Hi. I want to share an insightful report about event management with you in this post. The report “Event storytelling playbook” is written by EventMB Studio Team.
Understanding how to engage with attendees in events is crucial for tourism marketing. Events can be one way to tell your brand story or the story of your tourism destination to customers and prospects. As today’s consumers care about companies’ values (i.e., how they try to influence the world), companies have to tell their brand stories to gain new customers and retain them. It is not enough to compete with rivals with costs effectiveness. In addition to that, it is essential to tell your story to your business partners. It would help if tourism companies cooperated well with a lot of local stakeholders. And storytelling would help them know your company or destination and feel empathy with you.
The author states the importance of storytelling that it help you resonate with your audiences, and it is exceptionally effective for your business. The universal nature of storytelling can avoid audiences feeling overloaded and make messages personalized. I will list several interesting points from the report below.
What are stories?
Stories are everywhere. We all grew up surrounded by stories, and we explain our daily lives to others with stories. Thus, stories tell something complex in a simple, relatable, and engaging way.
When you use stories for your event, it will be an immersive and persuasive experience for your audiences. The goal of storytelling is to build empathy and a deeper connection with your audience. For example, you can tell your brand story (how and why you started it) and your customer’s story (how successful customers overcome challenges). Or, you can make your event schedule into a story that your audience goes through.
The author points out four essential factors of storytelling.
- Plot: Plot is your content
- Character: Character is you, your audience, and the speaker. It is important to position your audience as a hero of the story.
- Familiarity: Use familiar story structure (a beginning, a climax, and an end).
- Voice: The tone and style of the language should fit your audience.
Tips for storytelling
- Good stories are universal: It is important to make your plot sound familiar so that your audiences can recognize it. For example, a character facing challenges and overcoming them is something your attendees resonate with. In this case, they have to be the story’s hero, while your role is to help them overcome the challenges. Think about how you can help your audience transform or evolve through the event.
- Build relatable characters: Audiences easily root for characters who are not perfect. A campaign by Dove is used as an example here. Dove featured stories of unique beauty even if he or she does not fit into traditional beauty standards. This campaign shows that interweaving brand and individual stories can produce a powerful message.
- Understand audiences’ struggles: It is essential to understand the struggles and desires of your audiences. Show a deep understanding and empathy to their struggles and show that you are there to help them. It makes them feel good about themselves and eventually about your brand.
- Make your audiences care: Be sure to keep your audiences care about your story. It is an excellent way to retain their attention to use the unexpected feature of characters. It generates tension in your story.
- Evoke an emotional response from your audience: Emotion is important for remembering, and a story evokes an audience’s emotion. When you have an event promoting your holiday destination, showing beautiful pictures of your site can draw attendees’ interest. However, they easily forget it. The use of a story is thus crucial. If you can evoke an emotional response from your audiences by telling them background stories of your destination, they will remember it.
- Transport them elsewhere: Make an immersive experience. Large screens and great sounds can draw your audience in your story and make your story so real.
To sum up, storytelling for an event is an effective way to engage with the audience. I have learned that it is essential to understand customers’ struggles or fears in life to build a story that relates with them even when we want to tell a story of ourselves.
Reference
EventMB Studio Team. (2019). Event storytelling playbook. Retrieved from http://www.eventmanangerblog.com/event-storytelling