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Planning industry tentpole events in advance is the difference between leading the conversation and scrambling to keep up. 🍳 🏃
With so many fabulous events happening this month it got me thinking how imperative it is to maximise event impact by planning early. Here's why:
⛺ Tentpole events are high-stakes moments
There are a few moments each year when your entire market is paying attention. They concentrate audience interest, competitor activity, PR opportunities and revenue potential into a short window.
- Showing up unprepared is very visible.
- The cost of missed opportunities is high.
- Weak meetings, forgettable content, lost leads and low share of voice.
🎨 Planning early unlocks bigger creative ideas
Strong campaign concepts rarely appear overnight. They need space to be explored, challenged and improved.
- Strategy and creative teams can properly align messaging, narrative and visuals instead of rushing out generic assets.
- You have time to build a story arc: pre-event tease, event peak, post-event follow-through instead of a single noisy push on the day.
🤝 Coordination across teams takes time
Tentpole events usually touch almost every part of the business, without early planning:
- Sales teams don’t know the core message so their conversations feel disconnected from your marketing.
- Ops and events teams are forced into last-minute logistics, which drives up costs, limits options and increases the risk of mistakes.
- Early planning turns the event from a scramble into an orchestrated effort where each team knows what success looks like and how they contribute.
⌛ Content and campaigns need a runway
Tentpoles work best when they are surrounded by supporting content and campaigns. To build that ecosystem you need time to:
- Distill your thought leadership message.
- Create social campaigns, email sequences and paid media to warm up your audience before the event.
🔥 Early planning reduces chaos and burnout
When teams are constantly in “emergency mode” quality drops and morale suffers. Scrambling typically leads to:
- Long hours, burned-out teams and a sense that the event “just has to be survived” rather than leveraged.
📏 Planning ahead improves measurement and ROI
To prove value from tentpole investment, measurement must be baked in from the start. Planning in advance allows you to:
- Define success metrics and tracking.
- Set up the right infrastructure before things go live. Without that groundwork you end up with plenty of activity but little clarity on what worked, what failed and where to invest next time.
✨ If you are struggling with your event strategy and feel you need to elevate your planning and activations, don't hesitate to get in touch. ✨
