By directly influencing attendee engagement and satisfaction, event design plays a critical role in the success of your events — or the lack thereof.
A well-designed event ensures that all elements align with event objectives and the target audience, creating a cohesive and memorable experience. However, many teams struggle with effective event designs due to a confluence of challenges — including a lack of clear objectives, resource constraints, and technical challenges.
To help customers accelerate their event strategies and get the most value out of our events, we launched Bizzabo Studios, a partnership with Bizzabo and Smyle, last year. The event design service helps customers create world-class event experiences by delivering award-winning event technology and vast creative and operational expertise all in one package.
At Bizzabo, we’re laser-focused on helping event teams deliver unforgettable experiences, and that starts with exceptional event design. To help practitioners take their event design strategies to the next level, we recently hosted a webinar called Designing for impact: Mastering the art of strategic event design that featured:
- James Howitt, director of client experience and development at Smyle;
- Sophie Hulf, Smyle’s senior creative strategist;
- Nick Thomas, technical director at Smyle;
- Jacob Palmer, producer at Smyle; and
- Kacie Finance, VP of enterprise sales at Bizzabo.
At a high level, the webinar covered the fundamentals of event design, how thoughtful event design makes events more meaningful, and how teams can work with an event design company to coordinate physical and digital elements to produce a cohesive event landscape. In an age where 45% of event teams are prioritizing attendee engagement, this is a webinar you’ll want to watch over and over!
What is Bizzabo Studios?
Not every organization has the resources to deliver spectacular event experience through incredible and engaging event design.
If you’re looking to create impactful event designs that deliver unforgettable experiences, joining forces with an event design company — or a partnership like Bizzabo Studios — can provide the specialized expertise, creative solutions, and technical know-how needed to execute a memorable event.
“We’re here to combine Bizzabo and industry-leading technology with everything that Smyle has to offer with award-winning agency and production services,” Thomas said of Bizzabo Studios, adding that Bizzabo and Smyle have been working together for four years now. “We’ve delivered some of the biggest events that have ever taken place on the Bizzabo platform together.”
Smyle itself has been around for 21 years, according to Howitt.
“We pride ourselves on our insight-driven approach,” he said. “We always think about our audience, our brand, and the external environment we’re in to help build creative solutions. It helps us connect with audiences and brands to really drive positive outcomes for our clients.”
Talk is cheap, though, and data is gold. After each engagement, the Smyle team surveys its clients, asking about their experiences. To date, the Smyle team has racked up an 86 Net Promoter Score, Howitt said, which eclipses even Apple, which has a 62.
“It’s always positive feedback,” Howitt explained. “That’s something we’re super proud of.”
How does Bizzabo Studios improve revenue for clients?
While you might not think that paying an agency to execute your event design can actually translate into more revenue, you’d be wrong.
When you can deliver superior event design, revenue can accelerate through more ticket sales or more value-adds for sponsors, Finance said.
“Revenues can come from a number of different directions, either directly or indirectly,” Finance said. “Paid tickets may increase with cohesive design and the expert skills that the graphic designers, technical directors, and producers can bring. Or you may see your sponsors are benefitting from just a better designed, more cohesive community-driven event that really speaks to your brand.”
How does Bizzabo Studios ensure event design output delivers on objectives?
Each year, the Smyle team helps create upwards of 500 events. With so many experiences to design for, there’s a lot of potential to deliver cookie-cutter events. But the Smyle team works hard to ensure each event they support is different.
“We look past the brief and look at the real why — why is the brief on my table at all?” Hulf said. “The brief will say ‘raise awareness’ or ‘drive pipeline.’ But above that, what is going on on a business level? Why is the audience feeling the way they do about our brand? Unless you know what the problem is, you can’t go about solving it.”
Per Hulf, the Smyle team aims to discover what is most important — what the audience wants and why they care about it.
“Often as brand marketers we forget that audiences and brands want almost always completely different things,” Hulf explained. “Brands can fall into a trap of thinking their product or service is the hero, the main character in the story, and it’s not — it’s an accessory. The hero is the consumer.”
Uplevel your event design with Bizzabo Studios!
Does your team possess the skills, expertise, and experience needed to deliver unforgettable event design experiences?
If you’re looking to create memorable event design outcomes, Bizzabo Studios can help. To learn more about our capabilities and how your team should start thinking about event design, check out the webinar on-demand and learn:
- Specific examples of how Bizzabo Studios transformed real-world event atmospheres
- How Bizzabo Studios has already impacted customer success
- Trends event teams need to be aware of to stay ahead of the curve
- And more!
Ready to take your event design game to the next level?
Watch the webinar on-demand at any time.
