There was a time when an event had clear boundaries in time and space and, often, a certain sense of the exceptional.
In the corporate world, events were for a long time so far out of the ordinary that they took on that meaning entirely — “it was quite an event!”.
Is that still the case?
From where we sit, no: events have changed so much in recent years that they have shifted not only in form — from moments of shared space and time they have dematerialised, becoming online, asynchronous, even virtual — but above all in function and purpose.
They have become load-bearing elements of the organisation itself, of its daily operations and, more deeply still, of its very capacity to exist and to act.
Are we overstating it? We do not think so.
Let us try to make the case.
1. The new strategic centrality of events
Events have become strategic levers of corporate identity and operations.
What do we mean?
In short, that they have become the glue holding together everyone who, cooperating at different levels and in different roles, keeps that organism we call a company together.
Some examples?
- How do you hold together the people who work in a company? -> with team building
events. - How do you share company values? -> with conventions.
- How do you pass on the knowledge and skills people need every day in their work? With training events. And the development needed to steer change? The same.
And it is not only about the inside of the company, of course.
- How do you make known the products and services the company exists for? With trade fairs and keynotes which, as Apple taught us, can be formidable tools not just for presenting a product but for selling it.
- How do you build the bond of trust and affection that is still the best marketing lever there is? With themed conventions and conferences.
- How do you find new customers? With lead generation — which, as it happens, works very well at events, including other people’s events where we are simply there with a stand.
2. The efficiency of events
Events have become all of this over time because they have grown more efficient — better at delivering concrete, measurable results for the resources invested. How did they manage it?
- By taking on the problem of measuring their own impact, and so moving from a logic we might call purely aesthetic — designed to impress and move people — to a functional one, which builds in the ability to measure everything through a system of digital touchpoints.
- By acting as instruments within a broader performance marketing strategy, where each event connects to other channels that reach the user before, during and after taking part in what — and the definition feels increasingly narrow — we call the event. This is where the whole question of events and time opens up: do events still have an ending, or, being bound up with the existence of a company, do they last exactly as long as it does, simply varying the intensity of their presence? We will leave that for another article.
- And by focusing on scalability and control: event management platforms turn events into measurable, repeatable assets. By reducing the friction of getting started, events become easier both to launch and to nurture as they grow more elaborate.
3. Events pay for themselves
Training done well, like development delivered at the right moment, can make the difference between staff who are a cost and staff who pay for themselves, because they know and can do what is needed when it is needed. Training also helps steer change, which these days is no small thing.
The statistics tell us that the best leads are gathered at events, because people are more open, attention is more focused and conditions are usually at their best. Of course you also have to bring your most effective resources to bear to make the most of it, but we take that as read.
Finally, and we have partly seen this already, events strengthen the bond between a company and all its stakeholders, starting with its customers. And we all know that looking after existing customers is far more efficient than winning new ones, don’t we?
So where does that leave us?
If events have become infrastructure for corporate identity, instruments of operational efficiency and levers of financial return, it follows that they can no longer be treated as one-off episodes left to instinct or to the taste of the moment. They need to be designed, measured and repeated. They need the right tools to govern their complexity and bring out their potential. It is no longer about organising events, but about running them with strategic vision and operational control — and doing so with the best tools, because those are the ones that produce exactly that result, with the least possible expenditure of energy and resources.