Being a corporate event planner is not an easy job. Whether you are an internal staff who was tasked to plan your company’s event or an external event planner whose job is to arrange events for several companies, planning a successful corporate event is a complicated task to accomplish.
Your role is to handle all aspects of the event including
- gathering and confirming the attendees’ list;
- negotiating with vendors/suppliers;
- booking the perfect venue;
- filing the request payment form for the vendors/suppliers;
- coordinating the event operations;
- creating the program for the event;
- and many more
Looking at the job description of a corporate event planner, you might even confuse them with an event marketing planner because their job description is pretty much similar.
However, keep in mind that corporate event is different to event marketing. So even though their job description might be similar, their objective and end goal is different.
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What makes corporate events different?
To put it simply, a corporate event is a PR event.
This means that unlike marketing events that focus on lead generation and brand awareness, corporate events improve and maintain the company’s public image.
It is a strategic way to build a better relationship with the public and other organizations through events.
Generally, corporate events are internal gatherings with a formal or unique party theme. The attendees are mainly company employees, shareholders, stakeholders, and partners.
As much as the company values its customer’s opinions, getting internal approval from these people is still the best way to maintain the company’s reputation and integrity.
Without these internal approvals from employees and partners, your company would not be existent today and people are less likely to work for you.
In a way, a corporate event is like a press conference, job fair, and even a venture capital conference compressed and packed within a single unique event.
So there is a lot at stake when it comes to organizing events like these.
Even though the means are similar to that of event marketing, the end goal for corporate events is most certainly different.
Types of Corporate Events
To give you a clear picture of what corporate events are, we have listed a few examples below:
Conferences
Conferences can double as a PR and marketing event for your company. If you ever attended a conference or assembly before, you might have noticed that the attendees are mostly from the same or related industries.
This is not a coincidence because the main purpose of this type of event is to allow people to network and build relationships with other companies in the same niche.
An example of a great PR conference is the annual assembly of the International Trademark Association. Given that the attendees are mainly lawyers from the same niche; it is a strategic event to not only promote their firm but also allow individual lawyers to market themselves to other firms as well. So it’s a win-win event for both the company and the attending lawyers.
Seminars
Almost every company holds yearly, monthly, or even weekly seminars. It is a great way to keep your employees in check.
With that said, recruitment, human resource, and higher-ups executives are the ones who mainly benefit from this type of event.
For the recruitment and human resource department, it is a great way to encourage more people to work for your company. Consistently holding seminars means you care about your employees and you pool in extra time and resources to help them grow
As for the executives within the company, seminars are a great way to renew your employees’ motivation and confidence to do better at work.
Team Building Events
Like fun icebreakers, team-building activities are a great way to skip the awkwardness and make the atmosphere at work a lot more comfortable.
Apart from the generic goal of team-building events (which is to strengthen bonds and increase collaboration among your team), it is also a great way to foster security and inclusivity in the workplace.
From the past team-building events that we organized and attended, employees feel less isolated and more likely to engage in office banter after every team-building event.
Even though this might seem like a menial or tiny accomplishment, it can trickle down to the entire collaborative efforts and team’s productivity because everyone can now comfortably speak their mind towards each other’s work.
Board Meetings
Board meetings are also in the same category as shareholders’ briefings, corporate meetings, and annual partners’ assemblies.
These types of corporate events are objective-driven gatherings. This means that at the end of every session, attendees should be able to impart and gain knowledgeable insights that can contribute to the companies’ whole business operation.
On top of that, it is also a PR event because the attendees are mainly executives and higher-ups who make big decisions for the company.
They are the ones who decide on the direction of the company and where it should go. So with that said, it should have a successful “press conference” as well because both their employees and customers are watching them like a hawk.
Private Luncheon or Dinners
You might be wondering why we include this in this list. Well, even though these are private gatherings, we still consider this as a type of corporate event because planners of these events take a lot of factors into consideration.
Even though these may seem like an administrative assistant job, scheduling and booking restaurants, there’s a lot at play here when it comes to the PR side of the company.
Hosting a successful private luncheon or dinner with your colleagues or business partners gives you the opportunity to build a stronger relationship and deeper connection with them.
It strengthens your company’s culture and solidifies your brand’s message.
And as we all know, when it comes to PR, nothing is more organic and legit than first-hand information from the people near you.
Through events like these, your employees and partners would positively talk about you and your company to other people.
Charity Events
As you probably already guessed, charity events are great for the company’s PR and reputation.
