We are very proud to announce that we have been shortlisted for the Evcom London Live Awards! We are a finalist in the Best Finance Event category for our work with Deloitte on their ‘Festival of Partnership’ event. Well done to everyone involved – you rock! #shortlisted #awards

The weather isn’t the only thing that is hot in #London! Brands at Work is thrilled to be named a finalist for Finance & Professional Services Event of the Year at this year’s C&IT Awards! Congratulations to our fellow shortlisters.
Read more here

Managing Partners John Birger and Karen Kadin discuss all things Brands at Work to Conference News…

2018 was an amazing year for Brands at Work – the agency formed by Karen Kadin and John Birger in 2010. From a small core team in the early years, they achieved year on year growth expanding their client list by one or two new clients each year. But last year saw the agency grow by 125 percent as they won several big tenders and a number of new clients were added to their roster. All of this while ‘moving house’ to new office space in the heart of Belgravia.

How did you both get into the events industry, and how did Brands at Work come about?
JB: My background was in the theatre, I worked in stage management and then became company director for a number of West End musicals, whilst Karen was from a strategic marketing and advertising background. We met when we both worked for the same agency that was part of the WPP Group; Karen was in New York, and I was in London. Karen came over to the UK on a two year secondment to help grow the European business and we worked really well together. We left to set up Brands at Work because we felt there was an opportunity for events to be brought into the marketing mix a lot earlier, rather than as an afterthought. Brands at Work offered the sophistication of big agency thinking coupled with the personalised service of a boutique agency.

You’re an agency that still has your founding clients – how do you keep the relationship fresh?
KK: We are never complacent and we treat each of our clients as if we are still in the courting stage of the relationship. Each time we approach an event brief, we step up our game and find a new angle of creativity that will completely blow the brief’s objectives out of the water. Always building on the past experiences we have, we delve deeper and uncover new insights and gain a more crystalized understanding of the business and the brand which means that we can deliver more meaningful work. It is a balancing act though, and we are very self-aware; when I’d delivered the same event for a client for five years running I felt that I needed to ensure that the client didn’t think that we were taking the event for granted. I stepped aside and let a new creative team take the helm and spark new ideas. I was still involved – sharing my wisdom and experience – but the new team brought fresh eyes to the event.

Which sectors do you work in?
KK: When we first started out, we knew we were entering a competitive landscape, so we went after the ‘less glamorous’ companies in industries where the subject matter is more complex; we thought they would really benefit from an infusion of creativity. This approach led us into healthcare, financial services and professional services. From a musical about chewing gum to a festival for professional services partners, we have a knack for transforming complex content into hugely creative theatrical experiences. Over the years our client list has evolved and diversified to include new clients and industries, including restaurant chains, tech and insurance companies. No matter how simple or complex the subject matter, we have built our reputation on being able to deliver amazing event communications that resonate with any audience!

How are you involved in the content creation for the events you deliver?
JB: Business events are often created as a catalyst to evoke change, to build understanding of a new strategy, working practises or a shift in culture. The content or story of an event needs to be fully understood to have an impact, and to do this the audience has to relate to it. Every event and every audience is different but it’s about making content spring to life by telling stories in different ways using unexpected formats. This could mean using relatable metaphors to ignite the audience’s imagination or using theatre techniques to get the audience on their feet and involved. Video and imagery often play a role too, but to us, the content, the story and the way it is relayed is essential in creating a successful and impactful event. We start by challenging the brief using a framework that we call the ‘Four As’ – this enables us to look at the Audience, the event’s Ambition, the Approach needed and then the Activation.

How do you find the pitch process and do you think agencies should be paid to pitch?
KK: This is an industry that has for so long been an after thought in the marketing mix. There hasn’t been enough value placed on the ideas generated from our end of the marketing sector and so we need a more unified approach. We appreciate when potential clients recognise the time and cost of pitching, but it’s challenging when it comes down to intellectual property and who then owns the ideas presented in the pitch.

What does the future hold for you?
JB: We want to keep attracting great talent, growing our client relationships and make sure we keep enjoying the work we do. We are growing our international work too – especially in the US where we will be expanding our team and focus. Our priority is to retain and grow our existing relationships – here in the UK, the continent and in the states and secondarily, add new clients into the frame. First and foremost though, we want to continue to create a thriving agency culture and keep attracting like minded talent to our herd.

