Course Correction: Get the Best Out of Your Agency Partnership
We’ve all been there. Plans change, unexpected challenges appear, team communication breaks down, and suddenly it feels like a project has gone off...
Event Trends
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From virtual and hybrid event production to immersive digital experiences, we're always looking ahead to what's next in the events industry. Read our blog for insights, ideas, and advice on engaging your community--both in-person and virtually.
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2022
Event Trends
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So, You’ve Found a Great Agency Partner. What’s Next?
Recently, we posted about the best ways to identify a trusted agency partner during an event agency’s sales pitch, but choosing a partner is only the...
The Trust Index: A Scorecard for Evaluating Your Agency Partner
When it comes time to evaluate your agency partner, there’s a good chance you’re putting too much weight on the wrong criteria and not enough on the...
5 Ways to Find a Trusted Partner During an Event Agency’s Pitch
There’s no denying that the agency pitch process has changed significantly over the past few years, with remote work fracturing the human connection...
5 Ways to Elevate Your RFP and Find the Right Partner
An RFP (request for proposal) is most companies’ go-to method for finding a creative agency partner. Whether it’s the best way to source a...
7 Ways to Use Game Design to Create Better Hybrid Event Experiences
If you’re reading this post, you’ve likely attended or worked events where it feels as though every single task associated with attending and...
Five Ways to Keep Leadership Comms Relevant, Impactful, and Human
Over the past couple of years, many of the status quos we’ve relied upon in our working cultures have been upended. In the wake of this instability,...
Office Optional: Establish a Strong Culture in Any Setting
As the EVP of People and Culture here at August Jackson, it’s my goal—both internally at AJ and externally in partnership with our clients—to nurture...
Vision Architecture: A Holistic, Engagement-Focused Approach
Whether we’re working to increase engagement across a company’s entire workforce or within a specific division or team, there’s one thing we know is...
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Picking the Right Higher Ed Event Partner
You’ve been asked to find an outside organization to assist with your next major event or entire campaign event strategy. How do you know which one...
Strategies for Success: Digital Engagement for Campaigns
Higher education campaign launches have historically focused on in-person events that bring together alumni and institutional partners for complete...
One Size Never Fits All: Event Engagement Framework
User Experience (UX). Put simply, it’s an art and a science often reserved for digital work that is focused on ensuring frictionless, user-centric...
Putting Purpose at the Center of Your Event
All engagements should have a purpose—a central reason for being. When creating an event engagement strategy, it’s vital to start with why and build...
Leverage Joy: Experiential Marketing Summit 2022
At the end of April 2022, a small team of AJ Creative Directors and Producers descended upon Las Vegas for the Experiential Marketing Summit, the #1...
Use Event Technology to Build Sustained Engagement
Long-term relationship building is a primary goal for all organizations regardless of industry. From big corporations to small nonprofit...
Build a Compelling Story Arc for Events
A comprehensive and compelling story arc should drive your event at every step. Stories are the main thing—sometimes the only thing—that will engage...
Amp Up Event Engagement with Personalization
With the increasing use of social media, ever-expanding sources of music and video streaming, and algorithms that anticipate what we want before we...
Authenticity and Audacity: How Event Design Best Supports Your Message
After spending the past several years in digital environments, people are excited for the opportunity to come together at in-person events. For...
What Peloton Could Have Done Differently At Their All-Hands Virtual Meeting
5 key insights gained from experienced event producers
Finding My Seat At The Table
When COVID-19 hit and enforced a work-from-home structure, for many companies it was like cutting off the head of a squid, with singular tentacles...
Changing the Volume: A Burst of Engagement Becomes a Hum
August Jackson recently had the opportunity to evolve its relationship with one of the world’s leading Professional Services firms; leveraging...
How Our Agency is Putting Hybrid Work into Practice
In my role at AJ, I not only help clients design events and communications that drive their internal cultures and engage their employees, but play a...
Supporting Communities In A Post Covid World
The online community has become just as important as the communities we're used to being with in-person.
Four Guiding Principles for Fostering Human Connection through Hybrid Events
Predictions abound around what work-life will look like as we start to come out of the pandemic and resume a new cadence of business and...
University Uncertainty: Students Respond to Fall 2020 Possibilities
Universities around the country are announcing their plans for the fall semester. Regardless of the plan, all schools are hoping students will be...
Designing an Effortless Virtual Experience
Have you ever been so engrossed in a task or a discussion that time just seems to evaporate? For me, it happens when I’m doing something just like...
5 Design Tips for Great Virtual Events
Digital screens have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. As a result, whether we think about it this way or not, these screens have...
Creating Engaging Presentations in a Virtual Space
Eye contact. Emotion. Movement. Body language. These are some very human, very theatrical tools we use to keep things interesting when presenting to...
