These days it is unthinkable to organise events without taking their environmental impact into account. There are many reasons, and while the first is to reduce the pressure we put on the planet, more prosaic and economic motives certainly weigh too: green events are more appealing to an audience that keeps growing and is ever more alert to protecting the planet and reducing the human footprint on it. As a result these events also become more attractive to investors, exhibitors and sponsors, who stand to gain from associating their brand with an initiative that cares about the environment in practice and not only in words.
For anyone organising and running events, developing a critical eye for these questions can be useful operationally as well as from a green marketing point of view: reviewing procedures and activities — as you do when you genuinely set out to take an environmentally sound approach — can lead you to discover more effective and more efficient ways of doing things. Just as can happen when you try to bring technology in as an ally in more sustainable processes without giving anything else up. So here are three key areas of any corporate event where technology can make the difference — not only in making everything greener and more environmentally sound, but also more efficient and more effective.
1. Less printed material
Many corporate events still rely on large quantities of printed material. From programmes to badges, from tickets to maps, paper is often still the preferred medium. But is it really needed? And, above all, is it effective and efficient? When you print something you fix it in time and space, removing any possibility of updating or changing it. Printed brochures, programmes and floor plans are lovely, and something everyone is used to — but anyone who has organised an event knows that changes and corrections often arrive a moment after you have gone to print, and handling them takes extra measures that make everything uglier and less workable. So would it not be better to move it all onto digital media, which allow real-time updates and changes and even let each tool be enriched after the event, if that is what we want? We could, for instance, think about moving a whole set of activities online with tools such as:
- Online registration and ticketing: no more printing tickets and brochures — attendees can register and receive their tickets digitally, save them on their phones and print them only if they need to.
- Event apps: a single tool holding all the information about the event — available well before it starts, if you want — always up to date and continuously enriched: programmes revised until moments before each session, maps, presentations. On top of which event apps can become genuine matchmaking and networking tools, greatly increasing engagement and satisfaction for everyone, attendees and exhibitors alike.
- Marketing and promotion tools: given how competitive the landscape has become, it is essential that the event’s communication and promotion reaches the right people at the right time in the right way. So what could be better than a coordinated set of tools that, from platforms you own to those you “rent“, can reach your audience in the best and most timely way and — not to be underestimated — often in a greener way than printing and posting?
2. Efficient management of space and resources
Limited resources against growing demands call for decisive optimisation in how resources are allocated and used. On top of which events are not getting any simpler — quite the opposite: their richness often translates into greater management complexity. That is why having the right tools to hand, including on the move, is essential for being more economical and greener without giving up effectiveness.
- Planning tools: using event management software to plan and coordinate every aspect of the event, from logistics to setup, lets you optimise the use of space, energy and consumables, reduce waste and improve efficiency, freeing up resources for further investment.
- Event management apps: from the point of view of both working efficiency and environmental impact, it matters that as many activities as possible are gathered into tools staff can always carry with them. Just think of always having to hand all the information and notifications you need to work better and help attendees get the most out of the event.
- Access management systems: electronic badges and app-based access control let you do away with turnstiles and check-in and check-out desks, making everything not only faster and more pleasant but also lighter on the climate and the planet.
3. Greener engagement
Audience engagement is a fundamental part of any event’s success. If people do not feel involved in what is on offer, it will be very hard for the outcome to be a good one. But how do you square engagement with reducing environmental impact? With a set of tools designed precisely to reach that goal without leaving the screen, drawing on what we have all learnt from social networks, their dynamics and their functions.
- Online surveys and feedback: by now these are the norm at every event. People expect them, just as they expect the customer care email after any purchase. But can we stop there? Or could we instead turn an activity as unremarkable as collecting audience ratings into a show? And how do we do that while keeping environmental impact in check? By creating an online show, where involvement, suspense and real-time novelty become an event in themselves — one everybody, absolutely everybody, will want to be part of without leaving their chair.
- Sharing on and off stage: social media is an outstanding tool for promoting an event, not only when the organisation uses it but also, and perhaps above all, when attendees use it to produce those priceless things called user generated content. So encouraging the people at an event to share their experiences and photos helps build a promotional mechanism that is environmentally sound and brings a community to life around the event’s brand.
- Strategic partnerships: choosing the right suppliers and partners for the adventure of reducing your event’s environmental impact is essential. Being convincingly green requires the whole supply chain to be just as green, or you risk being accused of using ecology as a marketing flag, with incalculable damage to your reputation. And those who have already gone green have often already reduced much of their impact, technology included, which can make some of the journey simpler and more effective at the same time.
Of course, technology is not carbon-neutral either — far from it. Electricity pollutes; the devices we use pollute. So the picture has to be seen as a whole: what has the lower impact? What costs less planet? Answering those questions, we often find that online weighs less than offline — think of how much an in-person event “weighs” in pollution from travel, setup and so on compared with an online one.
But not always, certainly. There are plenty of offline tools that, thanks to recycling among other things, can cut the carbon footprint far more than an email does. So in the end the optimum is always a good compromise rather than an either/or, especially when it comes seasoned with a healthy dose of common sense.
After all — does that email really, really need to be sent?