The Corporate Event Season 2012

The 2012 corporate event season has been ticking along but it will really get busy after Easter. There's always a lull over the Bank Holiday and then for a few days as people get up to speed and then the events start to flow through. If there's some good weather around that time it always helps it to pick up, along with good or at least not bad economic conditions. That's had a huge effect over the last few years.

So, how will 2012 look for corporate events and team building? The big event during the year will be the Olympics. Luckily it runs from late July through August, which is generally a fairly quiet time for corporate events because it's the holiday season. However, there will be a lof of resources being used in the build up, not least staff and iot may have a knock on effect to the main September month. We just don't know, it's a new set of circumstances.

So, the 2012 season is almost underway. It's going to be an interesting year.

Corporate Event Season

It's been a busy year. I've been working on events with The Team Building Company and I've found myself specialising more in Treasure Hunts, while doing the occasional Murder Mystery.

The other interesting area for me is facilitated team building. This is working with tools such as Belbin and Myers-Briggs and it would take me more into the role of facilitator rather than event manager.

However, you can't be everything. I'll have to see what the winter brings.

Off to Budapest

I'm off to Budapest for a Treasure Hunt. I love the trips abroad when they come up three or four times a year. The most exotic was a spy themed event in Istanbul when I spent the day in a Turkish Bath as an undercover agent. Budapest seems just as exotic.

The best bit is the planning trip, which usually takes place over a weekend. I fly out on my own and spend a couple of days on foot exploring the city and collating the Treasure Hunt. Most city airports are approximately half an hour from the city centre and the bus typically costs around £3. It's details like this that make travel around Europe a doddle. Of course there are parts of the World that I wouldn't approach with such relaxed expectations, but Europe is fairly predictable.

So, Budapest is the next desination. The best so far this year was Sintra in Portugal. Will this surpass that experience?

The Season Has Started

It's been a busy week. Monday and Tuesday was taken up with a Belbin team building event and then I had to go to Leeds for a hostage take on Thursday. On Friday I did exactly the same thing in Brighton.

I usually do a Hostage about once a month, so it was unusal do have one the day after another. We storm the room and take a person or something like a laptop hostage. The group then divides into teams and takes part in a themed treasure hunt style event finishing up with getting the person or equipment back.

It's always very fast paced and great fun.

Edinburgh Treasure Hunt

I was in Edinburgh for a Treasure Hunt recently. It's a great city for this sort of event because it's so compact and there is so much that can be experienced on foot in a half day. You have the sights of Princes Street, Calton Hill which gives a stunning view of the whole city and the wonderful old city.

The photo shows the clock on top of The Balmoral Hotel which runs three minutes first. Why do you think that is?

Corporate Events in 2011

The corporate event year 2011 is well underway and, as each year has its own character, we can start to assess how this one is looking. We came into 2011 with concerns that The Royal Wedding and the layout of the Bank Holidays in April would put a real dampner on the early season. There was also the ongoing financial outlook - how would that effect the year? First of all March has been very strong and April is looking good too, inspite of those unusual events. The UK's consumers are certainly suffering but corporates seem to have recovered and generally they seem willing to look at entertainment rather than just events with measurable business outcomes. Consumers tend to lag behind corporates in their reactions to financial events. For most corporates the times of trouble and cutbacks are behind then and they are looking at a more positive future. This is backed up by recent surveys which have found that corporate risk appetite is on the rise again. So, it's early days but the outlook for 2011 certainly looks positive at this stage.

Duck Herding For Spy School

It happens occasionally. There's an event with a very specific theme but the client wants an activity as part of it that has nothing to do with the theme. So, how do you incorporate duck herding into a Spy School themed event?

Well, it's all down to designing a plausible story. So, there's a gaggle of radioactive geese that has been trained to enter Parliament during the next sitting to bring chaos to the Western world. We call it Radioquacktive.





What's not plausible about that?

Happy Christmas

Seasons greetings from Corporate Event. It's been a fairly good year. We've seen important clients from the banking and finance world coming back, which is very welcome. It's all very well demonising certain business sectors but when you depend on them for work it's less helpful.

Next year is going to be interesting The first quarter is usually held up by government spending and it's fairly safe to assume that won't happen in 2011. Will the private sector hold up the recovery as hoped by the government? We shall see.

Seasonal Corporate Events

We're moving from the Summer months to the colder seasons and events are starting to move indoors. There's a lot to be said for outdoor team building events at this time of year; the Autumn trees are fabulous and there's that great smell of leaves and bonfires. After the event you can head indoors for logs fires and hot drinks. It's all quite magical.

Team Building for Students

We've just delivered an event for the year six students of an Academy school that we've done for the last six years. The aim is to get them all together at the beginning of the new year and give them a positive shared experience to set them off in the best possible way.

I'm always impressed by these youngsters. They get involved in the activities and are engaging and engaged. They enjoy the day and you can see them and their relationships grow over the course of the event.

Perhaps it's because they're in a good school where they have to put effort in if they want it to work out. Perhaps it's because it's the sort of school and the type of teachers who will hold a team building at the beginning of the year - it's a pretty enlightened idea.

Whatever it is it's a pity that, after six years, this year is likely to be the last one. They won't be getting the funding for it next year. I understand that we don't have the money any more and I'm not surprised. There will be lots of situations like this where it's a shame and there's not much that can be done about it.

Professional corporate event presentation

Progressive Resources has made a huge investment in its corporate events and one of the most visible outcomes is what seems to be hundreds of flight cases.

Every piece of equipment now has a home, with shapes cut into the foam inserts so that everything fits into its own space.

It does look really good and very professional. Flight cases are tactile, people like using them. Things have certainly moved on from the days of string, tape and oil barrels.

