How to Create Events That Scale Magically ✨
This is my formula to create magical scaleable events…
CORE BUSINESS + AUDIENCE + TRENDING TWIST
The core business is the experience type you are providing. It may be a single location, multiple-location and/or digital business. Ideally someone on your team has previous experience running this business type. It’s easier to innovate on something you know how to do (but sometimes harder to break old habits). Here’s some core business types I’ve created for…
Festival
Party / Rave
Group Fitness
Group Healing
Group Travel / Service Vacation
Summer Camp
Retail
Restaurant / Food Truck
Bodywork / Spa / Beauty
Health Care
Co-Working / Art Studio
Private Club
Elder Care
Business Accelerator / Hackathon
AUDIENCE
Your audience is who this event is aimed at serving (although it may serve many groups, you need to pick a focus). You must be totally inspired to serve this audience because you’re about to work hard to do so. There also must be enough of your target audience members in the area you plan to serve. Here are some types of audiences that you might choose to serve…
Young Children (and their parents)
Older Children
Pre-Teens
Teenagers
Millennials
Gen Z
Gen X
Gen Y
Baby Boomers
Elders -- Pay attention to this demographic! They are a huge population that is underserved by new experiences.
Women’s Group
Men’s Group
Beyond Binary Events
LGBTQIA+ (you can focus on each segment individually or collectively)
Race-Based Groups
Faith-Based Groups
Economic Segment (Wealth, Middeclass, Under-resourced)
TRENDING TWIST
Finally, a trending twist is what will take your event from ignored to front page news. Public attention moves in waves that send every reporter searching for stories on one trend to another. Having an established event that integrates a trending twist as the press spotlight searches will earn you more free press than you could ever buy.
Free press (or earned media) is seen as more trustworthy, which means being talked about in the New York Times is more beneficial than advertising in the New York Times. This is why integrating a trending twist can make all the difference to the success of your organization. Here are a few trending twists I’ve designed experiences for…
Cannabis | CBD | Plant-based Wellness | Psychedelics
Sex
Create Your Art | Play Your Own Music
Secret (invite-only, have to know somebody)
Co-operative | Decentralized
Cryptocurrency
Nature-based | Outdoors | Farming
Get Obsessed With Your Attendees
Most planners start with what kind of event they’d like to create and worry about who the heck is going to attend later. I recommend the exact opposite approach. I start by getting obsessed with the people I’d like to serve. This ensures two things:
You’ll create an event that real people want to attend.
Every event decision will be easier to make because you’ll know who you’re making the decision for.
Again most planners skip this step and design the event to their personal taste. Instead of asking if the audience will love DJ X, they pick DJ X because they love her beats. This can work just fine if there is an audience very similar to them that will attend the event. This formula can create great initial events that fizzle with repetition if you don’t evolve with your audience.
Define Your Audience
I get obsessed with our audience. I want to know as much as possible about who is going to attend our event. For private events, this might be as simple as asking the client who they are inviting. For public ticketed events, you’re building the profile of the most likely buyer. For complex events, you may build several attendee profiles to represent the types of attendees.
Why Profiling Works
Racial profiling by law enforcement is bullshit. Customer profiling by marketers allows you to sync up your team to make decisions around the people you’re serving instead of your personal preferences. Our favorite example of a customer profile is from Trader Joe’s, the quirky grocery store chain that sells more per square foot than even Whole Foods. According to business case study lore, Trader Joe’s customer profile is a
Male
43 years old
Unemployed College Professor
Lives alone
Drives a used Volvo
Likes high quality & international food
Doesn’t like to cook from scratch
This is fascinating on two big levels. First, this isn’t the customer profile of an average grocery store customer at all! While most grocery stores are geared towards mothers with kids (they buy the most), Trader Joe’s went after the exact opposite demographic. This gave them a fresh market of customers to please and permission to use tactics that other grocery stores won’t (like $2 wine). Their customer profile is the core of why they are such a distinct grocery shopping experience.
Second I’m fascinating by how little I match their customer profile but yet shop at Trader Joe’s regularly. Because they made strong cohesive decisions based on a singular customer profile, the strength of that design attracts me, while the majority of grocery store experiences are hard to tell apart.
WTF Attendee Profiles
What information you want in your attendee profiles will depend on the type of experience you’re creating. Here’s elements I love to look at:
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Education:
Occupation:
Income:
Where do they live:
Who do they live with:
What transportation do they use:
What payment methods do they use:
Where do they learn about events to attend? (facebook is a juggernaut here)
What other options do they have at the same time as your event? (go beyond just other happenings in the area, you’re competing against Netflix, getting high, and masturbating)
Who would they invite to join them?
How much do they spend on events?
Why did they attend the last event they chose?
What are they hoping to receive/do at an event?
What are they motivated by?
What do they want more than anything?
What would change their life?
What is their constant criticism of events? (i.e. bad food, wish they had this..., terrible music, snobby people)
What kind of events do they usually attend? (street fairs, raves, clubs, bars, house parties, weddings/bar mit’s/anniversaries, conferences, classes)
What are they afraid of?
What brings them ultimate joy?
Do I just make this up?
Sometimes. This profile is your best guess at who you are serving. First you’ll pull as much data as possible (who has attended in the past, who lives in the area, survey potential attendees, etc.) and then add your intuition. Imagine the person you’re making this experience for and what they want. Lastly, we sometimes use our actual friends as profile templates to fill in the blanks.
