“And caaan you feeel the looove tonight…” – Elton John
Our feelings are one of the most powerful tools to use to manipulate us. We react emotionally to everything we experience. These moods can range from mildly positive to strong emotions of joy and pride. An emotional reaction is also our relaxed feeling when we are drinking a cup of coffee at our favorite café.
Because we cannot stop our emotional reaction to the things that happen around us, it is even more important to focus on a positive customer experience at our events. As mentioned before, I might not remember every detail of a show I saw, every song I listened to, but what I will never forget is how I felt, how all what happened around me made me feel at that particular moment. Goosebumps, excitement, a shiver… But this will also mean, I remember if something made me feel bad, sad, or annoyed.
People will never forget how you made them feel!
This said, pay attention to every important detail at your event, fair, or meeting. Don’t let the power of guiding your attendees in the right emotional direction slip away. You are in charge of how you make your guests feel. Use it, to establish the long-lasting, positive relationship by causing positive associations with the audience.
We are not stimulating all of our visitors’ senses only for the mere fun of their experience. We are doing this to foster an emotional reaction that will encourage the wish to share the experience – and therefore our message.
Taking our Christmas fair with all the physical, emotional, and interactive elements, we achieve this positive emotion by using performers to personalize the guests’ experiences. Walking around the fair grounds they are surprising individual visitors with unexpected delights and engage them in conversation about individual’s preferences and experiences around Christmas markets, the Dickens Christmas story, or preparations for the holiday season.
All efforts we put into stimulating the senses of our attendees (the characters, the music, the delicious scents, food and drinks) contribute to a much more positive emotion during their stay at the fair. And this feeling will lead to a much higher wish to share the experience than at the same Christmas market in a sterile, non-decorated meeting room where the only sound you can hear comes from chatting booth owners, sitting behind tables with boring white tablecloths who don’t acknowledge you until you grab for one of their items. This fair doesn’t need me, but I need to feel important in order to feel attracted by it. You get the picture!
Organizing a fair or market when you have a serious logo and marketing culture can be improved by creating mascots or hire one-time performers for the event. This will help to show a different, more personal face of your brand. Their look can stimulate positive feelings and memories of carefree times, which are then aimed to be felt by the visitors during the event. Compared to your usually serious emblem, the performers transmit the emotion of fun and contain a positive role to avoid negativity by spreading emotions of fun and happiness. They can also be used as a type of cheerleader to steer the crowd at certain moments to start emotional waves of excitement, awe, and many other feelings.
Emotional engagement brings people closer to a company’s ideals and adds more strength to the company brand. Therefore, it is essential to avoid negative experiences due to insufficient performance of staff, e. g. staff not being proactive in their communication with customers and only responding when customers initiated the conversation. This leaves the impression that the staff does not care about the customer, and is also not supporting any relationship if they are not performing within the event’s theme.
Customers which feel positively connected to a brand are more likely to develop loyalty to it which is important to control their consumer’s buying behavior. And as you can probably tell from your own visits of fairs or concerts, a positive experience promoted your emotional connection between the brand and yourself, which then enhanced your loyalty.
It’s almost impossible to prevent this from happening. You had a great time with your friends or family at an event, you felt childhood dreams come true at that Christmas fair, you loved being part of the crowd at Wacken, you were in awe at the last Cirque du Soleil show. You will always love to remember those times, you wish to go back there, be part of it again. You are manipulated.
“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” – Anton Chekhov
Are you steering your attendees’ feelings yet? Don’t hope for a random customer journey. Get in charge now! Let me know about your previous event experience, and together we find a way to engage your customers’ feelings to grow your relationship to the next level.
Have a wonderful day!
Kristin Sammann