See original article https://www.conference-news.co.uk/index.php/features/working-hard-brands

Dan Broadberry, Producer, Brands at Work featured on the C&IT website yesterday sharing his thoughts on how technology will change how we measure the impact of events:

I’m often frustrated at how undervalued conferences can be outside the circle of people organising them, even within those circles on occasion! When I’m asked what I do, “corporate events” is often interpreted as ‘jollies’ or parties and not great events that have an impact on a business. It’s hard to explain the time, effort and thought that goes on ‘behind the curtain’ to those who’ve not been there.

One of my long-term career goals is to help our industry to better demonstrate the effectiveness of conferences and the positive impact they have. Most event organisers want feedback from an audience to try to prove, and improve, an event’s impact, but often the tools, techniques and timing, such as surveys or feedback forms, can actually skew the results and obscure the insights needed. There’s a phenomenon in physics called the observer effect which states that the very act of measuring something can change the measurement itself.

This same principle can be applied to the act of asking for feedback. An audience that knows it’s being monitored may say what they think they’re supposed to – or you may only get extreme opinions because the happy, middle ground people don’t bother answering.

The other day I was introduced to a technology that I feel could really help us gather effective and accurate feedback from an audience.

Facial recognition (FR) isn’t new, but now with the readily available nature of cloud computing FR can be used to identify faces at an event and follow those faces through a crowd and around an event space. It can track which parts of an event, or which exhibition stands, they dwell at and which ones they bypass.

That’s not the most exciting part though. The best bit of this technology is the system’s ability to recognise facial expressions representative of emotions; it can monitor and record exactly when, where and what makes a delegate happy or sad, interested or bored, pleased or angry all in real time.

The GDPR police will be pleased to hear that no personally identifiable information is held either as no images are stored. The system takes geometric data from points of a face and then scrambles it into a code that can’t be traced back to the source but can be used for analysis.

The system can’t pinpoint John Smith in Row D looking bored, but instead takes an overall view of the audience and reports back percentages of expressions. For example, it could say that 70% of the audience was happy, and match that to when a particular point was made during a presentation, helping give insights into their opinions and mindset.

The system could be used to monitor which speakers created the best audience response, or even which messages were well received, and which ones fell short and may need to be reviewed.

There’s also potential to see this being used to help shape the content further on in the day or even right in the moment – repeating the key messages that didn’t quite hit home first time or going into more depth on a topic.

This technology may seem scary to some, but it’s not about identifying individuals and their reactions, it’s about identifying a good event with great content and the business value it brings.

Playing devil’s advocate, it could be said that organisers should be cautious of having their events analysed like this because the results may say they’re not having the desired impact.

But even if that is the case, this technology should be seen as an opportunity to help us all be better at what we do, to ensure that we are adding the real value we want to and creating content that has a genuine and deep effect on an audience.

Technology like this could scientifically prove the value and impact events have. I personally see it as a great opportunity for our industry to step up and show to the world what we all as #EventProfs instinctively know to be true; that the events we create have real, important and absolute significance.

Originally published in C&IT April 2019

Karen Kadin, Managing Partner, Brands at Work features on the C&IT website this week talking about creating immersive experiences. Here’s what Karen had to say:

Creating an immersive experience is the best way to communicate your brand story and key messages. We define immersion as the transportation of an audience – be that physically, emotionally or mentally. In the world of events, part of our job is to make the audience forget that they are in a chilly convention centre in Birmingham or an overly warm ballroom in Orlando, and it’s up to us as the creative architects of live experiences to transport them. When discussing immersion, so many immediately take the jump to using virtual reality, and with new breakthroughs in event and production technology there are of course infinite creative ways to immerse audiences in all-surrounding, multi-sensory physical environments; but the opportunity for immersion is everywhere and it does not necessarily require big budgets or technology. We have of course delivered the all singing, all dancing shows where audience members were wrapped in 3D projection mapped surroundings, but enabling our audiences to really lose themselves in an experience begins and ends with the quality of the story we are telling and how it is told.

In its simplest form, immersion can even happen in PowerPoint mode. Of course, I don’t mean ‘death by PowerPoint’, but I have recently been immersed in two very engaging talks given with just the aid of slides. The first speaker stood in a basic room, with basic front projection featuring a few slides; but his story was so powerful and emotional that it had the whole audience gripped from start to finish. It could not have been a simpler set-up but it was the quality of the content that immersed us all in the room. He just got up, spoke his truth, shared his own story and it was raw, and it was emotional and it was enough; he didn’t need anything else to capture our hearts and imaginations.

