Why examples help (and why they're also dangerous)

A company of 650 employees was stuck with a strategy that was beautiful on paper and didn't land in practice. The director had presented it five times. No one behaved accordingly.

The brief was vague: 'we want to bring the strategy to life'. We turned that around. What if we stop presenting the strategy and let colleagues discover it for themselves?

What we made: an afternoon where every colleague walked through five rooms. In each room, one part of the strategy was hidden in a task they had to do. No explanation beforehand. No PowerPoint. Only in room five, with the director, did everyone get the whole strategy on paper and watch the puzzle fall into place.

Message: our strategy isn't something we say, it's something we do. Mechanism: the rooms themselves, where everyone experienced the strategy first-hand. Result: the Monday after the event almost everyone was talking about the strategy, and for the first time in a good way.

The concept wasn't called 'Escape Room Strategy' or anything like it. The concept had no sexy title. The concept was the mechanism. That's what makes a concept strong.

A family business turned 75. The client wanted to celebrate it, but feared an awkward evening: the board on stage with hollow words, everyone claps, done.

We asked: what's the story that hasn't been told yet? It turned out the previous generation, who had built the company, were never really put in the spotlight because it felt inappropriate to indulge in self-praise.

What we made: an evening where the 75 years of history were played out by seven actors. Seven short scenes, each a pivotal moment from the company's history. Not actors learning a script, but actors improvising conversations with real anecdotes from interviews with former employees.

Message: our history isn't a list of dates, it's a series of people who made choices. Mechanism: the scenes themselves, which made historical choices tangible. The result: three former directors who burst into tears. A room that was silent in the right way. And an anniversary book that was made afterwards after all, because now everyone wanted to read it.

Good question. The short answer: you don't copy a concept. You copy the thinking process.

Always start with what you want to see done differently on Monday. Translate that into a one-sentence message. Work out what behaviour that message calls for. Come up with a situation where that behaviour really arises, not acted out.

Only then do you work out what goes with it: venue, speakers, décor, music. All those choices have to support the mechanism. Never the other way around.

A trap many people fall into: they see a great example from another company and want to recreate it. That rarely works. The example worked because it fit exactly with the context, the people and the message of that moment. Your context is different.

What you can take from it is the level of ambition. Once you've seen that a concept truly brings a shift, you no longer accept a day with a nice title. That's the value of examples.

We're an agency that comes up with concepts and delivers them. So if you're looking for help translating your situation into a concept of your own, you know where to find us.

Want to talk through corporate event concept examples and what they could mean for your next event? In a short conversation we'll hear your question and give you an honest answer on whether there's something sharp in it.

We work throughout the Netherlands for companies of 150 to 2,500 employees. For kick-offs, anniversaries, family days, strategy events and everything in between. Always with our own concept and our own production.

Call us on 085 401 40 14 or email hello@live-impact.nl.

Seriously fun.