How to brief an event planner so you get what you want

The best briefs we receive are rarely the longest. They tell us what the event is for, who is coming, what has gone wrong before and what a good outcome looks like. The rest we can work out together. Here is how to write one in twenty minutes.

Start with the purpose, not the theme

The most useful sentence in a brief is the one that explains why the event exists. To thank clients after a difficult year. To introduce a new leadership team to the people who matter. To raise a specific sum for a specific cause. A theme can come later, and often we will suggest one you had not thought of.

The purpose is what every other decision will be tested against, so it should come first and it should be honest. If the real purpose is that the chairman wants a better party than a competitor had, say so. We have heard it before and it is a perfectly good reason.

Tell us the budget, even roughly

Clients sometimes hold the budget back in case naming it makes it the price. It does the opposite. Without a figure we have to guess, and a guess in either direction wastes a week. A range is enough: between this and that, and we would rather be at the lower end.

From there we can tell you quickly what the figure buys at the venues you have in mind, and where it would go further. If you do not know what is sensible, say that too, and we will show you three levels and what each one gets.

Write down the three things that annoyed you most about the last event and we will design them out before we design anything in.

Tell us what went wrong last time

This is the part of the brief that people skip, and it is the most useful page in the file. The speeches ran long. The room was cold. Nobody could find the cloakroom. The vegetarians got pasta. The chief executive’s guest was seated next to someone she had just made redundant.

Every one of these is a decision we can make differently, but only if we know. Write down the three things that annoyed you most about the last event and we will design them out before we design anything in.

Name the decision-makers

An event with one decision-maker takes a month less to plan than an event with a committee. If there has to be a committee, tell us who has the final word on the budget, the venue, the guest list and the creative, and whether those are the same person. We will set the meeting rhythm around them.

The quickest way to lose a good venue is to wait a fortnight for an answer the venue needed on Friday.

The question that saves a month

At the end of every first conversation we ask the same thing: what do you want people to say on the way home? Not what you want them to see. What you want them to say.

The answers are revealing. I had no idea the firm could do that. They really looked after us. I must find out who planned it. That sentence becomes the test for every idea that follows, and it stops a great deal of expensive decoration that would never have produced it.

A brief like this fits on one page. It takes twenty minutes to write and it saves everyone involved a great deal more than that. Send it to us and we will come back within a working day with a few questions and a time to talk.

Gabby KoyaFounder and Creative Director

Next: Choosing a London venue for 300 guests