In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore is joined by Gianna Gaudini, Fractional Head of Events at Cognition, to explore how modern event planning is evolving—and why emotional connection is now at the core of successful experiences.
Drawing on her 22+ years in the industry, Gianna unpacks the shift from traditional, tactical events to purpose-driven, human-centric experiences. She shares actionable insights on designing events that spark connection, support team well-being, and deliver measurable business impact.
From embracing multisensory design and spontaneity to aligning ROI with strategic goals, Gianna offers a blueprint for building events that resonate long after they end. You'll also hear her candid thoughts on leadership, team culture, and why psychological safety is the foundation of sustainable success in the high-pressure events world.
In this episode, you'll learn:
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Rachel Moore: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo.
The podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events.
I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host.
We're about to deep dive into the evolution of event planning, and trust me, this conversation is about to give you all the strategic insights you need to create experiences that actually matter.
Gianna Gaudini, Fractional Head of Events at Cognition. Brings the heat on how to forge genuine emotional connections with your attendees, the art of measuring ROI that actually tells a story and why adaptability isn't just a buzzword. It's your survival skill in a world where business goals shift faster than a Marvel plot twist.
Plus we're about to get real about international event design and why leadership that prioritizes team wellness isn't just a nice to have. It's mission critical for your Event Experience. Welcome back to another episode of Event Experience.
Our guest today is rolling in with 22 years in the events industry. I love bringing y'all expertise. It's very important, and as you can see, we're going to have a whole lot of that today.
Today's guest has led events for Google, for AirTable, AWS and SoftBank Vision Fund, and if that wasn't already impressive enough. She's also a former concert pianist and a marathon runner, and she currently serves as the Fractional Head of Events at Cognition.
I'm delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Gianna Gaudini. Thank you so much for joining us once again here on Event Experience.
Gianna Gaudini: So amazing to be here with you again, Rachel.
Rachel Moore: I love having you here. I love that we talk, we kind of touch base, we circle back. And like, okay, let's, let's see where things are these days and stuff like that. I know we asked you this last time you were on the show, but let's ask you this again. It might have changed.
What are your go-to on the ground event day shoes that you're using to save yourself for the whole 14 hours or whatever?
Gianna Gaudini: Okay, great question and it has sort of changed.
So, in the past, everybody I've worked with knows it's Tory Birch wedges because they're professional but comfortable. And I am known for my Alice and Olivia. You know, colorful dresses like I'm wearing today.
However, I am maturing as an event planner and, , finding that it is much harder to walk around on site in heels of any sort. So, now my favorite go-tos are my little Gucci sneakers. Still cute and stylish.
I have actually worn them with this dress I'm wearing and, uh, but way more comfortable and easy on my knees.
Rachel Moore: Oh, it's, yeah, it's not just the feet, it's the knees. That's, that's for sure. It's the leg, really? So, and then the back.
Gianna Gaudini: I'm too old now for the wedges even. It's so sad.
Rachel Moore: I know, uh, times there are changing and that's so true. But great recommendation. So that, that'll be great for our audience to be like, Hmm, gotta get myself a pair.
Is there anything that you're listening to, watching or reading these days that you can't put down? Does not have to be events related.
Gianna Gaudini: Always. I'm an avid reader, podcast listener. I'm obsessed with News podcast. I'm obsessed with is, Healey, this actually goes really well with the leadership questions, it's Healey Cypher and CEO of BoomPop's new podcast. It's called "Don't Be a Jerk".
It's so good. I'm obsessed with it. It's really good business slash life lessons from good leaders, like leaders that are successful and are not jerks.
So I'm obsessed with that. I also am obsessed with Ziva meditation right now by Emily Fletcher. And I'm just obsessed with her. I would love to be her best friend. So if Emily, if you're listening, like, please, can we meet up with the battery?
And then, my like "fun read" right now is, I actually forgot I pre-ordered this, like, I don't even know when I pre-ordered it, but I'm kind of like obsessed with it is Gwyneth Paltrow's bio.
