Event Concept’s marketing director Abby Hartley explores the extraordinary everlasting: delivering long-term value with events
With live events re-emerging as a critical tool for companies looking to rebuild trust, forge deeper relationships and create lasting impact, events aren’t just booming, they’re being redefined. Businesses are no longer viewing them as isolated moments of engagement, but as powerful levers for brand reinvention and long-term business impact.
With this shift, however, expectations are rising and event and marketing teams are facing mounting pressure to justify spend, prove ROI and deliver outcomes that go beyond the event itself. But what distinguishes an event that feels like a ‘moment’ from one that delivers lasting value?
The answer lies in building experiences that achieve two things: embedding trust and delivering transformation.
Trust is a competitive advantage in today’s fragmented landscape, and live experiences are now among one of the few marketing tools that can actively build it. When done right, events provide physical, immersive environments where attendees don’t just see, but feel what a brand stands for.
Event marketing can no longer just sit in a silo. It must be aligned with wider business goals and equipped with strategies that truly shape audience behaviour.
Designing for memory and meaning
Events must do more than just entertain or engage – they should be designed to anchor two key outcomes: long-term memory and behavioural change.
Memories drive behaviour, and if guests can’t retain key takeaways, they can’t act on them. Event design must intentionally support how memory works, by creating emotionally charged, personally relevant and socially shared moments.
Psychology tells us that people remember the emotional peak and the ending, and Samsung’s 2016 World Mobile Congress presentation is a standout example. During a VR demo, attendees were asked to try on headsets while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg quietly appeared on stage. When the headsets came off, his surprise entrance created a powerful, unforgettable moment that’s still talked about today.
Aligning with brand and business goals
The first step in achieving lasting impact is ensuring an event is rooted in brand strategy. This means every touchpoint – before, during and after the event – should link back to organisational goals, core brand values and relay a cohesive narrative.
Take Secret Cinema, for example. Their immersive theatrical events are a masterclass in pre-event brand engagement. By building anticipation through storytelling, costume suggestions and interactive digital content, they allow attendees to engage with the brand in a heightened emotional state.
The result? Audiences arrive already invested, making the brand memory stronger. Crucially, this emotional engagement drives measurable outcomes – from increased brand affinity to product awareness.
Events shouldn’t be one-way performances, and interactivity and co-creation are essential for helping people retain information and shift behaviours. When attendees are invited to shape their own experiences, they’re more likely to feel invested.
When it comes to measuring event success, short-term metrics like attendance or generated leads are still important but brands should measure events not just by what happens at an event, but by what happens after. This includes integrating event data with broader marketing analytics, and using follow-up campaigns, surveys and behavioural tracking to make a link between experience and outcome.
The most effective brand experiences are those that stay with us. By embracing brand integration, behaviour change and peak-end design, brands can create events that aren’t just extraordinary in the moment, but truly everlasting in their long-term impact.
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