Event Branding

This event branding guide will discuss the various elements of branding and how you can use it to promote your event.

What is event branding?

Branding is an incredibly important element of marketing. Whether it’s an event or a startup, the audience needs to recognise and identify with your offering. Branding helps achieve that. Branding includes the name, logo, font, colour or other identifiable features you can link to your event to help keep it foremost in their mind and make it instantly recognisable.

Companies spend hundreds of thousands on branding. If you approach branding right, you won’t need anything like that kind of budget.

Why is event branding important?

A brand is more than just a name and a logo. It conveys character, values, personality, approach to customers and so much more. It is most definitely greater than the sum of its parts and can literally make or break an event. Get it right and your event could be amazingly popular. Get it wrong and it could quickly become forgettable.

Event branding is also important to differentiate the event from the stakeholder brand. It needs to reflect the values of those stakeholders but also stand on its own two feet.

If you don’t have a stakeholder brand to worry about, you have the freedom to come up with something totally unique. Either way, the event branding ideas in this guide will help you come up with an event brand that delivers.

How to successfully brand an event

Branding, like many events you will work on, requires far more time and effort in the planning than in the execution. The more effort you put into branding at the earliest stages, the smoother and faster the rest of the process should go. That’s exactly the same approach as event planning itself so you should have no trouble with this!

Identify your target market

You will likely already know the target audience from the initial event brief. This should give you a good idea of the demographic you’re trying to appeal to. Your target demographic needs to be at the centre of all your branding efforts and should be the first task you tackle when considering branding.

Make it the same but different

Event branding should offer the same characteristics as the stakeholder brand but should also be different. The event brand should stand on its own but reflect the qualities of the stakeholder brands as much as possible. It is difficult to describe and even more difficult to pull off, but is incredibly important to the success of your event.

For example, if stakeholder brands are young and edgy, you should reflect that in your event brand. Reflect the characteristics of the ‘parent’ brand but make it different enough to be unique. The same for more upmarket or luxury brands. Make your event brand reflect those characteristics but also differentiate it enough to make it stand on its own.

Cover everything

Branding includes colours, fonts, logos, names, shapes, themes and even sounds. Take a long look at the stakeholder brands and identify key components of each that you can use in your event branding.

Use experts

Budgets are often tight within event planning and spending money where it will provide the most value is key. One area of that is branding. You don’t have to hire a branding agency but utilising graphic artists, web designers and copywriters may provide the outcome you’re looking for in a much shorter time and at a much lower cost than doing it yourself.

Use the event branding everywhere

Once you come up with a brand that reflects the stakeholders but is also unique, prepare image stock, logo stock, colour palettes and the building blocks necessary to use that brand. Then use it everywhere. You want to build a consistent, coherent picture of the event so use the branding on the website, leaflets, social media, online and offline channels and even in your email signature.

The more people begin to recognise the event brand, the more awareness you create.

Top tips for event branding

Branding is an incredibly deep subject and something you will likely find yourself wrangling with for a while. Here are some quick, actionable event branding tips to help.

• It’s all about the audience – Identify your target demographic early and bear them in mind throughout the process. They are the people you’re pitching to, not your stakeholders or boardmembers.
• Cover everything – Effective branding can include colours, fonts, logos, names, shapes, themes, sounds and even postures or movement. Include as many elements as your stakeholder brand uses to create a coherent image.
• Create templates for everything – Once you have designed the event brand, have your team create email templates, web page or blog templates, guest post templates, social media branded templates and the stock necessary to deliver a consistent brand experience across all the channels you use. Don’t forget offline advertising in your preparations either!
• Keep It Simple Stupid – Don’t be tempted to make the brand complex or include too much. Look at Apple or Uber. They use simple branding to great effect and have created amazing brand presence. The subject of branding may be complex but the brand itself doesn’t have to be.

Event branding ideas

Here are some simple but very effective ideas for communicating your event brand, conference branding or gala.

• Design branded props – Branding doesn’t have to be complex or expensive in its execution. A simple cardboard frame for social media, branded t-shirts or branded giveaways can help create the buzz you’re looking for to promote your event. Link the prop to the target market and intent of the event and it should work well.
• Banners and backdrops – If you have a single entrance with photo opportunities, add the stakeholder brand alongside the event brand to the backdrop. Use banners around the event if appropriate either at height or at eye level.
• Branded food – Never underestimate the power of event catering to make or break the experience. Use that to your advantage by branding the napkins, menus, food labels, food flags or other appropriate method. If you feed your guests well, seeing the brand at the same time creates a positive association of both.
• Brand experiences – Use every medium your target market uses to create a coherent brand experience. Create 360 videos of the event, use branded swag bags and don’t be afraid of experiential marketing if it would work for your audience.

Key takeaways

Successful brands are like personalities in their own right. Using colour, images, logo, visual devices and style, you can create event branding that reflects the stakeholders while being unique and having a character all of its own.

It is possible to spend hundreds of thousands on branding but you don’t have to spend anywhere near that much. Target your resources carefully, use professionals where appropriate and you could feasibly create something just as powerful for a lot less money. Either way, make it simple, memorable and fit the character of your event and you should be fine!