Rachel Moore: That would be interesting.
Gianna Gaudini: It showed up in the mail from Amazon. I'm like, "oh, I forgot I ordered this", but this is fun.
Rachel Moore: You have to dive in now. Be like, okay, let me, let me learn all the things.
That would be, that'd be a really interesting read. That's cool.
Gianna Gaudini: It's really interesting.
Rachel Moore: Well, great. Is there a social post or a piece of media or even a hot take about events that you might've found interesting lately?
Gianna Gaudini: So I actually, I'm an active poster on LinkedIn and I notice like a lot of people commenting on this post that I was apparently in and I was like, what is this?
So I had a listen, it was like a link to a podcast and I was like, "oh, I better listen to this and see what was quoted." And it's apparently, um, lemme see if I'm getting their name right.
Frenus Marketings, Best of LinkedIn and Field Marketing, and they do it I think like every week or two and they do like a 15 minute podcast. They round up like the best tidbits that they've gotten on a given topic. From people on LinkedIn and it was actually really good.
So, I'm glad that they tagged me in it. 'Cause now I follow the show.
Rachel Moore: That's really cool.
I've recently found on a, on a subreddit called like LinkedIn Lunacy, and so that's like the knot, the opposite end of the spectrum. But I would definitely like to see like, here's some of the better ones of LinkedIn.
So I'll have to check that out. That sounds really cool.
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah. I liked it.
Rachel Moore: So, it's fabulous to have you back on and I only skated over your bio again. It's hard to, hard to put 22 years into two sentences. So, I'm gonna stop trying to do that.
But I wanna toss it back over to you and give you an opportunity. Tell us more about. What's your day to day like? What are you into these days? What is going on in in the Gianna world?
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah. Well, first of all. I mean, 22 years of experience, but I am only 28. Let's just be clear on that.
Rachel Moore: That's right. Let's make no mistake about that, everybody.
Gianna Gaudini: Started my career at age five.
No, but in all seriousness, yeah, so I've kind of done it all at this point. You know, started my career on the agency side, went in-house at VCs, big tech startups, wrote a book. And the book actually forced me to launch my own business because you need an LLC to be a publisher.
And so, that was where I got my first taste of publicizing myself and selling and running a business part-time and it's incredibly challenging but it did give me a taste of what it could be like and I did take on I think seven advisory positions over the time when I was in-house. And I loved it so much.
I kind of just wanted to see what it would be like to run my own business a hundred percent at the time, and that was, to be honest, I've always been a very intentional person and from the time I told my father, I am leaving pre-med and I am going to be an event planner for my career.
I also had the goal of running my own business and building towards that. And so, this was actually always the intention. It just took me a little bit longer because I ended up in-house at some pretty amazing companies where I was having a great time.
But, uh, a couple years ago I gave myself the chance and the opportunity to see if I would enjoy this. And I absolutely love it so much. So, why do I love it? Because I have the ability now to work with different clients at different stages on different types of events.
So, I typically will work with a few clients at a time. None of them obviously competing with each other. So typically I'll have a startup or two. They're all in the a AI space right now for the most part. Although I advise a couple of event related companies as well.
And then I also love the VC space and so I usually have one or two VC clients and they're just very different strategies, very different types of events, different teams involved. But what I love about it is it gives me the ability to go very high strategic. Then always go very like, also dive down into the tactics.
And I use this analogy that I think Ryan, whatever his name is on Million Dollar Listing used where he said, "I just wanna sell a house to just know I can sell a house."
And so, it's great to have that breadth, doing what I do right now, and to just stay fresh with, you know, everything that's going on across events. So, I absolutely love it and there's never a dull moment.
And I also love that I don't join a lot of the meetings that I used to feel were a waste of time, quite frankly. And so, every meeting I'm in now, it's a hundred percent productive, a hundred percent useful.