The second speaker used humour and used PowerPoint to cleverly signpost his journey – and the audience was with him the whole way. He put on accents, used props and theatrically demonstrated his points with funny and entertaining images. He used his slides to show a few amusing pictures and gifs that helped reveal elements of the story and delivered punchlines which had us all captivated and highly entertained. For the 15 minutes he was on stage we were all totally immersed – and there wasn’t a VR headset in sight.
These two people stood out to me because they didn’t use PowerPoint as a crutch, but instead used it as a clever tool to bring to life their brilliant stories. Their stories had a clear beginning, a middle and an end – and a moral too. They then used PowerPoint to narrate their story, not to deliver a presentation, and that was the distinction.
If you can create an event or even a standalone presentation that transports your audience and immerses them in a different environment or perspective, then it’s not just a more pleasurable experience for them, it’s a more beneficial one. When they feel a part of the story, they are far more receptive to learning – whether that be new ideas or a change in behaviour. No amount of bells and whistles or production gimmicks can create a fully immersive experience in the absence of the story that truly transports them.

Absolutely delighted to have Karen Kadin, our joint Managing Partner interviewed in Forbes this week outlining the unique and collaborative approach that sets us apart from our competitors, and why our clients who have been with us from the beginning in 2010 love working with us and have stayed with us to this day. Karen also discussed the challenging approach that we take with clients, and what the future has in store for us.

To see the full article click here

*inspired by Marie Kondo

You can’t escape the phenomenon of Marie Kondo that is sweeping the world and inspiring us all to declutter our homes. Her books were hugely popular a few years and ago and her new show, “Tidying Up”, on Netflix has gripped the nation; everywhere I look – on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – everyone is showing off their tidy drawers and their KonMari’d closets.
We too work with our clients to declutter their messages and to streamline their event content, so how can we take inspiration from Marie Kondo’s rules and apply them to help companies filter, tidy up and transform their communications?

The Rules:
1. Look forward
What’s the best possible outcome from this communication? Start the ‘tidying up’ process by determining what is the vision of the future? What do you want your audience to think, feel and experience as a result of this communication?

2. Simplify and organise
The temptation can be to throw a whole ‘kitchen sink’ of messages at an audience but we need to streamline and think about what’s relevant. Take your content and categorise it – challenge yourself to break down the communication into three to five key categories rather than a list of endless bullet points. These will serve as a filter – if a message sneaks in that doesn’t neatly fit in one of these categories then you know that it doesn’t belong in this communication.

3. Speak to the heart – AKA ‘Spark Joy’
Keep the audience at the heart of the communication. Go through every little message that you want to deliver, hold onto it for a moment in your mind and ask yourself: will this spark joy and have meaning for the audience? Is this message relevant for them? If so, keep it; if not let it go. Streamlined content creates a more joyful experience; it will hold their attention span and will help them retain those key messages. The Japanese for ‘spark joy’ is tokimeku which literally translates as ‘flutter, throb or palpitate’- a great reminder to speak to the heart!

4. Let it go
Only keep the content that fits into those categories and sparks joy for your audience. If it doesn’t meet that criteria then let it go. Marie Kondo works mindfully and thanks every discarded item for its service, but I won’t make you take it to this extreme! It can be difficult to let go of messages that you’ve worked hard to refine, but perhaps those messages still have a place but just not in this communication. They may be relevant to another audience, time and place.

5. Create beautiful displays of content
The practice of KonMari is built on the Shinto spiritual practice of creating displays that show that you value the things that you have kept. Tidy up the words you use, make them concise and beautiful. Neatly ‘fold’ the messages and show that you value them by presenting each one with amazing visuals and a display that brings each message alive and creates value for the audience.

Karen Kadin, joint managing partner, Brands at Work

Thank you to M&IT Magazine for profiling our agency in their ‘Agency Pitch’ column this month – we are very proud to be featured! Read the full article in January’s edition of M&IT.

See if you can find the note about our new hire in their People Moves section also…

Rupert Lane, our Global Commercial Director, recently wrote a piece for Conference News examining what makes content great.

You read the full article here.

Brands at Work appoints Natalie Allen as Key Account Director
Brands at Work has appointed Natalie Allen as key account director to manage and develop some of the agency’s key clients – including Domino’s, Prudential, Deloitte and Biogen. Allen brings a wealth of knowledge from her 15 years of industry experience and was part of this year’s C&IT A-List.

C&IT Magazine		Incentive Travel
Conference News		M&IT Magazine