Ready to Make Your Meeting More Memorable?

What makes gatherings truly meaningful and memorable? It’s not necessarily how much money was spent, but rather how many positive, memorable moments an attendee recalls.

To get a handle on some of the positives and negatives of your meeting, start your planning with a “sensory exposure audit” of what attendees will experience, from pre-meeting mailings through the meeting itself and afterwards. Just as political campaigns have “advance agents” who walk through every step of an event to consider all that might go right or wrong, you can mentally visualize each “vignette” attendees could encounter.

During your site inspection, drive or walk through the main and secondary paths your attendees will use from the time they leave the airport. Consider the colors and patterns in sleeping, eating, meeting, and gathering spaces, so that your theme colors and images can be compatible and even complementary. Ask the staff about comforting and conflicting background sounds from piped-in music, other meetings, mechanical operations, catering procedures, or elements beyond the facility.

Other sensory questions to consider:
• Where do the smells go from the cooking and catering areas?
• Are the walkways carpeted?
• Are carpets plush or thin?
• Is facility signage large and easy to understand?
• What do session chairs feel like?
• Are there comfortable places to relax and converse between organized activities?
• Is there access to natural light during some activities?

Storyboard the Meeting Experience
You could borrow a storyboarding trick from the advertising world. Write out the meeting “story” as a series of moments, or exposures: pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting. For each exposure, write a brief description noting if each encounter is positive, negative, or neutral. For example:
Positive: Candid photos taken as attendees enter the opening-night mixer, placed in pressed-board white frames inscribed with the meeting theme and hung on fish line in the breakfast room the next day as a take-home souvenir.

Negative: Long treks between certain meeting rooms.
Mostly neutral: Conventionally decorated hotel rooms.

Next, write out what attendees will see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. How many of the senses can you include to make the exposure more positively memorable?
You can add low-tech sensory experiences, such as more human touch, by simply increasing the number of times an attendee is greeted by name, a wave, or a handshake. In studies in 2010 and 2013, two groups experienced the same public event, but the only difference was that people in one group were touched lightly twice in a three-hour period (for example, shaking hands or a touch on the top of the hand or forearm). The group that was touched described the people sponsoring the event as more intelligent, caring, and good-looking than did the other group.

One idea for creating higher-tech sensory moments is scenting a general session to match the speaker and convention theme. For example, you could gradually change the scent a few times—from lemon to lime to suntan lotion—during the course of a 40-minute, midwinter, keynote speech, lightly scenting the handouts to match. Technology now makes it possible to deliver scents that refresh, relax, or renew—without allergic reactions.

From all this, you’ll begin to view your meeting as a theatrical production, where you’re working to make more of the exposures positive—often not through more cost but through simple changes in planning.

One technique to counter a negative exposure: “Burma-Shave” it. Burma-Shave brand of shaving cream was famous for advertising along highways with small sequential signs that kept travelers reading across long stretches of road. Could that work for a long walk between meeting rooms to build interest and excitement? Your messages could build suspense toward the identity of award recipients or the surprise entertainer. Messages could also include cryptic instructions for attendees to look under their session chairs for more. You could take it further with related messages appearing on the backs of speakers at the podium, who turn for attendees to read them, or on the wait staff serving dinner. The same technique works well pre-meeting, using a series of postcards that provide various clues or reasons to register for the event.

Some of the most important exposures can be during slow and less-exciting times: hotel check-in, meeting registration, and downtime before the first session. This is when you have a chance to make a positive impression that attendees aren’t expecting. Try these:
• Have a team of people greet arrivals at the hotel door, perhaps in costume and/or with a welcoming gift. Make the gift fun to see, touch, or taste. Have a second gift waiting for them in their room, perhaps a contest announcement. The more attendees feel cared for, the more they will perceive subsequent meeting experiences in a positive light.
• Whenever you ask attendees to wait, plan amusements that catch the eye or that people can hold, play with, or hear. For example, a magician might roam the registration area to build involvement and excitement. Or mimes could follow and imitate attendees in gentle fun, perhaps handing out mementos provided by exhibitors that make attendees eligible for a drawing if they visit the booths.
• To get attendees involved, get them in motion and to let them see motion around them, because motion increases the emotion people feel.

Few meetings can compete with the sizzle of a modern amusement park or an action movie, yet planners can multiply the number of positive exposures, and thus increase the likelihood that attendees will rave about their meeting when they go home.