So, I found that my output is now 10x what it was. So, I'm very happy right now.
Rachel Moore: I would imagine. I mean, obviously we're gonna dig into like a lot of the stuff you share too and bring all that expertise to bear.
But man, you just, you just talked about something that everybody's like, can we get more of that please? Where I, I love having meetings about the next meeting that we need to have and, and meetings about the things I need to do. And then, oh, before you know it, the end of the day and I need to go make dinner. And I didn't get anything done 'cause of meetings.
Gianna Gaudini: And it's just very draining too.
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Gianna Gaudini: I will reveal my age when I hit 40.
I just had this awakening that I don't have like endless time and I don't want to waste time anymore. So, I'm very, very intentional about how I manage my time and also my clients' time now.
Rachel Moore: This'll date, this podcast a little bit.
I didn't see it, but I saw online today, I guess Taylor Swift said something like, "my time is a luxury and not everybody can afford it." And it was like, "Ooh, that's so true."
And really way to be protective of that and I love that you found this niche too. Where you're like, look, now I can, I can do these multiple things.
Like you said, it's never boring, but you're able to kind of plug and play where, where it matters to you and where it's meaningful for that client or that brand, to put you into play there.
Let's dig into some of that experience. I'm actually, double entendre with that word, because my first question has much to do with it.
Across the industry and on the show with our guests, we often hear the terms "experience". In the context of an event and experiential quite a bit. And sometimes we hear them used interchangeably.
I'd love to hear like, what do we mean, from your perspective, what do we mean by experiential events rather than a marketing event in quotes?
Gianna Gaudini: Well, it's funny that you say that experiential versus marketing. Because when I was at Google, we actually went through quite a transformation as a team.
Over the nine years I was there, and we started out as the marketing events team. And we were just doing high volume, very low lift. We didn't even have time to measure.
I mean, I remember asking my manager at the time. " Why are we not measuring how these are performing?". And she's like, "we don't have time".
It was like constant, like, rinse, repeat, just move tactical and we were just hustling. But then, there came a point when we grew our team enough and became trusted enough within the broader Google organization that we realized. We could actually create a tiering system and we would support the tier one events that were more experiential in nature. And we actually changed the name of our team to Events and Experiences.
So, this leads me into what the difference is. Because, I think there's a lot of misconception between the difference especially internally.
So, I think experiential doesn't necessarily have to do with budget. You don't necessarily need an agency to be producing experiential, which a lot of people believe to be the case.
I really think the true definition is experiential wants to create an emotional, participatory connection with your audience. It's not a one way dissemination of information.
It's really going to be more emotional and connecting and building that brand, building that trust with your customers in an immersive way.
It's usually more engaging when it comes to community, when it comes to engaging the senses, when it comes to creative formats, when it comes to two-way communication.
Whereas I would say traditional marketing events are a lot more focused on like, one way we need to get our information out. They're typically a lot more tactical. It's typically a lot more tied to like very clear pipeline goals type of ROI and I, I think we're gonna chat ROI at some point and there's a lot of nuance.
I do think experiential really helps us prioritize the value of connection in doing business like the relationship nature of doing business.
And it's not always as linear to measure as a straight up marketing tactic. And that's where it can be challenging to prove the value of experiential 'cause how do you prove the value of a relationship?
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Gianna Gaudini: It's a little bit harder.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely. I think this is so thematically un aligned too with like, what we're, we're hearing from some other guests we've had on the podcast as well and even on Bizzabo webinars.
Things feel like from the attendee perspective particularly, but then you get into the actual teams putting these together. It feels like it is expanding or there, there needs to be that nuance that you just described.
There needs to be that like not every event is the same and our attendees are expecting more and that includes what you were talking about.
What's the emotion here? It's not just a transaction, it's not just communicating, like you said, in one direction. But there's, there's absolutely a lot more to it. It's more complex it feels like. Right? Yeah.
So, having defined experiential events, I'd love to ask you too, because, you know, having experienced that, ha, we're gonna use that a lot.