Do Rapid Customer Development Instead of Guessing
This step sounds tedious but DON’T SKIP IT! Right now your team is full of assumptions about who is going to attend your event. Instead of testing those assumptions by making a huge event, you can get a lot of clues by asking for people’s feedback. Don’t spend a meeting arguing which graphic to put on the invitation, mockup a couple and ask people.
Identify and talk to 100 likely attendees to understand their specific needs and language. Seriously go TALK to your community before you make expensive decisions for them.
Quickest: Visit a mall or competitive event and stand outside the area that attracts your target demographic for an afternoon.
Most Thorough: Set up short chats with potential customers by phone. This takes the longest because you have to identify potential customers and get them to agree to an appointment AND get them to keep it. (An unpaid market research call from their friend’s college roommate is the first thing that gets forgotten.) Offering to call the customer directly instead of using conference lines will reduce no-shows.
Most Data: If you’re looking for a board opinion and/or a healthy start to your mailing list, then use an online survey or contest. The goal of this survey is often to collect as much customer data as possible to support creation of your event. The survey or contest should ask respondents if you may contact them to invite them to the next event.
TIP: There are specific laws about contests or give-aways that must be followed in the United States and many other countries. Consult a lawyer if you plan to give away anything worth more than a few hundred dollars. Consult a web search for some default language for sweepstakes. Avoid requiring a purchase of any kind to enter the contest because you may run afoul of local gambling rules
Define What Your Event Is About
Now that you’ve become obsessed with the people you’re serving, it’s time to pick the core reason you will bring them together. Many events touch on ALL these areas but the best events are created around ONE core goal.
Seriously a SINGLE GOAL. You’d think you could stuff at least two objectives down someone’s throat over five hours and appetizers but you’re lucky if your audience remembers ONE thing from your event–so make it the ONE thing worth remembering.
Education
Teach them ONE thing. “What’s with this ONE thing thing you’ve got going?” you ask. People are busy. Brains are full. If you’re lucky to get a person into the receptive zone to learn something then you’re lucky if they take away ONE thing. Remember all those silly trainings with acronyms like KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Well the reason we make those acronyms is because people can only remember one thing so you need a single word to get them to remember four words that stand for a larger concept. You get the picture? Keep it simple and teach them ONE thing.
Entertainment
Let’s have fun. Let’s relax. Let’s be amused. Astound or entertain your audience but make it memorable. We love building events with lots of small entertainment experiences woven together. Sometimes a mainstage act is all you need. Pick your entertainment very carefully.
Influence
Be seen. Do the “right” thing. Be cool. Meet your “tribe”
Authentic Connection
This is where transformative events shine. With social anxiety at an all-time high, creating gratuitous excuses for connection is your special sauce. Interacting with new people can be terrifying and playing games on your phone is pretty safe so how can you create an environment where guests choose to risk it?
Can you create ways for people to meet each other with little risk of rejection
Can you create ways for people to learn about each other?
Can you get them to skip the who are you and what do you do and go deeper first?
Group Bounding
Taking a group of people and turning them into a team is one of the great joys of transformative events. You can create low-stakes environment for people to learn about each other and test out working styles. Since we know most obstacles are internal, I like to give groups challenges to work on their internal obstacles with external circumstances. We also know the highest functioning teams are those where everyone feels safe to contribute. How can you create a safe container where everyone’s input is received? How do you teach a team how to play together?
Why Does Your Audience Attend?
It’s not good enough to know what you’re going to do, you must also know why your audience is giving up their well-earned get high, watch netflix and masturbate time. Why should someone attend your event?
Curiosity
You’re doing something so novel that people just want to come experience it for themselves. This is rare. Most things have been done before.
Relaxation
Leisure time is making a comeback as the links between stress and diseases like cancer become apparent. These events will focus on restorative practices.
Fun
Everyone could use more fun.
Transformation
This is an opportunity to put someone into a space where they can recognize a new way to be, exist as that being, and potentially exit transformed. Or it’s an excuse to blow millions of dollars on a desert rave. That’s all up to you.
Transformational work should not be chosen lightly. Changing one's way of being is hard. In fact most of your friends and family don’t want you to change, they are dependent on you being exactly who you are now. (If you changed, they might have to learn a new way of being with you and/or it may force them to examine their own way of being.)
I invite you to seek mentors and partners if you choose this intention. Start small and learn as you grow.
Pleasure
We’re about to see a pleasure revolution. You don’t have to believe me. Just enjoy it.
A few final words on Profit
You never thought I’d get to profit right? I put it last because I’ve found my best work was in events that were self-sustaining (make enough to pay everyone well and maybe donate some to charity). Events with the fundamental purpose of profit place the organizers of the event above the attendees, which often leads to lame events practices like huge blocked-off VIP sections, charging for water, and exploitation of the event staff.
Don’t misunderstand me. I want your events to bring in lots of money that you spend abundantly on your staff and your guests. I want you to be paid abundantly for your time and effort as well. But I want you to look carefully at the profit-driven event empires before you choose that model for yourself. The time where customers will support businesses that don’t care for people and the planet is short.
Going Further
I’ve got a few articles you may find useful for your new event empire. Also feel free to leave your questions in the comments and I’ll get back to you.
More Event Tips from Jazmin Hupp