Balancing Technology with Authentic, Tangible Connection
Balancing technology with authentic, tangible connection Quick thought experiment – You’re at a festival and you come across two consumer...
The Importance of Courage in the Workplace: Inspired by "Dare to Lead"
Lexy Murphy is a Producer/Production Manager who recently stepped into her management role at August Jackson. On a journey to discover what kind of...
6 Trends in Organizational Culture
As we enter a new decade, we’re in the midst of a white-hot job market, “super-mega” mergers and an American workforce that looks very different than...
Creating Communities of Action Through Storytelling
Look, it’s clear that you are already acquainted with the rules of effective storytelling. I don’t have to remind you about a three-act pyramid...
Video: Our Approach to Employee Engagement
We approach our employee engagement work with a three-step process that’s rooted in design thinking methodologies. Find out how this roadmap helps...
Design Showcase: Supporting Action
Sometimes the smallest details can tie an event together and deliver authenticity throughout the experience.
Empathy as the Source of Innovation
Empathy drives innovation—not only as a foundation from which we can ideate, but as a discipline that both defines and expands our creative...
How a Communications Campaign Can Extend the Effectiveness of Your Sales Kickoff
Depending on your fiscal year end, you’re in the midst of planning your annual sales kickoff! Or you will be soon. So this describes your world right...
Design Showcase: Awarding the Awarders
At AJ – we are often approached by clients seeking to dial up the energy and excitement around their employee recognition initiatives. While engaging...
National Sales Meeting Survey Best Practices
As sales leaders, we spend months planning our yearly sales kickoff or national sales meeting each year, yet our event surveys tend to be a bit of an...
3 Ways to Influence Your Organizational Culture
There are 3.4 billion (yes, billion) search results when you google “company culture.” As a culture, it seems we are all obsessed with… well,...
Video: Building Purpose-Driven Culture
Organizations today have an opportunity to use their culture as an anchoring mechanism in uncertain times. Culture is a powerful force and, if we can...
How your philanthropic lifecycle informs the direction of your campaign strategy
If you are in the silent phase of a new philanthropic campaign, you are no doubt on the hunt for inspiration. The conferences you might attend are...
Leadership Voice Archetyping: Empowering Leaders to Propel Their Story Forward
Some leaders make it look so effortless. They communicate with vision and consistency. They take the stage or step in front of the camera with...
6 Presentation Design Tips from Click: The Presentation Design Conference
We’ve all sat through a dry presentation or two with slide after slide of cluttered words, ambiguous clip art or lists of bullet points. But if...
Engaging Employees with Purpose
The idea that a highly engaged workforce is important for the health of a business is not new. It’s a highly researched area, and the research points...
Video: The Meaning of Employee Engagement
Organizations who implement employee engagement programs and campaigns see less turnover, increased sales, higher levels of profit – the list goes...
Purpose: Your Organization's Shelter in the Coming Recession
The next recession will soon be upon us, likely within the next two years. That’s according to economists who point to a very reliable indicator… the...
10 Tenets of an Effective Event Producer
The role of the event producer is one that brings with it a lot of confusion. “Does he oversee creative?” “Does she spec the staging elements?” “Does...
4 Strategies to Unite & Ignite Your Salesforce at Your Sales Kickoff
You’ve come to the close of another successful year managing your sales team. And while a break around the holidays is certainly well-deserved, you...
A Communications Strategy to Inspire Today's Donors
Working in the higher education and nonprofit environment is a lot of things. It’s exciting. Meaningful. Challenging. Satisfying. Above all, it...
How to Plan Sales Kickoff Content That Gets Results
Measurement matters. And it’s no secret that businesses struggle to figure out how to exactly measure the impact of their sales kickoff. The ultimate...
Discovering Purpose: Always Start with "Why"?
I’ve been in the agency business for 25 years. I’ve worked with all kinds of agencies. Above-the-line agencies, below-the-line agencies, consumer...
How to Choose the Best Event Management Software
I’ve spent my career in the creative agency and event space and with great experience comes great responsibility. And after 14 years in the industry,...
8 Tips to Craft an Engaging Award Ceremony
Let’s face it – for anyone other than the very select group of people actually being recognized, an award ceremony runs the risk of losing the...
Drive Bottom-Line Results with Strategic Sales Team Engagement
If you are the one responsible for directing a large sales force into the future of annual sales increases, the pressure is on to inspire, align and...
5 steps for planning and tracking event ROI
What is the best way to measure my return on investment for an event or activation? This is a common and critically important question, but one that...
3 ways to use event technology to boost ROI for your next event
Event technology has impacted every thread of the event marketing discipline, creating amplified experiences, driving deeper interactions and...
How to Build an Event Emergency Plan
From large scale conferences hosting thousands, to the most modest of company meetings, the most successful events have one thing in common – they’ve...
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