I know I'm gonna be like, experiencing the experiential events and being on the experiential, you know, the events and experiences team.
But, with experiential events, what do you find to be the most important aspect to focus on for successful execution of an experiential event specifically?
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah, that's a great question.
I'll start like a little bit more macro and then get into like a few key points that I think are really helpful tactically.
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Gianna Gaudini: I think, you know, really in my experience at Secret Sauce is being extremely intentional and focusing on experiences that are going to drive human connection and authentic engagement. And then everything kind of builds off of that.
So, you know, it's not just flawless logistics and graphics. It's really like how do we get into the hearts and minds of our attendees? How do we embody what our brand means in a personified way that is an event, and translate how this event treats people as an extension of how the brand will treat them as a customer, whether it's B2B or B2C.
And so, you know, just to break it down in planning like three key rules of thumb, I always start with like, what is the intention behind the participant's journey?
I like to say it's not just what is RROI? It is what is the attendee's, ROI. Especially in this day and age, people want to go to events. I mean, every study is showing that.
We can all relate, we want to be in authentic in-person environments where we can trust that who we're talking to is a human.
But we want to know that we are being catered to on a personal level as well. It shouldn't just be one size fits all. People want to feel seen and they wanna feel heard, and that drives more connection, engagement with its other attendees and your brand and it creates a flywheel.
So, it's figuring out, what do we want those attendees to think, to feel to do at our event? And then, you kind of back the experience planning into that.
So, the other thing is leaving some white space, I think over programming is can be the enemy of good experiential because good experiential has a little wiggle room for those spontaneous connections and moments to happen and as a planner, you need to also be listening.
Will Guidara wrote a wonderful book. It's one of my favorites. And it's all about when he ran his restaurant. It was a lot about listening to what these folks who came to a Michelin Star restaurant wanted and sometimes it was like they were saying, "We're in New York, we're here from overseas, we just wanna try New York hotdog." And his staff would like go and buy a hotdog and bring it back and deliver it like in a Michelin star restaurant. And it was so delightful for them.
Rachel Moore: Nice
Gianna Gaudini: I did this once at Google when I was checking the event app messages and someone said, "Can I get a Diet Coke around here?"
And we weren't serving Diet Cokes 'cause it wasn't really something we did on brand. But I said, we are gonna get this person a Diet Coke. And we did and he was so delighted.
Sent the sales rep a message like it doesn't have to be a big extravagant thing even, it's just making sure your staff are highly engaged and open to listening while on site. And Then I would say the third component is like really being intentional with your design elements and thinking about how you can make it multisensory.
And again, it doesn't have to be budget. It doesn't have to be related to budget. You can create, wonderful sounds using a playlist. You know that that is free. You can create wonderful smells at your booth. Baking fresh cookies and it's a very like, inexpensive spend. And we'll draw people in and give them the warm and fuzzies.
And then you can do really big sensory and engaging activations using experi agencies that I love. And happy to share recommendations with your audience if anyone ever needs them. But it can really come in all forms. But it's really, why are we doing this? So what is the purpose behind engaging this sense? Not just let's throw everything at them 'cause that's not going to work. That will possibly have the opposite effect., Make sure that it is participant centric.
So you really want to aim, you know, everything that you're doing From the attendee's perspective. I like to say, let's start with low hanging fruit. What are the pain points and how do we eliminate them and create delightful moments instead.
And then how are you going to create a lasting memory beyond the experience? Lots of ways to do that. And is this so delightful that it will be shareable, whether it's in the moment or word of mouth.
And that's kind of the gold when it comes to really successful experiential my experience.
Rachel Moore: This is also taking me back. I love hearing you say this 'cause we, we have had you on the podcast before and I remember on a prior episode, you talked about what you're describing.
Like really taking care with the design. Like, every touchpoint, every sensory touchpoint that the attendee is gonna have, whether that's, the touch and feel of a material. The smell, you know, the aroma in, in around the booth, what they're visually seeing.