It is worth noting that even though there are companies that only use charities for PR purposes, there are tons of companies out there that legitimately care about the charities’ cause and advocacies.
The PR side is just the positive by-product of supporting these charities.
Organizing charity events is an excellent way to prove your commitment to your company’s mission and vision. Without a mission and vision, your company would not have any end goals and it would be a lot more difficult to establish your company’s credibility and integrity.
Appreciation or Milestone Events
Giving recognition to employees who have helped build your company is also a strategic way to build a better relationship with the public.
Events like these can also double up as promotions event for your company. It is a subtle way of celebrating your company’s culture and encouraging more highly skilled people to join your team.
On top of that, corporate events like these are often publicized as well. So it also gives customers insight into how you run the company, making them more trusty and confident with your brands and products.
Planning Process
Like a wedding planner, being a corporate event planner can also be hectic and stressful. You are expected to not just please your attendees, but also make a good impression and leave a lasting impact on the public as well.
So in order to accomplish all that, you need to plan every corporate or social event a few weeks or even months ahead.
As we all know, every successful event, no matter what kind or industry, is ultimately anchored on the event planning process.
Without proper event management and effective planning, your corporate event would not even hit close to its target goals.
With that said, here are a few tips for internal corporate event planners:
- Identify and discuss the event’s target goals with your team
Only when necessary, try to discuss your goals with the company’s higher-ups or executives. Doing this would allow you to clearly establish and align your goals with them. This way, you can smoothly execute all your plans without any hindrance or interruptions.
- Create an estimated budget and discuss it with the in-charge person in your finance department
If you have worked in a corporate setting before, you know that aside from your boss, you also have to get the signed permission of the finance department before you start procuring or spending the company’s money.
In this case, the best thing to do is to finish all of these and get these out of the way first so that you can focus on the other tasks afterward.
- Create a timeline of deliverables for your team
In this case, we like to reiterate the difference between a project timeline and a timeline of deliverables.
From our view, a timeline of deliverables is more effective and you can actually track each individual’s progress. It is more specific and you can see the end result of every task.
We only use project timelines for meeting presentations with the company’s board or executives.
- Always have some backup suppliers/ vendors / catering /etc.
If you have worked in the industry long enough, then you probably already know that coordinating with vendors and suppliers can be a bit tricky, and sometimes, you would face problems that are just inevitable and simply out of your hands.
So in order to remedy this, you should always have a backup supplier or vendor on standby.
- Break down every goal into micro and easy-to-manage tasks.
This way, it would divide tasks accountability and you would not rely on one person within your team. Should you face any problems along the way, it would be much easier to find the person accountable as well as help them find ways on how to resolve them.
- Listen and take into account your colleagues’ creative ideas and suggestions
As we have implied before, corporate events are mainly for your employees and stakeholders. With that said, hearing their inputs and suggestions would help increase the success of your event.
Should you get external help?
If you have made it this far, then you’re probably weighing the options of whether to assigned someone from your team to organize the event or just get external help and let them do it for your company.
When you’re in this dilemma, then hiring an external corporate event planner might be your best shot.
You would not be in this predicament if you already have a trusted employee specifically assigned to do all this. This just means that you do not have any internal corporate event planner currently working with you.
In that case, you should get external help from an expert because you cannot simply assign this project to a random employee in your company.
It would not guarantee your event’s success and you might just overwhelm your employee if you randomly assign this task to him/her.
Event Success
Unlike marketing events where your metrics for success are sales, return of investment, and lead acquisition, the measure of the success of a corporate event tends to be subjective and unique for different companies.
Given that corporate events tends to be centric on employees, shareholders, and public perceptions, it can vary based on your goals and business operations.
That is why in the previous section, we asked you to clearly identify and discuss your goals first.
This way, once the event is done, you can simply refer to that goal and determine whether you accomplish it or not.
For example, the end goal of your team-building event is to build morale and make employees feel comfortable to speak up at work.
To measure whether you achieve this or not, you can simply ask HR or just observe your colleagues’ performance during meetings. And if you want to be technical and have real data to measure your success, you can look at the company’s productivity chart and its employee turnover rate.
Once you clearly and specifically established your end goal, monitoring your progress and tracking your success would not be that difficult.
Conclusion
All in all, being a corporate event planner is similar to being a great public relations specialist and an event marketing planner. You need the skill and competence of these two professions in order to be successful in this field.
