Preparing for an event briefing: 5 things your event brief should include
Every event should have a clear purpose. After all, you’re showcasing your brand and investing time and money, so you need to establish your desired outcomes.
Whether you're utilising the expertise of an external events agency or managing things in-house, kicking off with a solid brief is crucial. Even if you're organising a recurring event, briefings are fundamental for both you and your planners.
Before diving into the nitty-gritty of the brief though, you’ll want to consider some key factors and make sure you can communicate them in your event briefing.
No doubt, many other questions will be raised throughout the event planning process, but here are the most essential questions you should be able to answer in your event brief:
1. What is the purpose of this event?
Do you want to bring together teams so that they can get to know one another, bond, share ideas and ultimately build better, more effective, working relationships? Or are you launching a new product and need to stage an event that attracts the media and showcases the brand? In these examples, there’s a clear purpose for the event and from that, we can begin to set goals. However, in some instances, you may need to dig a little deeper.
A common reason given for having an event is ‘networking’, but what is the desired outcome? It’s worth spending time exploring the motive for the event so that we can set, and then meet the objectives.
Sometimes, you may think of hosting an event because ‘it’s done every year’. Realising that an event format has become routine can be quite freeing and an opportunity to rethink the purpose and vision.
The success of an event is mostly measured by whether or not it has achieved its purpose. Even if this question may have obvious answer, it’s actually the most important one.
2. What is your budget?
An obvious need-to-know is what budget you will be. Consider the event purpose, the scale of your event, desired location, but also how is your event going to be funded. Would you cover all costs yourselves or expect your attendees to contribute?
It’s important to be realistic, especially as the costs are rising and the same event as you held last year is likely to be dearer this year. Destination will have significant influence on your budget, as the unit prices will differ together with the surcharges such as service and tax.
Being creative, providing good value, scrutinising decisions and benchmarking every purchase against objectives is crucial. Every event is an investment and setting clear expectations from the start will save time and disappointment at later stages.
3. What are the expected attendee numbers?
Getting your forecasted attendance wrong can not only be costly but can harm your reputation. Nobody wants to be forced to turn down bookings due to limited capacity, or to host an event in a half empty venue. Still, forecasting attendee numbers seems to be more complex that ever. Especially more recently as habits have changed and bookings are not being made until much nearer to the event.
Our advice is to consider how many attendees you would like and then put together a solid communications strategy, that you can implement early on, to ensure you can achieve this.
For some of our suggestions on this, please refer to our article Elevate your event communications and increase attendees (LINK).
4. When are the major deadlines?
Creating a timeline and having deadlines helps us all work more effectively but agreeing on these with the client keeps communication flowing and means the client knows what to expect and when to expect it by.
Once major deadlines are agreed upon, we can then organise tasks according to relevance, priority, and the time needed to complete them.
Event planners will obviously develop a far more complex and detailed timeline to keep planning on track leading up to the event, but major deadlines need to be agreed upon with the client during the event briefing.
5. What are the non-negotiables?
This one is often forgotten but is very important. There are going to be a few things that are integral to the event's success. So, find out what these are.
It may be reliable Wi-Fi or good transport links. It might be that the event needs to be planned in a way which adheres to the company’s values, such as commitments to sustainability or inclusivity.
If you work with an event agency year on year, they'll keep records of these non-negotiables, so they’re known for future events.
Why event briefings are important
Asking the right questions early on during the event briefing makes it easier for you to make informed decisions and justify those choices. If you’re an event planner working with an agency, like Dynamic Events, knowing the answers to these questions ensures everyone is clear about event objectives and goals, meaning we can work really effectively together to make the vision for the event, a reality.