More phone answering problems

I blogged a while ago about hotels not answering their telephones. Yesterday I was trying to place a £10,000 booking and half of the hotels I tried to contact did not answer their phone, or didn't have anyone available who could help me. It just doesn't make sense.

I Tweeted about the problem and was immediately telephoned by a venue finding agency and a hotel group. Pretty impressive. There's the thing, really. You can divide the market into two types of business. The first type just doesn't seem to care, or isn't very switched on. The second type is right there on the pulse, reacting immediately to the changing world not only by answering the phone but scanning proactively for opportunities.

I don't have any data to prove the theory, but I can be fairly confident that the latter will be more successful.

The state of the event business

The event business is definately showing signs of improvement. Last year it was Pharmaceutical clients and The Government that kept us all going. This year Government business has started to contract, although there is still a fair amount of it around. It's surprising that there's anything, but I suppose it takes time for cuts to come through.

The really good news has been the return of the banks and financials. This was always the main source of business and it literally froze in 2009. Not only were there not the budgets but organisations in that sector were very concerned not to be seen to be doing anything that would lead to accusations of frivolity. That unfair accusation deserves a blog of its own, but it was the way that people felt. Now times are improving and their business is starting to come back. Great news!

Doing business with hotels

I can see that this is going to become one of my pet subjects. Why do hotels make it so difficult to do business with them?

Take my interaction with Crowne Plaza hotels today. I used Google to find a contact telephone number and I think we can probably assume that most people would do the same thing. So, we're talking about the main communication avanue between them and new business. I'm given an 0871 number and told that it will cost me 10p per minute. I haven't studied call charges for a while so I don't know if this is better or worse than normal rates, but I have the feeling something cynical is going on.

I telephoned them with one simple question: 'what is your day delegate rate?' After a fairly long message (at 10p per minute) going on about a customer satisfaction service that I'm not interested in I spoke to someone who told me I'd have to speak to the hotel and who gave me another 0871 number. I get this a lot, the sheer frustration of dealing with central reservations.

I then called the new number and was put through to an extension number that didn't answer. I was returned to the switchboard who put me through to someone else. Don't forget I'm feeling edgy because I know this is all costing me 10p per minute.

Finally I'm speaking to a person but they're reluctant to give me the rate I need to finish my proposal until they've taken my address, telephone number and email address. Even then I have to go through a whole discussion about how and why rates might change.

So, the event part of my proposal took me five minutes and the one piece of information from the hotel took me about 10 minutes to get and a whole load of frustration and stress.

I don't know how much these venues spend on marketing, exhibitions and whatever but why on earth do they make clients jump through hoops to get a fairly basic bit of key information?

Embedding company values

Film making is a very effective way of embedding company values. Many employees are unfamiliar with the company values that are published in annual reports and on the corporate website. The words and concepts seem remote and unfamiliar.

Using a film making team building event to make people more familiar with their corporate values is effective and makes a fun experience out of an important business objective.

On a recent event teams were given two out of their company's four stated values and they had to create a film from which the other teams could guess which values they were representing. They couldn't say the word or write it down, it had to be clear from the film.

There were four teams in total and all eight values were covered. The result was interesting and fun and working with the company values for a day helped everyone in the group to become familiar with not just the words but the behaviour behind them. The result was much more powerful and authentic that learning by rote.

Why don't hotels answer their phones?

It's very strange. Hotels are multi-million pound businesses and, if what you read in the press is true, the market is pretty tough at the moment. And yet here I am with a bluechip client wanting to book 40 rooms for an event in March and the first two venues I have called haven't answered their phones.

Are receptionists much more expensive than one would think?

Is the fun coming back into corporate events?

In 2009 we noticed that events with business linked outcomes were more popular than the more frivolous activities. Corporate executives were in a sombre mood, but the thing we heard more than anything was 'it's not what we do, it's what we are seen to do.'

It would be easy to by cynical about that, but the reality is that you would have to be pretty thick skinned not to feel that way. Already in 2010 we're hearing more of that good old word 'fun'. That will mean the return of events like the good old It's A Knockout coming back.

And so it should be. Fun is one of the key ingredients of a good event. It builds relationships and it reduces stress in the workplace. Fun is not a four letter word.

Chocolate Making Event

Chocolate making events are undoubtedly the big success of 2009. We do find that there are events that just hit the moment and you see a lot of them at various times. Currently it seems to be the time for chocolate making.

The event is easy to put on in any suitable location and it appeals to people of all ages and abilities. Real teamwork is needed to achieve the aims of the activity and it suits small or large groups.

Chocolate making can be themed as well, so it's an ideal Christmas event idea.

We have a La Gavroche trained chef who oversees the group and makes sure that some wonderful chocolates are created.

It's a good fun team building event.

Qualities of event instructors

Event instructors need to be smart of appearance and intelligent enough to communicate ideas and concepts to the client. They also need experience of the activities they are instructing; people can tell if someone has never actually tried the event and you can't get an all round view without experiencing it first hand.

The one quality which separates an average instructor from a good one is the ability to connect with people. You have to be 'present' on the day, which may seem an odd thing to say but in reality people are often not present when they seem to be in front of you. They're thinking about the weekend or something that is more important to them.

A connected instructor is present, cares about the client and wants them to get the maximum return from their investment.

The corporate event experience

The best corporate events provide a stage on which clients can build on their history together through shared experiences. It's important not to lead participants too much and control their every action. Really the event manager needs to take a step back, because it's not about them. Clients will be laughing at 'in jokes' that the instructor won't understand, and it ruins the flow if they feel the need to be part of the team they're working with.

You may be the best instructor in the world and the event may be the most exciting and novel on offer, but the real value for the client will be the hundred of little moments between the participants.