How will corporate events shape up in 2025

Joe Gilliver from Manchester’s Chameleon Agency predicts how the industry will perform in the new year.

Experimental marketing and live events can be considered a luxury in a marketing budget, but there are undeniable commercial benefits for brands that embrace face-to-face events that see an increase in employee retention and in profitability. Live events drive brand awareness, foster connections and drive tangible results.  So what event trends will we see emerging in 2025?

In-person events lead the way – but virtual events are here to stay

CVent has revealed that 24% of European event planners are maintaining their virtual event offer whilst 41% are planning hybrid formats, an increase of 8% from 2022.

At Chameleon we have been producing hybrid events since we were founded with great success,  Paramount UK brought us onboard to help launch their Peak Sustainability Strategy. We created a 10-day office takeover and a broadcast studio in their UK headquarters in London, where top presenters interviewed celebrities on their environmental credentials. The live event content for the team in London was shared with international offices via a live-streamed Sustainability Town Hall.  The 10-day event was a huge success. This year we have also created a number of successful virtual events for IAG and Convatec. For Convatec we have created a successful pop-up studio in their UK head office, where alongside internal comms agency The Surgery we help produce hybrid events that link up multiple offices around the world, with a two-way interactive broadcast complete with multiple simulations and language translations, enabling Q&As and training. We are seeing the budgets of virtual events increase as clients are benefiting from how immersive they can be, engaging employees to feel they belong to the organisation no matter how far apart they are.

Hyper personalisation

AI is enhancing events for attendees, creating different individual experiences for everyone attending.  Personalised communication pre, during and post-event ensures people are getting the most out of their event visit, helping by prompting delegates to attend talks and sessions that people will find most interesting inline with their interests, roles and profiles. This will only accelerate in 2025 to make sure people are making the most of their time away from their desk.

Service and attention to detail

As the event sector struggled to get back on its feet post-pandemic, service levels have dropped. Many of the skilled event professionals left the industry for good, leaving a gap for newcomers who have had little experience or the mentors to help them get up to speed. Now I feel the tide is turning and we are returning to full service, event attendees in 2025 will enjoy the service levels we had pre pandemic, if not better. Attention to detail will be a key theme for events going forward.

An attack on the senses

Live events have the edge over virtual events as they have the power to engage all the senses. Experimental marketing can thrill through shared experience and multi-sensory engagement. Making live events memorable should be event managers’ priority for 2025. To fully resonate with your audience we must create an event that immerses the attendees and emotionally attaches them to the brand or organisation they work for. Working with telecoms giant Three, we enabled them to celebrate their commercial success with a huge immersive event. From the concept ‘Anything but Ordinary’ we flowed a day of activities from bespoke animations celebrating the successes of individual departments that also tied the panel discussions and presentations together. We concluded the celebrations with an evening of interactive activities including Bandeoke – where anyone can sing in a band.

Storytelling

Storytelling has been a buzz phrase in marketing for a while,  but what it really means is revealing the purpose of your brand or organisation while connecting with your audiences. Be authentic revealing the organistions ‘why’ across all your communications channels and bring that to life in your events, hybrid, live or virtual. By following a narrative structure in your events with a traditional story arc, with exposition,  rising action and a resolution you take your audience on a journey. Brand managers should consider the story of their organisation and align their events with their brand strategy in 2025.  

Source: hrnews.co.uk