That you and, and I know from what you had shared at that time, you really put a lot of time and intention as you said into that. And this gets back to something you said, you described in your answer as well, where this is all about as you're designing this and really taking the care and building this from that foundation of how the attendee experiences and has that moment.
How they can expect the brand experience to be, that you're really fostering that saying, we're creating this and helping you feel this way right now. This is what you can expect from here on out, from this particular business or brand.
And again, why events and particular experiential events are just so crucial to how a brand interacts with their customers, right?
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah. Just to give you an example I saw recently. This wasn't my event, but I thought it was, um, it's a good example because it shows how you can do the same thing and one way is experiential and one way is just marketing.
So, I was at, I think it was Google Next and forgetting who it was. Oh, I think it was Palo Alto Networks, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.
They had screen printing of superheroes, really cool looking superheroes in different types on t-shirts. And it was just like, it drew people in. It drew me in because it was like, oh, that's cool. Like it's cool story and it's printed here live. Like I want one.
But then they said, okay, well, you know, in order to get one, you have to take four of our demos and get like a little cart from each of the demos. It was a cool enough, high stakes, enough piece of swag that I was willing to do it. Plus I just kind of wanted to check out their demos and see if they were good.
And what was great was the demos were great. Like, I actually learned a lot about cybersecurity that I did not know. And it didn't annoy me because I was like, "Oh, I'm so glad that they made me go on this journey. 'Cause I would not have gone and talked to any of these people doing demos otherwise."
So it was actually, I was like, this is so strategic because they're incentivizing people to engage, but not in a way that feels annoying. It's actually enlightening.
And then you get a reward at the end. And it's like they could have easily just given out a shirt and said, "do a demo", but they didn't. They made it more of an experience.
And so, that can be the difference. Just a couple of little tweaks to your strategy can turn something. Straightforward into a little bit more of an experience with your audience.
Rachel Moore: That's so great.
And like you said, the swag can feel like, like you said, the low hanging fruit. Like yeah, let's, let's just get some really cool swag, but to really have the intention of saying, "oh, we're gonna make you earn it here", but not in like a big hassly, like, you know, like, it's not like going and try to, you know, sit through a timeshare presentation, right?
Where it's like..
Gianna Gaudini: Oh God. I tried that once, never again. I think I used the bathroom like 10 times.
Rachel Moore: Right. You're like, oh my God. I just, just where, how do I escape? Let me get out of here.
Gianna Gaudini: I was like, what did I get myself into?
Rachel Moore: Exactly. So, not aiming for that. But aiming for the complete opposite that is an a value add. And then, yeah, you get to walk away with that cool thing that you're gonna value and, and have a memory from.
I wanna switch gears a little bit 'cause we're talking about some very successful ways that you know and thank you so much too, that's great advice, you know, helping our audience kind of pop off ideas, be like, "Ooh, I, I could try this and do that" and, and really develop these to be better going forward and be successful.
So, speaking of success, I think you and I and everybody listening can agree that leadership plays a major role in a team's success. How many of us have been there where we're like, "okay, my leader, my manager, my supervisor, my director, is making or breaking my experience here with getting this stuff done?"
The work outcomes and just as important and I know this is a big deal for you, and it is for us too, personal wellness.
Gianna Gaudini: Yep.
Rachel Moore: Because, my gosh. Events professionals, whoa. It is a big priority for you.
Can you share with us why it's so important and how event planners, and more specifically the individuals who lead them and anyone who's listening to this, if you're leading a team, this part is for you.
How can people do better in this area and why is it so important?
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah, this is so critical and so core to my values and where I'm at at this stage of my career. Everybody on your podcast knows that events are not planned by one person, and the success of events are often determined by the success of the team working on
them.
Rachel Moore: We'll be right back with more Event Experience after the break.
