Though The Hunger Games might not be your idea of a great event, as he read this science fiction story, Mike McAllen began to see powerful lessons for event planners. He shares his takeaways here.
Spoiler alert! So if you haven’t read the Hunger Games books or seen the movies (coming out this weekend) this will make no sense to you whatsoever. I recommend reading the books first before reading this post or just seeing the movie. I am excitied to see this movie and I really enjoyed the books which are a quick, fun read.
Someone doesn’t have to die to have a great event
Every year the Capital holds the Hunger Games in Panum and every year they try to make it better experience for the audience.
I understand driving a bunch of kids and teenagers to kill each other is a stretch for you to think about for your next meeting or event. Some of you reading this may be smiling thinking about a fight to the death with your current executives, but realistically your yearly sales meeting or event should be building your story to get attendees fired up.
Planners should be thinking about how to engage the audience behind the over arching message you want them to recieve.
The Hunger Games main message was to keep the districts down and not taking action. This was accomplished by striving to make each hunger games better than the last.
Get your audience to do something when they leave the event.
Take action.
Figure out what kind of talent you have for your meeting or conference and build your event story
Sometimes you have executives who are awesome at their jobs but not great speakers or presenters. Much like Katniss Everdeem the heroine of the Hunger Games stories. She was a terrific game player but not a great speaker.
Working with your executives before they hit the stage helps you get the message for the meeting across in a more engaging fashion. Presenters need to understand that it is about the audience not the speaker.
Much like how Katniss learned to do this before entering the Hunger Games. She learned her role and preformed beautifully.
For your events, offer speech coaching, presentation development, and driving the message in an engaging way. Using videos or images can help speakers have main talking points and help the audience sponge up the content.
On the other hand Katniss teammate Peeta Mellark was a fantastic speaker and could turn an audience to the desired message or action with ease. Working with executives like Peta is a wonderful experience for everyone involved, especially the main focus the audience. Tag teaming these types of speakers can also work well to hold the interest of audiences.
Your meeting design drives your meetings message and moves your audience to action
The designer Cinna who led Katniss Prep team before the Hunger Games made sure that Katniss looked the part for the message he knew the audience would resonate with. Girl on Fire!
Posted with the permission of Mike McAllen. To read the rest of this post, please click here – http://grassshackroad.com/5-ways-event-organizers-can-learn-from-the-hunger-games
(Photo via blogbusters)
