Engage Winter 2017/18 | Page 18

Opinion Dissecting epic A t GES we have a marketing campaign that touts our ‘epic events for epic clients’. You may disagree, but we think this is a pretty clever angle on our business, and we’d argue that much of our work could qualify as epic and that, of course, all of our clients are epic. Yes, I am pandering. The thing is, when you claim to produce epic events, you need to make things a bit more concrete and explain what you mean. What is an epic event? How do you create one? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. The fi ve essential elements of an epic event 1. It connects with hearts and minds. Like all of us, event attendees make decisions based on a mix of emotional and rational factors. But, all too often, event marketing relies on being entirely emotion or entirely intellect. Epic events consider both, and are designed to affect our hearts and minds equally. Emotional impact can be sad or ins