Clients, partners, attendants, and even employees bring their own, unique expectations to each engagement, and the corporate event must meet these touchpoints to build awareness, relationships, and (ideally) true excitement.
For the most part, corporate leadership finds no trouble locating potential destination management and event production companies in South Florida, but they often do find trouble understanding why an event went wrong, where it might have faltered, and how it all could have happened. They set goals, chose partners, followed their guidance, and ultimately felt let down by the experience.
Anyone who has been dissatisfied by them—especially those whose role and intention was to organize the event to begin with—will recognize the elements below that set a standard for the successful corporate event. To transform an event from a dull obligation into a delightful experience, consider the following key components (and their potential for problems).
Standards (and Pitfalls) for Corporate Events in Florida
Goals and Visions
Every event begins with a purpose. You want the chance to impress a message upon your employees, open a space to build new connections with colleagues, influence the morale and culture of your company, and more. Perhaps all of these are an interrelated part of your mission in dreaming up the next big event.
If you’ve been hurt by the outcome of a corporate event, chances are that the company hired simply wasn’t listening to your objectives, your vision, or your purpose. Instead, they may have designed an excursion or destination in the way they always have. And, it is likely that it’s the way they know rather than the way you want.
Finding a destination management or event production company in South Florida (just as anywhere) isn’t difficult. Rather, the difficulty sits with weeding out the listeners and observers from the cookie-cutter companies who throw the same event each time in different dressings.
Pro Tip
If a corporate event production company seems like a good fit, follow the lead and meet with them of course. As you do, observe how closely they can hear your goals. It may help to simply ask your, “If we work together, how will my event look different and unique compared to all the others that they’ve organized before?”
The more you ask this question, the more you may realize the smaller, local, more boutique firms are interested and engaged by your goals. They spark their excitement, their creativity, and their insight into the richness of South Florida’s spaces, entertainment, favors, food, and more.
Responsiveness and Timing
Once you’ve identified a corporate event partner, the next expectation, standard, and reality is that things should move smoothly. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case with big, busy event production companies because they can’t offer the individualized attention it takes to make your event unique, exciting, and successful to your standards.
Like our clients, you expect quick and consistent communication, and yet they offer long holds and lack of reliability when it’s difficult to reach them through their enormous, tangled structure: they are successful, but they may be too big and tied down by policies and confusion to help you succeed. This is an issue we see in South Florida where large firms flounder to satisfy clients because they are tied down by their own policies which dwindles creativity.
Pro Tip
Any event production or destination management company will be happy to take your business, but as you consult with them for the first time, take note of the responsiveness you see (or don’t see). Another way to evaluate whether a corporate event company in South Florida will serve you well is to notice how they express and anticipate your needs.
When you speak to them about concepts, details, logistics, etc.—ask yourself which needs you’ve expressed and how you see those concretely reflected in their language and their direction with the potential outcome. At Firebrand, for example, we learn from our clients and partners like the Ritz-Carlton, Key Biscayne. One of these standards is a commitment to being responsive to the expressed and the unexpressed wishes and needs of the client. For our day-to-day operations, we hold this as a core value.
Quality and Delivery
Everyone expects quality. Everyone claims quality. And yet, few corporate event production and destination management companies in South Florida are prepared to deliver on the promise. Instead of bespoke solutions, they rely on generic fixes from the same old vendors and partners they have strict agreements with. What you get is much of the same.
From entertainment to furniture and fabricated items, those who plan corporate events for their company commonly find arrangements don’t live up to their expectations. They find this out, usually, moments before the doors open. At that point, there is little they can do to resolve or remedy the issues before it threatens the success of the entire event.
Pro Tip
Any event production company can dream up the perfect event in their mind or even in their project management systems. If you want to find out if the final product will match what was on the menu, you’ll have to be careful from the start by reviewing their portfolio, pitch, and client testimonials with sincerity.
Ask whether what you see being produced by their teams historically has any relationship to the promises they purport to be capable of delivering on. With Firebrand, clients describe well-finished environments that match the original proposal set out at the start of the event partnership. If you can match portfolio to pitch and client testimonials glow, then it could be a sign that this event can go a much different way than those that deflated your confidence in corporate events.
About Firebrand Event Productions
Firebrand designs, fabricates, and organizes corporate events to capture audiences. Telling stories and designing custom solutions, Firebrand uses the latest technology to bring our clients’ visions to life. Our clients describe an almost unbridled creativity compared to other South Florida corporate event firms. That’s why the Firebrand portfolio contains thousands of successful events as well as four Olympic Games and a presidential inauguration.
To see if a corporate event production company in South Florida really can listen to goals, communicate, and deliver, consult on your next event with Firebrand.
Comments