The first draft of every brief I have read sounds like a project plan. Arrival, registration, keynote, lunch, panel, closing remarks. Every one of those bullets is useful. Not one of them answers the only question that matters: what will the guest feel in the first ninety seconds?
The first ninety seconds decide the event
Guests do not remember the agenda. They remember the first ninety seconds. The lobby. The light. The smell. The hand that took their coat. The music that was playing under the conversation. The look of the stage as they walked toward it. Everything else on the agenda is a consequence of that first impression.
The reverse-brief
Before we write a run-of-show, we write a first-ninety-seconds brief. Door to seat. What does the guest see, hear, and touch in the first minute and a half? Every production decision, from the kerb to the canape, flows from that.
Sometimes this means the host has to give up something they loved. A two-hour registration desk with branded check-in tablets reads well on paper. Guests hate it. We collapse it to ninety seconds with on-arrival badges and a staffed walk-up.
The host walks the event
Before we go live, we walk the entire guest journey ourselves, one team member playing guest, the other shadowing with a checklist. Where does the guest stop? Where do they look for a sign? Where are they confused? The answers become the final tweak list.
Mirrors and seats and exits
Three things we check that most agencies skip. First, mirrors: every corporate event has a moment a guest wants to fix their collar, and a mirror placed cleverly in a lobby earns points we never claim. Second, seats: the front row of every session is the hardest row to fill. We design a reason to want it. Third, exits: when guests leave, they are emotionally open. The exit moment, not the keynote, is what they describe to their team on Monday.
The host gets the feedback form
At the end of every engagement, we send our client a short note listing three things that worked for the guest and two that did not. Brutally honest. It is the only way the next brief gets better. Every client has kept us for a reason. They want the honest version, not the PR version.
What we tell new clients
If your brief is about you, we will rewrite it as a brief about them. That is the part of our job we will not negotiate on.