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Rachel Moore: We're back with Gianna Gaudini for the segment you'll want to forward to your nearest and dearest event leader.
Gianna Gaudini: And you need your team to be healthy. You need them to have high morale, good communication. And ideally, if you're investing all this time in hiring people and training them, you want a durable team.
The only way I've been able to recreate my career and have it last as long as it has lasted, is I've had to evolve and change the way I operated to a more sustainable level, figuring out how to do things smarter.
There is no doubt that our industry is one of the highest stress. It's been reported in studies. I don't need to convince anyone here. Everyone I talk to and you know, I write a weekly newsletter and everybody tends to comment to me directly on the ones that involve wellness and they can really relate and they're really curious and some of the things that I mentioned.
So, I know that it is a topic that our industry needs to be a little bit more forthcoming with and address it, and I think that we are getting there. I think we're starting to enter a sea change when it comes to this, but it really starts at the top.
And this is why I will, first of all. Not work with people that are not healthy for my team and for me. I just will not, I feel that leaders in this industry need to be intentional about protecting the team and also setting an example for kindness and values and sustainability.
Not just in how we're creating events, but the people that are creating the events. And so setting that example I've seen has really empowered my team to feel supported, protected. I call them sometimes the shit umbrella. You guys just put your heads down and I will take it on for you.
And when people feel safe, they function so much better. It's a human, I'm a psychology major, so it's a psychological fact that people cannot operate well and they're very stressed if they do not feel safe.
So as a leader, it's important to make your people feel safe psychologically in order to be their most creative and productive.
What does that mean? You have to lead by example. And so, it's being forthcoming that, "Hey, I'm gonna have family dinner with my family." And I'll get back to you afterwards in setting that example that it's okay for them.
You know, I do not expect people to respond to me on the weekend, and if I'm working on the weekend, I try as hard as I can to schedule send. I do not want my team even thinking they need to respond to me because they're also on top of it.
It's modeling other healthy behaviors and honesty and imperfection. It's trying to figure out, you know, how to mitigate some of the stress. So, I'm constantly checking on workload balance and rebalancing people and re-resourcing as needed to make sure that everybody feels they have the right amount of work.
Because if you're overloading someone, even if they're good at it and say they can do it, it's not durable.
Rachel Moore: Yeah.
Gianna Gaudini: I could talk forever and ever on this. But those are just a few of the things that I think it takes to be a good leader.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you brought up the scheduling part. I think I even posted on LinkedIn like a year ago or something. It can immediately almost judge the quality of a leader if it's like, if you can tell they don't know how to use schedule. And they just, uh, 'cause who all, all of us have been there.
And even if you never know to, sometimes a leader will be like, "Oh no, I want you to protect your time." And then they email you at like 11:00 PM at night and you're just like. "Do I let that sit there or do I need to like.."
Gianna Gaudini: Or text, or slack. Even worse.
Rachel Moore: Yeah. And, and you're like, you are always second guessing. Like, "Okay, well is this a test?" You know, "Did they mean that?" But I really appreciate you. All of us can relate to that, whether it's that or some other things.
And then you, you go all the way back to what we've already talked covered in the, in the, in this episode, but it's like these are the front line. These are the people who are making your customers and your attendees feel good. If they're not feeling good, how are they supposed to manufacture that? You know, indefinitely, you
Gianna Gaudini: Right. And on that note, I'm a huge advocate. Anyone who's ever worked for me be the, an agency, a freelancer, an employee, a direct report.
They know that I am big on positive reinforcement.
Rachel Moore: Yep.
Gianna Gaudini: I hand write notes to everybody. I, you know, before events, send flowers to everybody. During the process, during hard times, encouraging your team, rewarding them for good job well done, celebrating the wins.
And I also try to lessen the pressure. One of my favorite sayings, I use this with my clients, my team, is look, no matter what, we're gonna get data from this event. No matter what, we will learn something, we will gather data, and there is no bad data. And events are great for that. They're one of the best marketing initiatives to actually capture data and then you can use that.
