When 50,811 people applied for 15,000 spots to be a volunteer at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow – a group larger than the applicants to the Manchester and Melbourne games combined – they started on a year-and-a-half long engagement programme. The volunteer communications strategy was designed to select the 15,000 representatives working at the games and maintaining high levels of interest, positivity and service throughout the event.

The Glasgow organising committee relied on partners and public institutions to support the pre-games volunteer comms campaign, Glasgow 2014’s head of media Janette Harkness says. The London Olympics’ massive achievements in terms of volunteer engagement heightened the profile of the Glasgow campaign too, says Harkness. Part of the success of the London games lay with the cheerful, helpful volunteers that made the games magical.

That alone, though, was no chance occurrence. Crown, a London brand and comms agency was put in charge of the volunteer engagement programme ahead of the Olympics. The agency developed a series of mass engagement events at Wembley Stadium and around the country that developed an emotional connection between the volunteers and the London Olympics and between volunteers on a personal level.

Glasgow’s team took a similar tack. Harkness says, “As part of Glasgow 2014’s training programme for volunteers and other members of Games workforce, Glasgow 2014 delivered four 5000-seater orientations events in the Emirates Arena. The orientation events were designed to be informative and inspirational, as well as giving a sense of scale and purpose.”

She adds, “Events were hugely important to the Glasgow 2014 strategy as they played a part in helping us to share a sense of how exciting Glasgow would be at Games-time and the absolutely essential role people – including our clyde-sider volunteers – would play in creating a brilliant atmosphere.”

Both events paid off when the volunteers contributed to two successful sporting competitions. But, Crown's head of planning and experience Giles Cattle says, large-scale events can be difficult to pull off successfully as they tend to yield a more passive audience. “The power of the shared experience however is massive,” he adds. “And as long as you consider the key take outs and objectives and ensure their delivery through this medium, then this type of large scale event can be very effective.”

Marco Forgione, CEO of EVCOM, the trade association representing the corporate video and live events industry, echoes that sentiment, “What has happened in recent years is a realisation that the most powerful and transformative form of communication is getting people together. There is something almost magical that happens when people are able to come together. There’s something additional that occurs, there’s an innovation between the people and the organisation.”

When dealing with paid employees, smaller events are the norm, largely due to budgeting and time management requirements, yet the objectives and strategies remain the same. Internal events, all agree, are only successful – and only yield a return – when they are in line with the overall communications strategy. Ashfield Healthcare’s engagement director Dan Walker says, “The most successful events are often underpinned by a good communications plan. If developed in line with an organisational communication plan this provides both consistency of message for the event, and further reinforces the value of the existing channels.”

Businesses often put more resources into the marketing and implementation of external events, while ignoring their internal audiences. Event professionals assert that the internal audience should not be neglected. “Internal comms engages with the most valuable audience a brand has, and the commercial value of a highly engaged and productive workforce is a clear reason to ensure the wider comms strategy considers this audience too,” says Cattle. Forgione echoes, “The distinction between internal and external is increasingly becoming irrelevant. The people you are talking to engage with external events, so their expectations are as high for what they would receive internally as what they receive externally.”

As with any internal communications endeavour, however, the objectives for the campaign must be thought through before hand. Event agency Smyle’s creative director Matt Margetson says events can engage a workforce when other approaches will fall short. “There seems little value in having an internal event if it is not linked to an element of the company’s wider internal comms strategy,” he adds.

Comms strategy, however derives not just from the communications team, but from the overall

What has happened in recent years is a realisation that the most powerful and transformative form of communication is getting people together. There is something almost magical that happens when people are able to come together

business strategy and leadership team. Thus, leadership buy-in to events is one of the most important aspects contributing to a successful event.

For internal event specialists Top Banana, understanding, assisting and working with leaders on events requires a considered and often scientific approach. MD Nick Terry says an examination of the psychological processes involved behind leadership and public speaking have allowed the agency to better understand what contributes to a successful event.

He says, “How a leader communicates dictates or shapes the culture of a company. When a leader is on stage and live and performing, then they need to ensure that they have an integrity and an authenticity to make sure they do that and get the actual impact matching the desired outcome. With the best events we work on we always have good access to the leader and we also have a fundamental understanding of the audience’s mindset.”

Terry recounts a moment behind the curtain of an event – a glimpse into the magician’s bag of tricks – in which a CEO finds his voice and the person he needs to project to his audience of employees, “I can remember a chief exec, a very well spoken eloquent individual. We planned the event structure and we worked very closely with the strategic marketing director for this business and we identified that the chief exec was the key person to sell the core strategy. We had limited time in rehearsal and I was behind the stage just before he went on. Everyone else was giving him space. I sensed he was very nervous and he was breathing very heavy. I said, ‘Do you believe in the strategy? That this is going to turn the company around?’ [he said] ‘Yes.’ ‘Your job is to just go and sell it.’” That event was ultimately successful.

Leaders can build up trust through events, if they are credible and authentic. Terry says, “The really important thing is for leaders to demonstrate what they’re in control of, ‘we can’t control A, B and C, all we control is how we respond to it so our response is...’ You give a frame of reference but out of all these, realistically if we do the top five well, that’s going to really make the difference. Focus on where you’re going to get the biggest wins.”

This represents a shift in thinking within the event industry. It’s no enough to have the biggest, loudest events or the “rock ‘n’ roll leaders of the past,” as Terry calls them. Internal events, responding to smaller budgets and the need for more coherent content, must refocus on the objectives only.

Events and video company DRP’s founder and EVCOM chairman Dale Parmenter says, “Gone are the days where events are somebody stood on stage with a deck of Powerpoint slides. This is about involving the teams to make positive change for the organisation. People are people, they need to be engaged, they need to be stimulated. There’s more distraction these days, its down to us as content providers to make sure we engage people effectively.”

To that extent, EVCOM has focused on the education and skills training of its members to enhance the events industry and ensure that events are run more efficiently. Forgione adds, “Agencies working in our space that absolutely get the value of metrics and measurement and the planning side of what we do. It’s something that EVCOM has been taking a leading role on. It’s something that is fairly fundamental to our world as we move forward.”

Making an event work requires, like a great magic trick, a lot of practice, process and understanding.

By enhancing the measurement and efficiency of events, smaller budgets can go farther and all content produced can be judged against its ROI – a boon to time-strapped leadership and comms teams as well.

When that happens, as it did for the Glasgow 2014 organising committee, magic can happen. Harkness says, “Bringing together Glasgow 2014’s 15,000 volunteer force was itself an historic achievement as this was the biggest-ever peace-time deployment of volunteers that Scotland had ever seen... Events played a part in bringing clyde-siders together, sharing with them a sense of the scale of Glasgow 2014 and sharing with them the importance and value of their roles.”A touch of magic goes a long way.