10 Tips on creating a national brand with your event- Patrick Roubroeks, Founder, Xsaga & Nancy Frates, Advocate, ALS

Events have enormous power in themselves. While some can fail terribly to even move a single emotion in their attendees, well planned and executed events on the other hand have the ability to inspire not just its attendees but also leave a mark at a global level. ‘Turn On the Lights’ festival in Holland and the ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’ are inspirational examples in this regard.

But what made these two events a global brand in themselves? What worked in their favor and made them the raging sensation that they became? Well, we got the answers to these questions on the first day of EEMAX Global Conclave 2015 as Patrick Roubroeks, Founder and Partner Xsaga and Nancy Frates, Advocate ALS shared with the attendees 10 tips on creating a national brand with your event.

Sharing the story behind creating, ‘Turn On the Lights’ an annual festival in 5 cities in Holland that celebrates the start of the festive season by lighting up hundreds and thousands of dynamically programmed sustainable lights on historical buildings, Patrick Roubrocks explained how a well thought out event has the power to become a global inspiration and attract media both at the national and international level.

Adding further Patrick said, “I was asked to come here and speak on how to create a national brand with your event, well for me the answer lies in these 10 points;

1-Think Big- Always start of by imagining a big concept that you wish to bring to reality. You have to think of a big, never done before idea first to make it a national brand.

2-Think in pictures-You have to think about the design of your event by imagining how would it look like in the pictures. One should be able to show the grandeur of their event in one single photograph.

3-Don’t forget small ones-Small elements and details related to the event should not be neglected.

4-Incoroprate local authority-The participation of the local authority in creation and smooth execution of an event is vital.

5- Extend brand through social media- Social media amplification is integral to share information and innovation regarding any event that you create at a global level.

6-Be loyal to the main idea and build tradition around it-It is a fact that in the process of creating something new in each edition of a festival, the main idea of the event is lost. However, in reality one should always be loyal to the main idea of the event and then forge a tradition around it to make it more compelling each year.

7-Trust wow-One should always aim for creating wow factor through their events. These factors can be created through culmination of many small things by weaving them into one giant story.

8-Dare to dream-People love fairy tales and if an event should always be that ways. To build a successful national brand with your event one must dare to dream.

9-Staging brands-Allowing brands to become a part of the event and not just associate themselves with it.

10-It is not about entertaining people but engaging them- It is one thing to entertain the audiences but to truly create a brand with your event one should aim at engaging the people as their primary motive.”

Nancy Frates, began her session with emphasizing on how it were the same points that helped The ALS Foundation bring awareness and donations to their efforts through the creation and amplification of the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge”, an activity that took the world by storm last in August 2014.

She said, “I couldn’t help but relate with the points that Patrick stated and how we through our initiatives managed to touch all of them to create awareness about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.”

Elaborating on how the concept of the challenge was born Nancy said, “What we tried to do with the Ice Bucket Challenge was to tell a compelling and relatable story through a fun filled engaging activity that could be shared with people to create awareness. Apart from people getting wet in all the ice bucket challenges another common factor in all the videos of the activity was the laughter. We wanted to create something that will allow people to open their hearts first and then motivate them to open their wallets too.”

When asked to advise experiential managers in India on creating such events, Nancy responded by saying” You have to be passionate and be authentic about what you are doing. Also how we drove the ALS Ice Bucket challenge was that we are proactive towards introducing it and then very reactive to the responses that were coming in.

Every minute that we spent on the social media in sharing, tagging and commenting made it count. We just kept exploring the opportunity that loomed ahead of us.”