What Comes After a Major Event You Sponsor
Much of our work revolves around the world's most well-attended and watched events, from the F1 USGPs in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas to INDYCAR's Indianapolis 500. All eyes are on during the event, and you have heard us chat about what the lead-up to an event is like, but what about what happens right after a major event your brand is sponsoring?
It is easy to think that the sunset of event day is the actual end of the event. For us, the end of the event marks the beginning of what becomes one of the most important stages of an event's lifecycle. The post-event stage is where you can take stock of your performance and understand how your activations made a difference in achieving the objectives you set out to achieve. Timeliness and urgency are paramount to us during this phase. Let’s look at what happens after a major event.
The night of
Even though a load of work is about to come your way, it is important to take a breath and enjoy your achievement. Activating an event on a large scale is no easy feat. You are operating at the highest level with critical VIPs and plenty of things you cannot control but still must manage.
Celebrate and enjoy the "calm before the storm" when you get back to the hotel. These couple of hours are some of our most cherished, especially when you can do so with your teammates that were there for every step.
The day after
The day immediately following the event day primarily consists of collection. There are more than a few stakeholders that have been documenting, photographing, recording, reporting, etc. and all of that raw footage will become the backbone of recap content for various audience types. Our first task is to aggregate all of this in one place.
We also look to send out any required guest follow-up, including thank you emails, photo albums and experience surveys. Keep in mind this is generally a travel day so you are usually dashing through the airports rather than anchored at your desk.
The week after
The media results and figures from broadcasting, venue, team and sanctioning bodies start to roll in. These are critical to document and understand the overall performance of the event year after year. These may be extra-important to you depending on your media investment level and exposure goals.
We have seen that impressions and other vanity-like metrics can be a distraction. If the size of the TV audience doesn't tie to your objective for being a sponsor, then don't stress over it. You can consider your investment successful if you were there to host 6 VIP customers and they had an amazing time with a follow-up meeting already set. We make sure to delineate these differences from the very beginning to avoid confusion.
Editing the video footage captured also happens during the week after the event. Editing can take a lot of diligence and time so we want to get started straight away. Our goal with video is to create an exciting asset that can be shared with those who could not attend and make them feel as if they were there. This becomes a great tool to promote next year's event should your brand have a multi-year relationship.
Two weeks after
By this point, we have everything we need to provide comprehensive internal communications to the different stakeholders involved. This includes distilled metrics, sharp imagery and video, customer testimonials and any key improvement points to consider for the next event. By this stage, we have generated a solid outline of topics to cover in a larger meeting on the horizon.
Three weeks after
We will organize time with the key stakeholders to come together for a final review of the event, the results, the materials, the feedback, etc. and look to conclude everything with a good sense of how it all went. This meeting is critical because it offers closure and the best chance to build a foundation for the next event.
A massive shoutout goes out to all the accounting and bookkeeping departments involved. It takes a remarkable amount of detail and effort to make sure funding is placed where it needs to be placed at the right times to make everything function. Due to several circumstances, this process can sometimes stretch farther than a month after the event and often turns into multiple meetings to ensure accuracy.
Onto the next one
Our next one usually starts during the above, so it is about managing various overlapping timelines. We consider the activity post-event as important as the event itself and use it as a springboard for future work. To pull off a big event like a title sponsorship, we expect 8-10 months of planning and development to make it all it can be.
