Experiential marketing giant Freeman has released the 2019 version of its Trend Lab, which presents trends in the events marketplace that can be leveraged to grow audiences over the next two years.
After examining the behavioral, societal, and technological shifts taking place around the world, Freeman grouped the dozens of trends it found into six areas that are central to delivering brand experience through in-person events. Those areas are attitude, format, content, engagement, effectiveness, and intersectional. Along with presenting seven to 13 trend observations in each area, Freeman uses case studies to show how the most influential ones can be embedded into a firm's own event or its show presence.
Some interesting trends across the six areas include:
- Artisanal approaches to event production that minimize elements appearing mass-produced
- Designing out intrusive experiences—annoyance leads to avoidance
- Not just crowdsourcing but also crowdsharing of content in organized ways
- Pop-up immersive environments for innovation incubation in addition to learning
- Connecting big ideas to personal stories
- Hyperpersonalization through RFID and other attendee-focused technology
- Livestreaming to capitalize on FOMO (fear of missing out)
The full report can be found here.
