With warm days approaching and COVID-19 protocols loosening up, this summer is slated to be jam-packed with outdoor events.

Whether it’s a tasting, dinner, large community initiative, or a night of entertainment and live music, approaching your events with intentional brand focus will help you achieve a larger, more lasting impact.

It’s no secret that experiences and memories stick with people throughout the years. Strategically organizing an event offers you an opportunity to make a lasting impression on your audience and convert guests into both loyal customers and referral sources.

So, where do you start branding an event?

The same place you start when branding your business.

1. Establish your goal. 

Every event has an end goal in mind – like increasing nightly bar sales, educating customers or creating loyalty.

The first step in developing a successful outdoor event is getting clear on what you’re striving to accomplish.

At Bauerhaus, we recently partnered with the St. Clair County Transit District to brand and market their Summer Riding Program, which incentivizes kids and families to ride and walk on local bike trails by offering prizes for miles logged. (Fun!)

Rewarding healthy activity, encouraging families to ride together, and increasing trail awareness and usage were the main goals around their summer program. We worked with SCCTD to get clear on those goals, and let that clarity guide us in branding the program and developing a strategy to promote it.

2. Build a brand identity to match.

Naming your event can sometimes feel like a daunting task, but when you start with a defined scope of work, you have a place to begin. 

For the SCCTD project, after determining their key objectives, we came up with three concepts for branding the program.

Each concept not only fit the scope and objective of the program, but also created opportunities for further developing the program’s brand.

Each brand concept we proposed:

• offered a holistic picture of a brand identity — by including a potential name, headline, target audience, visual element, and ideas for relevant marketing content
• used both language and visual elements to convey a particular message
• took on a specific angle, creating options for targeting a niche within the broader intended audience
• was fun and inspired ideas around future marketing content

After presenting the concepts to our client, we landed on “Together on Wheels”. This short and sweet name clearly declared it a biking program and spoke to the value of having families and neighbors explore the trails together. 

3. Taking your brand from concept to finished product

Creating a defined brand identity is foundational for creating effective marketing and promotional materials for your event.

Developing an event logo makes related communication materials feel cohesive, while also tying your event to your company’s overarching branding. While memorability and brand presence is great for marketing, it also enhances the experience your audience has with your brand and your event.

Keep it simple!   Click here to check out my blog post on creating unforgettable logos.

For SCCTD, we created a series of billboards to promote to the program. We lead with a strong, yet concise, tagline: “Walk. Ride. Win!”, while the program’s logo helps communicate with the program — and the intention behind — is.

Having a clear headline that catches attention and explains enough to get interested parties to read on is key. 

Language should briefly and clearly explain the program by providing a bit more information with a clear call-to-action or next step for consumers to take.

Events can be a powerful way to bring people together and create shared experiences around your brand.

Now take the next step and create a brand experience that will be hard to forget. 

Need help getting started? Schedule a free discovery call today.