Assessment Details
Individual Essay – ‘Exploring the Role of Authenticity in Strategic Event Design’
In this module, we are focusing on the strategic design of business events to influence the cognitive, affective and behavioural impacts of attendees for optimal organisational outcomes. Cognitive impacts help attendees to better understand their organisation’s strategy, new initiative or product (internal) or to clarify and build brand awareness (external). Affective impacts are emotional impacts which will affect how attendees (both internal and external to the organisation) feel and identify with the brand or the company.
Behavioural impacts change attendees’ behaviour towards a brand/company. For internal consumers/employees, behavioural impacts could be that they become more productive, more engaged and more loyal to the company. For consumers, behavioural impacts could be that they purchase more products from the brand and advocate or speak positively about the brand to others.
In both the experience design and strategic event design literature, authenticity is identified as a key influencing antecedent of positive event outcomes, both in terms of creating experience ‘intensity’ for the attendee and for the hosting organisation.
In other words, if the event experience feels authentic to attendees, they are more likely to demonstrate positive cognitive, affective and behavioral impacts from the event, over time, thereby benefitting the host organisation in terms of event outcomes.
Using the academic and industry literature, write a 3,000 word essay discussing how the creation of authenticity is being used as a principle design aim in the creation of business events.
The essay will follow this structure:
Introduction:
Describe the structure, content and purpose of your essay. The purpose of your essay is to discuss and assess how the creation of authenticity is being used as a principle design aim in the creation of corporate events.
Provide a definition for authenticity, using the academic and industry literature to highlight key understandings of this objective.
Explain WHY it is important that event designers understand how to create authenticity.
Indicate that the key outcome of your synthesis of the available literature will be to form conclusions and make recommendations about how authenticity can be achieved in event design, across different types of corporate events.
Main Body: Authenticity as a Design Principle – Theoretical and Practical Implications
Consider how authenticity is being described in the academic and industry literature in relation to event design and different types of corporate events.
To get you started, see:
Pg. 144 in Berridge, G. (2007). Events Design and Experience. Oxford: Elsevier.
Pg. 1 Concept 1 in Quinn, B. (2013). Key Concepts in Event Management. London: Sage.
“With a specific focus on the audience, Brown and Hutton (2013) identify three pillars of design to capture the audience, to provide the foundation for an optimal experience and to deliver the event objectives but they also highlight the importance of additional principles such as emotions, authenticity and surprise amongst others” (p. 22, Orefice, 2018).
You will notice in your reading of the literature, that authenticity is linked with many aspects of event design. Examples below:
These interactions represent so-called ‘moments of truth’ as they shape consumer’s overall perception of the event (Evans, 2015).
Evans, N., (2015). Strategic Management for Tourism, Hospitality and Events. London: Taylor and Francis.
See C&IT Incentive Travel Report 2017 for authenticity in incentive events. “There is a movement towards experiences and authenticity, it’s about going somewhere and ensuring you are immersed in the local culture.”
Pg. 332 in Bladen at al. (2018) in reference to destination and venue selection for corporate events –
“Increasingly, the authenticity and uniqueness of a destination plays an important role in the process of choosing a destination for an event that will give delegates the ‘Wow effect’…….Authenticity and uniqueness are not only a crucial aspect of the destination, but also of the venue where an event will take place.”
You should be able to find discussions of authenticity when exploring themes of Value Creation, Co-Creation, Storytelling and Narrative, Destination Selection, Influencer Marketing, the creation of Personas (see Event Audiences), Emotions, Intensity of Experience, Branding Theory, level of participant immersion or participation, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), meaningful experiences, memorable (affective impacts) experiences, etc. Choose the few themes that interest you most and provide illustrative examples from industry case studies to reinforce your key arguments where possible.
Throughout your exploration of this topic, highlight key aspects of the pursuit, achievement and outcomes of authenticity in strategic event experience design. Reinforce key arguments about WHY it is important that event designers understand how to create authenticity, why attendees must have authentic experiences, and how organisations benefit from hosting events which are perceived to be authentic (three distinct perspectives here).
Ensure that your essay has a strong academic foundation including theory, empirical evidence and references. If you use material from case studies or company websites remember that these need to be properly quoted and referenced just like all other materials.
Conclusions
Provide a summary of your key findings related to the pursuit, achievement and outcomes of authenticity in relation to strategic corporate event design, including key understandings of how to define an authentic experience or encounter.
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