. We’ve each tried so many things in so many events at so many venues throughout the years, we know every twist and turn.

We know that anything connected to WiFi can go down, and when that thing is the badge printer, the line will flow back out into the hotel and people will be furious they missed the opening keynote. We know that when you start advertising in a panic to fill seats, you dilute the event and guarantee people don’t make the right connections.

We know to measure elevators and booths twice, to use lighting to invisibly guide foot traffic, and to ensure there are more bathrooms than you think you’d need. All that comes from experience, but also taking the time to think through your event step by step. 

You can try this right now. Sit down with 2-3 coworkers and run through your event’s run of show like a board game. Or even better, go visit the venue and walk it as if an attendee. You’ll notice all sorts of inconveniences, like that one breakout room has floor-to-ceiling windows and thus bad acoustics, or that gravel walkway that will chew up people’s nice heels. 

When you understand your event in that level of detail, you will discover most of the things that will frustrate people and keep them from having an experience. Only then you can truly understand that event well enough to market it. 

Which is what comes next.

I believe event promotion starts with the singularly obsessive sense of all the details and works outwards from there. No surprise here, but the promotion also starts with the seed, and the way it’s come to life in all the decorations, environment, characters, and story arcs.

Write those promotional materials not to everyone, but to one person—promotional materials are “an ear, not an auditorium,” to paraphrase the author Robert Caro. Don’t address them to everybody. Address them to the one person who’s actually holding the flier. 

Then promote far more than you think you’ll need to, for longer than you think you’ll need to. Accept that your attendance rate will rarely exceed 50% of those invited, especially for larger invites to people outside the company. 

But if you did your planning right, you’ll get close to that and people will have a good time, because your marketing materials accurately reflected the reality. The details drew people in and they found what was promised. 

That’s great expectation management and helps keep things memorable for the right reasons.