You want your company logo to be present during the event. That is the very essence of event branding. However, it’s not enough these days to just distribute flyers and plaster banners. There’s nothing wrong with those tried-and-true methods, but you should be willing to be a bit more off-the-wall and brand your company in a way that garners social media attention.
Consider these eight ideas for igniting your imagination. Perhaps you can come up with something similar for your next event.
1. Branding the Food
Why brand the food? While guests may be attending for the lectures, workshops, and networking, they’ll nevertheless judge the overall event to a great extent based on the food. If you satisfy their belly, you’ll satisfy their overall impression. Consider these creative ideas for branding the food:
- Gelatin cups with your logo imprinted onto the top of the jelly
- Fortune cookies with the logo on the back of the paper fortune
- Lollipops with the logo imprinted into the surface of the hard candy
- Club sandwiches with a toothpick flag and the logo imprinted on the flag. Guests may keep these or post it on Instagram due to the cuteness factor alone.
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2. Showcase the Influencers
Most marketers are familiar with brand advocates. These are loyal followers that frequently share your products and content, either through social media or word-of-mouth. Leverage your top brand influencers as part of the lead-up to your event.
Wanderlust is a yoga and holistic health festival held annually in the U.S. and New Zealand. Think of Coachella but with an emphasis on health instead of music. Take a look at its Instagram page. Most of its photos consist of seemingly random women engaged in outdoor health-related activities.
You can do the same for your event. Ask your influencers to share personal pics of themselves engaged in activity related to your brand. With permission, add these to your company Instagram feed.
3. Use a 360 Camera
Film your event while it’s in progress and live stream it using a 360 camera. This enables remote attendees to freely rotate the screen to view the event from multiple angles. With your logo plastered throughout the venue interior, viewers will see your brand as they change angles.
Watch this video of Infocomm Media Development Authority’s launch event. It uses a 360 camera for its conference, which shows the venue during setup and while the event is underway.
4. Take-Home Gifts
Branded take-home gifts aren’t all that unique in of themselves. The usual items include promotional knick-knacks like pens, tote bags, and T-shirts. However, you can personalize these items. For example, you can include a photobooth where guests can take photos containing the logo in the background.
With the photo, you can imprint it into a promotional gear, such as on a mug, a T-shirt, or the cover of a notepad. The personalized element makes the item far more special than just a generic item containing the company logo
5. Flyers
Admittingly, branded flyers are useful but pretty lame. In fact, most end up in the garbage or recycle bin. Like promotional gear, though, you can incorporate a unique element to it. Here’s an idea. Include a raffle in your event. However, instead of handing out the traditional numbered ticket, incorporate that right into the flyer. In other words, each flyer has a unique code number and doubles as the raffle ticket.
Call out the winning code number just before the end of the event. This forces the attendees to keep the flyers at least until the event concludes.
6. Interactive Kiosks
Renting a kiosk and customizing it for your event can be a bit pricey but well worth it if you can squeeze it into your budget. Include some sort of game or interactive feature related to your brand. Upon successful completion, the participant receives a voucher they can redeem for a promotional gear.
Watch this Red Bull video where participants completed an interactive game and received a free can of the energy drink for their efforts.
7. Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing is somewhat of a broad term. It basically means a form of brand engagement involving real-world experiences or simulations relating to the industry.
It did an experiential marketing stint where it filled a room with hundreds of images of scales posted on the wall. Guests would then write their ideal weight on the scale. Alternatively, they can also get creative and write a message or personal goal. Lean Cuisine’s intent was to create voluntary interaction where attendees can freely express their aspirations regardless if it was related to weight loss.
8. Children’s Activity Book
If this is a children-friendly event, then hand out activity books for the young ones. This can include a booklet with fun games like connect-the-dots, mazes, crosswords, etc. Incorporate branded messages into the activities. For example, crosswords can include industry-related terms.
Obviously, you’re marketing to the adults and not the children. However, parents often work on the activities with their children.
Be creative when contemplating branding ideas for increasing attendee engagement. Unique concepts will more likely create a lasting impression among attendees.
