Building Sustainability into Your Event Communications
Communicate Your Sustainability Goals from the Start
When launching your communications campaign, it’s important to incorporate your sustainable decisions from the offset. By taking your attendees on the journey with you from the start, you can better highlight your brand mission while also helping them adopt more sustainable behaviours. Begin by telling the story of why you’re making a shift in the incentive format, then showcase where more eco-friendly decisions have been made, such as the choice of destination, travel options and ground programme. If there were things you were unable to make more sustainable, don’t be afraid to highlight these too, so your attendees are fully informed on every decision.
Launching sustainability messaging early on also helps attendees to understand the purpose behind the program before they even arrive. Explaining why destinations or activities have been selected will encourage greater buy-in and will create opportunities for attendees to make more sustainable choices throughout the experience.
This will also involve benchmarking your incentive emissions from the start, to help you assign targets for carbon reduction in following years. Without this data, it’s impossible to measure where improvements can be made.
Tell the Story Behind Your Destination
If you’ve chosen Amsterdam as your destination due to its green transport credentials or Helsinki because of its environmentally friendly certified hotel rooms, then make sure to highlight these reasons to your audience. Don’t expect them to know the ‘why’ around your destination choice, so tell them! Make this part of the incentive story and weave it though every aspect of your comms campaign that brings the destination, venues, and itinerary to life. It doesn’t have to be laboured but highlighting the sustainability credentials in video content, graphics and on your event website helps build a picture.
Rather than just promoting a destination, why not explain why it was selected in the first place? Highlighting local sustainability initiatives and responsible suppliers along with environmental credentials gives attendees much greater context and will reinforce the organization’s wider commitment to responsible event planning.
Use Data to Demonstrate Progress
Did you know that business class emits three times more carbon than economy due to the room the seats take up in the plane (Reuters)? Therefore, moving forward we’re bound to see a rise in incentive destinations accessible by rail, shorter travel times or companies opting for economy class when travelling long haul. Calculate the total CO2 emissions saved through these types of changes and make it a selling point in your communications.
Being open and sharing measurable outcomes helps turn sustainability into something tangible. Whether that is highlighting carbon savings or an increased use of public transport, a handful of simple data points can really help attendees to understand the collective impact of the organization’s decisions while demonstrating progress against future sustainability goals.
Use Gifting to Reinforce Your Sustainability Story
One area of incentives that has seen a significant shift is the role of gifting. Whereas before, high-ticket items such as branded sunglasses or handbags might have been the norm, planners are now sourcing ethical items to gift. If you’re going to an effort to source eco-friendly luxury gifts, make sure to communicate why it’s ethical, such as an detailing the story behind the product, where it’s made, who made it and the ingredients. Ideally source something by local artisans that also helps small businesses.
Thoughtfully sourced gifts can also provide an opportunity to tell the story of local communities and responsible production. Including this information within supporting communications will help attendees to better understand the wider purpose behind each gift.
Highlight the People Behind Your Suppliers
Food and beverage choices provide another excellent opportunity to reinforce sustainability messaging. Sharing information about local producers and seasonal ingredients helps attendees to understand the positive impact of these decisions while creating a stronger connection to the destination and its communities in the process.
Keep the Story Going After the Event
When designing an incentive, it doesn’t just end at the point attendees travel home, there’s so much opportunity to extend the event. And a sustainable story can be woven into this legacy. Having attendees take part in a CSR activity that will really help the community is a story worth reminding them of in the future.
The attendee journey should never end as soon as everyone returns home. Post-event communications provide an opportunity to share the outcomes of CSR activities, and will help celebrate collective achievements, while demonstrating the long-term impact that was created by the incentive program. This helps to reinforce the organization’s sustainability commitments while at the same time keeping attendees engaged after the event has come to an end.
Communicating Sustainability at Every Touchpoint
The most effective event communications never rely on making a single announcement. Sustainability messages should be appearing consistently throughout the attendee journey, as this will help to build a clear and connected story from the initial invitation through to post-event follow-up. You want to feel that if an attendee joined at any point in the incentive, they would still understand your mission in this area. Therefore, that’s communicating it at every touchpoint throughout your incentive.
Consider including sustainability comms in your:
– Event website
– Email marketing
– Video campaigns
– Teaser campaigns
– Post-event comms
– F&B Menus
– Event app
– Room gifts supporting communications
Organizations are increasingly looking for fresh and inventive ways to make incentive travel programs even more sustainable, but the success of these initiatives will always depend on how well they are communicated. Clear and consistent messaging helps attendees to understand the purpose behind sustainable decisions while at the same time encouraging greater engagement throughout the event experience.
Integrating sustainability into every stage of the communications strategy, allows organizations to create incentive programs that not only reduce environmental impact but also strengthen attendee understanding and connection with their wider business goals.
