Event Marketing: Hawaii International Conference
The International Conference on The First-Year Experience provides a forum where educators from around the globe join together to share ideas, resources, assessment tools, programmatic interventions, and research results focused on the first year of college. The National Resource Center hired Evergreen to design memorable event marketing materials to attract attendees and applications from potential presenters.
Project Goals
- Attract high quality proposals from potential speakers
- Increase attendance and revenue from the previous year
- Carry the Center’s well known and respected brand throughout the conference
My Responsibilities
- Create a unique attention-grabbing design
- Present the information in an easily digestible design
- Oversee print and production of all the conference materials
The first step
The first step was to create a unique compelling look that would carry through the entire conference. Because of very tight deadlines, this was done simultaneously as the call for papers was being laid out. It is so important that the call for papers have an impact because without proposals, there would be no presenters at the conference! This particular call for papers had a lot of copy and included a full page registration form, so I designed it in a letter-sized brochure that folded over and became a self-mailer, saving the Center from having to purchase and print envelopes.
The Hawaii state flower is the Hibiscus, which is why I chose it to be the main graphic element. I chose a contrasting rich chocolate brown and sky blue color palette to make this mailer and all the subsequent designs stand out from their surroundings.
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Program Booklet
After proposals were reviewed and presenters were accepted, it was time to design and lay out the program booklet. The challenge here was to fit a lot of information in to a format that wouldn’t bust the Center’s budget when printed, and that made life easier for the conference attendees. It needed to be easy to carry around, easy to read and use, and provide an overall enjoyable experience that enhanced the conference experience. The result was a 56-page letter-sized booklet, spiral bound.
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Signage, Name Tags, Tote Bags, Collateral Materials
There are a plethora of additional items that can be designed in order to enhance the conference experience. At this particular conference, the Center budgeted for signage, name tags, and tote bags. These three things (signage, a personal identifier, and a useful branded souvenir) are the most basic collateral materials that you can use at your conference to reinforce the brand and make it easy for attendees to find rooms, find other attendees, and to give them a sense of belonging and excitement to be sharing this experience with so many others.
How many conferences or events have you been to that used a consistent visual theme throughout? Looking back, didn’t it enhance the experience? If it was a recurring event, wasn’t it exciting to see how the visual theme changed from one event to the next?
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The Results
The international conference was a resounding success. The Center reported that they received more and better submissions than previous years, they had the highest number of attendees ever, and the attendee surveys after the conference were overwhelmingly positive.
