Planning, organising, and hosting a corporate event can be stressful even for people who have experience.
Everyone involved wants an unforgettable event but may lack the resources, ideas, and venue to execute it. Corporate event companies are professionals who can support a business and use their experience to turn ideas into realities.
What Are Corporate Events?
Corporate events are one of the three types of events: private, charity, and corporate.
- Private events are held for recreational purposes, often special events like weddings.
- Charity events have the goal of raising money for a certain cause.
- Corporate events focus on business, customers, industry relations, and brands.
What Are the Benefits of Hosting Corporate Events?
Corporate events can help businesses achieve various business goals. These goals can range from boosts of company morale to education of a large public.
Event pros include enriching company culture, facilitating brand activation, bringing a company closer to its target audience, and creating memorable experiences for attendees, among many others.
Types of Corporate Events
There are many types of corporate events ranging from more social events to events geared towards marketing and business relations. An event management company will know how to implement the aspects of event design, event production, and other strategies to ensure that the corporate event is a success.
Depending on the event’s goal, different types of events will have varying success. It is essential to consider the desired outcome of the event while planning it. Different events are better suited to different goals.
Conferences
- One of the largest scale events one can host, often lasting for several days with attendance in the thousands. These can include awards shows and can increase awareness of the brand or product.
- Conferences are good for networking, driving sales, and connecting your company to your brand.
- Conferences assert a company’s expertise in a field.
- Some will invite influencers to these events, which brings more guests.
Trade Shows
- Trade shows are more interactive and can create a memorable experience for the attendees.
- These connect multiple brands under one theme. They are a great way to show off old and new products and build connections with the audience and other brands.
- Attendees will have fun sampling and watching demonstrations of various products.
- These are good for marketing opportunities or product launches.
Seminars
- Seminars have a more instructional purpose than other corporate events and are academic in nature.
- Seminars offer a more classroom-like setting, occurring as a series and utilising small groups.
- Seminars are used for product training, employee training, certification, or to build customer loyalty.
What Are Corporate Event Management Companies?
Event management is the planning, organisation, and execution of an event. To plan an event requires excellent organisational skills and the ability to multitask. An event management team will be responsible for keeping within the budget, figuring out the logistics of hosting, and dealing with any permits necessary to pull off a large-scale event.
The event planning process can be very detailed, and for most businesses, there will be two people in charge of the process: an event planner and an event manager. While these roles have a similar goal, they are responsible for different parts of event planning.
Event planners create the vision for the event. They will choose the theme and venue for the event and figure out catering, entertainment, and other preliminary aspects of the planning process. The planning team will need to follow the principles of event design and stay up-to-date with the latest trends to ensure that the event meets the client’s needs.
Event managers then execute and support the event. They will book the location, hire and lead staff, coordinate with vendors and oversee the event. The management team sees the event through to the end.
An additional aspect of an event management company is the event production, focusing on the audio-visual part of a special event. This team will help to create an atmosphere and mood for event guests. The event production team will use logistics and technological aspects to complete the concept of the event.
The goal of event planning companies is to create amazing events that will have a lasting memory in the minds of the clients and guests.
Corporate Events Companies in South Africa
There are several event management companies in South Africa. Some of the most well-known include BW Productions, Mann Made Media, SAIL, and Openfield, among many others. All of these businesses host successful corporate events.
Some stick to more traditional styling while others branch out into the experimental realm. Depending on the target audience for these events, each company has its benefits.
BW Productions
BW Productions is an event management company based in Johannesburg with twenty-eight years of event management experience.
This agency offers world-class service in event marketing and planning. After handling events in almost every city in South Africa, from Polokwane down to Cape Town, they understand the different challenges that can arise anywhere and possess the knowledge to fix them.
The team is built out of professionals in the field, having hosted over nine thousand events and dealt with more than five hundred clients, including acts like Usher and Pharrell Williams, and industry leaders MTV, ABSA, and GSK Unilever.
Corporate event planning is only part of the focus of this company. Their services range from small private venues to large-scale concerts and charity events. Thanks to this experience and connections in the country, BW Productions is not limited by the event’s location.
They’ve successfully booked acts and arranged for catering to be supplied to corporate events held at:
- Hotels
- Bars
- Cruise ships
- Filming sites
- Commercial venues
- And even on aircraft.
Potential clients can approach them with a full-fledged idea that only needs suppliers or bring just an idea and then develop it together into a memorable event from the ground up. BW Productions can create a bespoke event from a small idea or bring a big idea down to the tavern level.
Mann Made Media
Started by three brothers in 2000, Mann Made focuses on brand experience through various media. The services offered by this company extend beyond event planning and include projects in animation and VR storytelling.
The mediums they have worked within their events include Augmented Reality, roadshows, app collaborations, and video recreations.
But even without all the bells and whistles, Mann Made can create top-notch events following a more traditional format.
They have been credited with managing the most successful Singularity University summits globally and are the sole producers for the South African SingularityU summit.
This company works with clients to create narratives of their life stories through these different mediums. Events can include a variety of steps and mediums in themselves.
Roadshows may utilise live-action, archival videos, and video recreations to get a short message across to the audience. Some events may even include a series of steps rolled out to consumers. The combination of stories and mediums means it is unlikely any two events by Mann Made will be the same.
Openfield
Openfield focuses on creating highly emotional experiences through its events. The company’s motto is that emotion creates action, and they strive to connect people with brands through emotion.
This focus on appealing to emotion is likely what makes them so successful in their events. They are known for managing the Gary Player Invitational Series, the most successful golf charity event in South Africa and globally. They hold the longest-standing sponsorship with the brand Vodacom.
Openfield also has worked with several notable brands in South Africa, including Nissan, Netflix, and Walt Disney Africa.
SAIL
The company for any sports event, SAIL, is typically involved with nearly every sports event in South Africa.
The company is leading the way in commercialising the sports and event industry. SAIL has been around for twenty years and continues to evolve how they handle their events. They believe that sports events are excellent tools for the marketing and selling of brands.
SAIL assists clients with their brand exposure using the sports industry to market brands, encourage consumer engagement, and manage brand activations and marketing. The sports industry is among the largest and most profitable industries, with a passionate fanbase in every country. Marketing in this industry is sure to give brands a lot of exposure.
SAIL offers a large variety of different corporate event types, with a list of twenty other options. This includes roadshows, team-building events, product and media launches, and concerts and shows.
360 Degrees
360 Degrees leads the charge into the future of events by offering virtual event options. They are one of the leading hosts for virtual events, offering myriad ways to entertain and engage an audience.
360 has revolutionised their virtual events — offering performances with audio-visual technology. Their virtual events can involve 3D avatars, mixed reality — a combination of augmented and actual reality — a gaming aspect with point systems and leaderboards, and engaging attendees with real-time polls and surveys.
They use this technology to immerse people in brand activation and create something unique and captivating.
This company offers many virtual event options outside of their virtual live events. They can host virtual studio events and online webcast services. They can even coach others after migrating to the online world.
The company still does actual live events as well, offering performances and entertainment alongside marketing for corporations.