So like, if everything isn't perfect, that's great. You know how to optimize. Not a loss.
And it just kind of takes the pressure valve and releases it a bit for people. When you can show that it doesn't have to be flawless to be successful,
Rachel Moore: Absolutely. Oh my gosh.
Gianna Gaudini: Even though all my events are flawless.
Rachel Moore: You're like, accept. They are. They're, they're, they're perfect. You know. And, and the attendees, the data says so too.
It's great. Everybody should take this clip and go, you just somehow plan it into the, the, uh, zeitgeist of whatever your team leader, wherever they're living life and be like, just listen to this part and make sure we've got that down.
So, I am gonna bring this back too. Because we just talked about data. We just mentioned it. The fact that, you know, you as a leader are saying, "look, the end of the day, the event's gonna give us the data we need and then we can tell how do we get better at this and how do we, how do we iterate?"
So let's do talk about data in the sense of ROI shall we?
Oh, see, I know you always get very excited about this, which is also awesome too.
Gianna Gaudini: They're all my favorite topic.
Rachel Moore: I love this. We'll have you back on a monthly basis, it'll be great.
Um, so we all know, uh, it's the part we get asked about before, during, and after every event getting planned. How do you approach ROI goals and reporting on them once an event is complete, inquiring minds want to know what is your approach?
Gianna Gaudini: Well, first of all, I love that you say it's a question we all get asked. Red flag, if you do not get asked what your ROI is. It is a huge red flag and I make sure that when I have clients that tell me there is no ROI objective, I don't take that as an answer.
We define, even two objectives. Even with social events, there are objectives and you know, even when person planning milestone birthdays, for instance, I make sure that I know what is it going to take for this event to be successful to you.
Because otherwise there's no way to know if you're successful and it anchors all decisions and it anchors the journey that you're planning.
And so, start with the angle in mind. What will success look like for you? And what will success look like for your attendees? What will make this event feel like it was a good use at their time?
So, it's almost the intersection of those two when it comes to crafting. The objectives. So, there's objectives, AKA goals, and then there are metrics that you can measure.
Some that are easier to measure than others. Some are a bit softer, as I mentioned upfront. A lot of the brand ones are a little bit softer to measure and may take a lot more time.
Another pro tip that I would say that's also a red flag for me when planning business events is, are these event objectives aligned to business goals? When they're not, I have seen a much higher percentage of these events get canceled or completely pivoted. Because things change so quickly and events are so expensive to produce that if they are not somehow attached to the goals of your business, even brand building events should be tied to a broader business goal.
For instance, if you're Google and you're doing a brand and reputation event with key opinion, former in attendance, you want to influence the way that they're going to vote on big tech in the future. That still supports your business objectives.
So, it's figuring out how to ladder up to your company's goals and communicate that very clearly.
This is a huge way to de-risk your plans, your budget. So, definitely get clear on what your company's business goals are, if you are not already. And then, also just be really clear on your metrics. I see people go for, you know, the quote unquote vanity metrics, like how many people showed up, like how many leads did we get?
And like, okay, well what is that really telling you? What kind of attendees are these? Like, are these attendees we actually want to talk to? Or are we wasting money that we could be spending on more qualified people to be here?
So it's, you know, a lot of it is the quality. So, it's the quality. It is understanding the customer journey, the sales journey and how your events are going to influence that positively.
Are we de-risking deals by building this relationship. By building confidence by them coming and seeing us live.
De-risking might be more valuable on big accounts than getting a new small account. So, it's getting really crisp on what is really going to drive the most value? And what are those big rocks?
Positive NPS is a really easy one, can be hard to measure sometimes without surveys, and the more senior you go, the harder it is. But it's a really good metric to understand like, are these people going to be champions? Are they going to spread positive feedback about your brand? Are they going to come back? Are they going to expand business within their companies?
