Why company DNA decides whether an event fits

The website won't help. It is written by marketing and often says more about the ambition than the reality. You need other sources.

Question one: how do colleagues talk about the company over drinks? Not about the company when they are speaking to a client, but when they are among themselves. Is it with pride, with humour or with cynicism? That is a better thermometer than any survey.

Question two: what story do they tell new people? Every company has myths that do the rounds. 'When the big client walked, the director worked three weeks on the floor himself.' Those stories are gold. They tell you what the company holds dear.

Pride and shame: what are colleagues most proud of, and what are they most ashamed of? Both answers help. What makes people proud, you can emphasise. What they are ashamed of, you must not touch — or instead embrace cleverly.

The hard line: what would absolutely not do, what would no one accept? This is the hard edge of the DNA. Cross that edge in an event and you lose trust instantly.

We always ask these questions of three different people in the company: leadership, delivery and new staff. The difference between their answers is where it gets interesting.

Many companies have written down core values. Bold, together, clear, and so on. They usually sit somewhere on a poster and are rarely used to make a decision. That is not DNA. That is marketing.

Real DNA is in the way the work gets done. In how much room there is for mistakes and how you treat them. In how quickly you make decisions and how many layers sit in between. And in how people talk to each other: straight to the point, or always with a layer of politeness on top.

A concept that matches the core values but not the actual behaviour feels hollow. A concept that matches the actual behaviour feels real, even if it grates a little with the official core values.

An example. A company had 'together' as a core value. In reality there was a lot of squabbling between departments. A concept that had celebrated the core value 'together' would have been a lie in the room. Everyone would have thought: that's not how it is. What we did instead: a concept that made the squabbles discussable and put them in the spotlight. Afterwards the director said: that was the first time we were honest with each other.

DNA is where you really are. Not where you stand on a poster.

DNA on paper is not yet an event. You have to translate it into four kinds of choices.

Tone. Is the company informal or formal, humorous or serious? That determines how the opening sounds, which host you choose and what music is playing.

Setting. Raw venues suit industrial companies, unexpected places suit creative agencies. A traditional company sometimes chooses something classic instead. The venue is the first visual punch: it has to ring true.

Programme. How much standing and moving versus sitting, how much interaction versus watching, how much room for your own input versus simply being taken through a programme? This has to match how the company normally works. A company where no one normally speaks up is not suddenly a place for open-mic sessions.

Symbolism. Which colours, images and objects belong to this company? It is not about logo colours, but about things that hold meaning for the people there. Think of an old tool or a line of text on the wall.

When all four of these choices fit the DNA, the event feels like a party of your own. If one breaks through, something feels off.

See how this fits into our wider concept process →

Four mistakes we see often.

Coming up with a concept for the company you want to be, not the company you are. A young scale-up does a glamorous awards gala because it feels grown-up. But everyone in the room knows: this is not who we are. Awkward.

Acting out the core values literally. A concept with 'bold' as its theme that only offers 'do-something-scary' tasks curls your team-building toes more than anything. Core values should be felt, not spelled out.

Confusing the DNA of the leadership with the DNA of the delivery. Leadership experiences the company differently from the lorry driver or the nurse. A concept that captures only the leadership DNA shuts out the rest.

Using DNA as an excuse not to try anything new. 'That's not us' is sometimes a reality, but sometimes a comfort excuse too. A strong concept goes one small step beyond what is normal, without stepping outside the DNA. A stretch, not a yank.

Knowing where your DNA stops and where the stretch begins: that is the craft. It sets an experienced concept-maker apart from someone who just picks a theme.

Our process does not start with the brainstorm. Our process starts with teasing out the DNA. We keep asking and listen for what is said between the lines. We put the questions above to the people in the company.

Only once we ourselves feel who this company is do we start thinking about the concept. Without that step, every brainstorm becomes a garden of ideas with no direction. With that step it gets sharp: we know which ideas ring true and which don't.

We are an agency that does concept and production ourselves. That also means the production team sits right through the whole DNA investigation. The director knows the company. The host gets the DNA as a brief; the technical team knows why certain choices were made. Everything hangs on the same starting point.

In our experience this makes the difference. Between an event that feels like a professional show and an event that feels like a party of your own. Both can be well made. But a party of your own is what people still remember months later.

Want your next event not to feel like fancy dress? We want it to be, instead, a reinforcement of who you really are.

We always start with a conversation in which we tease out your company's DNA. Not through a questionnaire, but through a good conversation in which we keep asking until we get it. After that we build a concept that builds on it.

We work across the Netherlands for companies of 150 to 2,500 employees. From family businesses to scale-ups and from traditional to progressive. Always with our own concept and our own production.

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

Seriously fun.