Executive Summary

Purpose-Driven
Strategy

The Future of Event Marketing

Read on to discover the key highlights of our latest white paper.

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Executive Summary

This white paper has been researched and written in order to support colleagues in the events industry to craft a purpose-driven, data-guided event marketing strategy, to catalyse brand awareness and growth. The paper draws on our experience as an agency and on the extensive wisdom and insights of the events industry hive mind. The aim is to equip and empower event professionals to elevate their strategy in order to set and achieve evermore aspirational goals, that align through and through with organisational purpose.

About the Author

Emily Maule
Content and Event Strategist

emc3

Emily joined emc3 in 2022 after more than a decade in education, championing educational inequality, managing highly successful teams and leading pioneering curriculum design at a national scale. And now, she’s bringing this strategic approach to the events industry, to advance people’s understanding around goal-setting and audience behaviour.

Introduction

What is the purpose of focusing
on purpose?

The pursuit of purpose is a theme that is found across many areas of life on this planet, and whether it be in life, in business, in relationships or in another area, the pursuit of purpose usually involves, even if subconsciously, some form of goal-setting. The goal-setting process is about backwards planning, and however methodically this is approached, it requires the identification of an end point and the desired achievements, and then the development of a plan as to how that goal will be achieved. This process of backwards planning is not a new one, and it is one that is fundamental to successful learning (Bowen, 2017) and yet so often poses seemingly insurmountable challenges to colleagues in this industry, that opportunities are missed.

Figure 2: Product Launch for Client in Tech Industry (emc3, 2022)

Reflections on 2022 and an exploration of predictions for 2023 and beyond will contextualise some of the findings and serve to provide further evidence of why developing a purpose-driven strategy for event marketing should be the top priority for 2023.

Purpose

Goal Setting and Mitigating Risk
The ROI of Purpose
Duo’s Rise to Fame

In 1968, Edwin Locke published a seminal piece on the power and purpose of goal setting for employees. He demonstrated how setting appropriate goal and receiving feedback from more senior individuals were unmatched in their ability to drive improvements in performance. He also showed setting challenging goals are yet more powerful for the individual in terms of personal development. The concepts that developed subsequently, including Doran’s system of SMART goals (1981) are now very familiar to people across a large number of industries and sectors: even school children are often accustomed to setting SMART targets. And this is because the evidence clearly shows that purpose drives teams and individuals forward. Having purpose and goals, allows teams and individuals to be that much more strategic and so therefore that much more likely to be successful.

Carol Cone (2022) writes that the best companies “set measurable goals to put their business strategy and purpose statement into action.” And so developing a purpose-driven strategy for event marketing is critical.

Naturally, there are many studies that highlight some of the potential risks of setting very specific and challenging goals, such as unhealthy single-mindedness, altered perception of risk or ethical behaviour, and even compromised organisational culture (Ordóñez et al, 2009). However, as with all things, and as Mackesy teaches through the characters in his book, “nothing beats kindness” (2019). Therefore, in an industry that has a worrying reputation for burn-out and fierce interactions, as the importance and implications of developing a purpose-driven strategy for event marketing are scrutinised, it is important to remember to keep kindness central. This does a lot to mitigate the unintentinal side-effects of over-zealous goal setting.

In a piece from April 2022, Google’s Giusy Bounfantino reports on the Harris Poll research that Google Cloud commissioned: approximately 1000 individuals were surveyed and the results showed that 82% of respondents had their purchasing decisions guided by brand value alignment. The data also shows that almost 40% of respondents would be willing to part with their favourite brand over diverging values, with 28% talking about this with friends and family and an additional 15% of respondents creating social media content about their decision.

For almost 40% of people, brand value alignment is a deal-breaker.

Now, the significance of this is that consumers are interested in purpose and value, more than ever before, which means that organisations need to be able to define, communicate and defend their purpose ever more effectively. Beckwith (2020) argues that “purpose is non-negotiable” and our experience in the industry shows that this is also true not just of organisations, but down to each individual event: people are more selective about the events they will attend and they need to know that it will be worth their while. This means that event purpose also needs to be convincingly defined and communicated.

This was explored at our event in December 2022, REIMAGINE: The Future of Event Marketing, where panellists discussed the importance of authenticity. This spoke directly to why our strategy workshops are so powerful: we support teams in deciding purpose, mission and vision, so that each subsequent decision can be made through these lenses. This alignment ensures that each event is authentic and true to the organisation’s values, so that the attendees are satisfied with the purpose behind the event. This process also significantly helps to avoid costly roadblocks further down the line, which is further evidence for the valuable ROI of purpose.

Carol Cone, who has written extensively about purpose, argues that as purpose isn’t an optional extra anymore, the question, instead, is how will each organisation define and communicate its purpose and so connect with clients and prospective clients (2022). Beckwith believes that purpose-driven organisations are “more resilient” (2020) and we would add that purpose-driven strategy is also infinitely more robust and able to be both proactive and reactive.

EMC3 Drift Hypergrowth San Francisco — Figure 4: Drift Event (emc3, 2022)

Duolingo is a great example of an organisation crafting a highly effective purpose-driven strategy. Zaria Parvez has transformed Duolingo’s social media presence, growing their following on TikTok to 5.5 million (Tiktok, 2023). And Parvez was able to do this by understanding what users were looking for on social media (and in Web3) and then designing a strategy to meet those needs (Parvez, 2022). The purpose on social media was not language learning, it was entertainment.

This carefully curated, purpose-driven strategy has catalysed Duolingo’s success as an educational programme, and Duo the Owl as a much-loved language-learning companion.

However, when designing a purpose-driven strategy for event marketing, the research is clear that you must decide on the evidence that will be used to check progress and focus, and then ascertain what steps need to be taken as a result of that evaluation. And this is where data comes in.

Purpose-Driven
Strategy

The Future of Event Marketing

About the Author

Introduction

What is the purpose of focusing
on purpose?

Want to find out more about how industry leaders are developing purpose-driven strategies?

You can download a full copy of our
white paper here.