Event branding is one of the most important aspects to any event. From marathons, 10ks and obstacle races to music festivals, food festivals and everything in between, your brand says everything about who you are and how you want to be perceived. In a nutshell, your branding is what your events look and feel like and by branding your event you’re developing its personality that will help it stand out from similar events and keep your audience coming back for more.

Here’s our list of top 10 tips for branding your event:

1. Create a strong identity for your event

Your identity defines your event and forms the visual foundations for all your promotional materials and displays. A strong identity helps you communicate the right messages with the right people and start to build brand recognition from the outset.

Our team of event branding experts and in-house designers can work with you to create a strong and memorable identity for your event. Important aspects of your brand include fonts, colours, tone of voice, personality and – perhaps the most important – is your logo. Don’t forget to consider how these will translate in to different sizes, substrates and media to make sure your entire campaign is consistent and easily identifiable by the audience.

2. The art of experience

Every interaction with an attendee is an opportunity to bring your brand to life. Whether that’s a participant in a race, a spectator in the crowd or a ticket holder at a music festival, it’s not just about the race or the music, it’s about the whole experience you offer with the event.

Why not consider experiential marketing as part of your event? Creating a meaningful and positive experience for your audience is essential to leaving a lasting impression and inspiring a deeper sense of loyalty. Do this by developing innovative activations across the site that really get your audience to immerse themselves in the look and feel of your event, leaving them fully engaged and personally connected to the event and your brand.

3. Go green

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental credentials of events and the work event organisers are doing to help offset the (sometimes considerable) impact they can have on the land. With so many different aspects to consider in event organisation when working towards being kinder to the environment including travel, power, facilities and catering to name a few, one that often isn’t considered is event branding and site signage. Many of the standard options are derived from virgin plastic and often not recyclable at the end of their life, but there are greener alternatives available.

At Harrison Creative, our growing range of environmentally friendly products includes eco-friendly alternatives to correx and foamex that’s traditionally used for site signage, a green alternative to PVC that can be used for banners and backdrops as well as our very own revolutionary material, Enviroflag™ that offers an environmentally friendly replacement for flags and feather flags (find out more here).  Many of our environmentally friendly products are made from recycled content as well as being 100% recyclable at the end of use.

4. Buy or hire?

Are you restricted by storage space? Or budget? Or are you wanting to try out new products before you commit to buying? Consider hiring your products rather than purchasing. Hiring what you need for your event means that even if you are facing challenges, you can still deliver impactful event branding right across your site without compromise. Hire products for event branding, whether that’s gantries, wayfinding, mile marking or hire flagpoles, can often be more convenient for busy event organisers too; they are delivered to your site and collected after the event and also allow for fully customisable print.

Find out about our hire products here.

5. Get creative with your space

Outdoor events and festival sites offer the organiser a completely blank canvas. A daunting undertaking at first, however it gives you the opportunity to dress your event any way you like, and that means getting creative with any available space. Utilise the height of scaffolding poles by adding bunting, lighting and other soft branding, add signage boards to gates or poles and create big, bold bespoke pieces such as giant lettering for photo opportunities or custom entrances to zoned areas to help them stand out.

6. Impress your audience

In a visually saturated world where consumers are bombarded with advertising and promotional messages wherever they go, expectations are increasing and it’s taking more and more to impress. This is coupled with experienced event organisers and their teams really raising the bar at established events, meaning attendees expect more when they go to other events – be sure to impress your audience with your displays!

7. Create a hashtag

Create a unique hashtag for your event to increase your reach and encourage engagement from your attendees. Proudly display your hashtag on all of your branded materials to ensure its seen – and shared – by your audience.

8. Clearly identify your site

Attendees’ experience of your event is key to them returning year after year and building loyalty to the event brand you’ve worked so hard to develop. Their experience will be based on many things, including convenience. Making sure your site is easy to navigate is essential whether that’s done with freestanding wayfinding options, temporary event signage or directional poles – or any other creative ways you and your team come up with.

9. Images, images, images

Consider a professional photographer to provide you with a suite of top-quality images that you can use post-event. Why not get your audience to do your marketing for you? User generated content gives you the opportunity to engage with a wider audience and by incentivising their submission of content you leave them feeling good about your brand.

10. Shout about it

You’ve done all the hard work; developed a strong identity, chosen your products, produced your plans – don’t forget to shout about it! Social media platforms are a must for regularly drip feeding messages about your event and don’t forget to use your connections to get sharing, liking and tweeting your messages so that you reach as many people as possible and give yourself the best opportunity for a successful event.