It’s no secret that event planners are experiencing more pressure than ever to apply the hottest marketing trends to their own industry. Taking a page from experiential marketing, event planners are expected to deliver an unforgettable experience.
What’s the magic ingredient? What makes you want to keep watching a movie or continue playing an immersive game?
One of the biggest factors is a compelling narrative. Couching your marketing and messaging within a story that helps them connect with your value propositions and company culture will drive home why your audience should choose you.
The problem is that this event narrative must resonate with as wide an audience as possible. If we want to create a narrative with universal appeal, we need to think about the key elements that make a story engaging.
To ensure that your message hits home, you want to reflect their personal narrative by speaking to their struggles. It is here — in this overlap between messaging, value, and relatability — where you have the greatest power to influence. Your narrative needs to deliver valuable takeaways that the audience can see themselves using to inspire action.
In this post, we’re going to dive into the psychological appeal of effective storytelling and help you craft an event narrative sure to captivate your attendees.
Narratives as a Call to Action: Move Your Attendees
People have probably been telling stories for as long as we’ve been able to communicate. Even prehistoric cave paintings were a way to narrate successful hunts. While storytelling was once a way to pass down communal knowledge and shared beliefs from generation to generation, it has evolved into a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Even when the story itself is not up for sale, it is often used to move products (merchandise).
And that’s just it: people are drawn to narratives because they want to be moved – to laugh, to cry. Moved to act. How do you craft a narrative that will be sure to move your audience?
Most good stories pivot on three key features:
- They deliver value.
- They relate to lived experience.
- They generate a sense of identification between the audience and the story’s hero.