So that, you know, it's again, like what does NPS mean for the business? Not just, I got an NPS score of X, Y, Z. It's like, well, well what does that mean? Does that translate to like our success?
A number of leads is great, but I've had events where we had like half the leads but way better business outcomes because they were much more strategic accounts, new logos we wanted to close.
So, you have to like be a little bit more nuanced in what you're measuring. And then, you know, when it comes to experiential, again, some of them are a little bit more soft. So, it's how do we measure engagement? What is it that we want attendees to do, and are they doing it?
Like, okay, if we want brand awareness, how are we going to know that people are aware of our brand? Are we getting more subscribers to our socials? Are we getting more demos? Are we getting more social shares or responses?
Like, what is it that is gonna measure some of those goals that you want? So it's what is the goal, and then like, what are the tactics to prove that it's working?
And then you're continuously, I think the key to ROI is like, you don't do it once and set your metrics. I see teams do this. They're like, okay, we have a standard set of metrics for all of our events, and we are, this is like our playbook. So this is, and we, we do this, and I'm like, that's great. But has your business strategy changed from quarter to quarter? Yeah.
As your company, as your, especially with startups. I mean, like, I've been at Cognition for a year and we've gone through so many insane changes and then got acquired by two different companies. You better bet our objectives have changed.
So, it's constantly optimizing and iterating on what those objectives are and how you're gonna reach them. And also, different events may have different objectives, like different sales cycles. You might need to pivot your objectives a bit based on what the sales team needs. Towards, you know, the end of the sales cycle or whatever.
So, it's constantly checking in, optimizing and taking the time to look at your metrics from events. I'm a big stickler of like tracking all this in one calendar before we go onto the next event. Postmortem what did we learn so that we can apply that learning to the next. 'Cause again, there's no bad data, but if you don't use the data, you're missing out.
Those are just a few pro tips.
Rachel Moore: And I love that came back from kind of full circle when you were sharing, like you were working on a team where they're like, we don't look at metrics, just go do it. Just go be tactical. And this is so great though too, but you're like, "Okay, well no, because here's, here's what you do need to do."
It's such a huge part of that everyone really on the team should probably be looking at all the time. And, and it's, I think it too, you are confronting it saying that sometimes. Maybe non-event team people may just assume, "Yeah, you said it and forget it, we're fine." But you as the event team need to remind them saying, no, no, no, no, no. Things have changed. The quarterly business goal changed.
From what it was last quarter or last, you know, half of the year. Therefore, we need to change and that's gonna adjust what these numbers are and what, what our goals are gonna be and, and stuff.
So, just really great that you bring up that it's gotta, it's gotta be able to be adjustable.
Gianna Gaudini: Yeah. I had a, a client once and I knew from working with their leadership as a consultant that they were very mindful of spend, budget, optics.
And the planning team internally wanted to do all these fun experiences at the event, which, you know, were great, all great ideas, but I made them go through the exercise taking all those ideas and drafting up what is the ROI of this experience, what is the ROI of this experience?
Like, it was that granular, but it really helped them prioritize because they're like, "Oh yeah, this isn't really like, it's cool. But yeah, definitely not really doing anything. And I said "this way, if you get asked why we spent money on that, you have a crisp answer." And so, I'm a big stickler in doing the work up front.
And this is why my clients and partners love me, and agencies love me because we do the work upfront so that things go smoothly once planning is underway, because you have the responses, you have the strategy.
You know why you're doing things and why you're spending money on 'em, it's just a pro tip that you learn over.
Rachel Moore: Awesome. Finally our easiest question of all, where can, uh, people find and follow you online?
Gianna Gaudini: So I'm way too easy to find.
I mean, you can just find at www.giannagaudini.com and on that site you can find how to contact me.
You can find my, all my former podcasts, including the one with you. You can find my book, my blog, my portfolio with fun photos, all the things.
So, that's the best way.
Rachel Moore: Excellent, all right. Thanks again to Gianna Gaudini for joining us on Event Experience, and thank you for listening.
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