Corporate Events with Mix & Twist

Introduction to Corporate Events

To the untrained eye, corporate events might appear slightly frivolous.

After all, they’re just big, fancy parties right ?

Wrong.

When done right, corporate events can be instrumental in building your company’s public profile, treating your clients to that extra something special or giving staff morale a much-needed boost.

Sometimes, they’re even a necessary part of your projects.

Such is the case with product launches or conferences, for example.

But that doesn’t lessen the value of corporate events with no immediately apparent end goal, like team building events and staff parties.

All of this is important for making your company run at its maximum effectiveness.

There’s no tailor-made solution to creating the perfect corporate event.

Each and every one is different from the last, depending on your company’s brand, the type of event you’re hosting, the products or services involved and even the time of year!

It’s a good thing, then, that corporate events come in all shapes and sizes, creating the maximum number of possibilities for your company to try out.

Mix & Twist have provided bartending and mobile bar services at corporate events ranging from staff training to a Sky ‘Women In Tech’ networking event and a VIP hospitality tent at Bedford Autodrome.

Along the way, we’ve learnt a thing or two about what makes a great corporate event.

Corporate Team Building

The most successful businesses don’t magically come together: they’re built on great teams.

No matter what industry you’re in, it’s incredibly important to ensure that your team’s communication skills are up to scratch.

Luckily, the best way of achieving this is by having a really, really good time!

Corporate team building events have come a long way in recent years, and can be a great way of getting to know your workmates in a more social environment.

It’s not just for laughs either; what might seem at first like a fun and silly day out can actually create easily transferable skills which have plenty of real-world applications.

Your corporate team building event can be as straight-laced or as wacky as you like, but the ones likely to generate the most enthusiasm in your team generally involve fun and active participation.

Here are just a few ideas that show great results:

• Escape rooms: Perfect for building a team that can put their heads together in a crisis and resolve issues in record time! Like a walking brain training exercise, you essentially get locked in a room with your colleagues, and have to work together to solve a series of puzzles in order to break out.

• Murder Mystery: These are usually hosted in a hotel as an overnight event, with dinner included. Everyone is assigned a character and the attendees have to play along with the given story and work out ‘whodunnit’ – and you get to dress up as well!

Cocktail Masterclass: Give your staff a lesson in creating delicious boozy concoctions, a skill everyone has a secret desire to learn but never gets round to!

With this option, your staff will learn something together while getting to enjoy their creations. 
 

Networking Events

By hosting a fabulous networking event, you can be the company that brings like-minded people and potential business associates together.

If all goes well and you throw an event that gets people talking, it can be amazing for your business.

Guarantee the success of your networking event with our top tips:

• Promote: You need to get your event seen by the right people to encourage attendance. Make full use of your social media—especially LinkedIn—as well as existing business contacts, industry publications and event management websites.
• Engage: It’s your responsibility to get people talking about the event. Make sure you keep people in the loop with regards to time, date and place. Don’t forget to send out communications post-event too, as this can encourage repeat turnout at future gatherings.
• Be human: Your networking event may be business-focused, but attendees need to feel happy and comfortable to come along and join in, particularly if they’re flying solo. By creating a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, people will strike up conversations and make connections in a more natural way.
• Set the scene: Networking is often about shared passions, so fire up your guests with a speaker or presentation to start the event. This gives everyone a common talking point when networking begins and provides a convenient and relevant ice-breaker.
• Increase attendance: If this is a regular event, encourage guests to have a plus one next time. You can also offer ticket discounts to those who bring someone with them, or the option to recommend a friend for one of the limited places. New faces ensure a good mix of different people, and therefore opportunities for attendees.
• Provide refreshments: Talking is thirsty work, so make sure you offer your guests drinks! If you’re hosting an evening event, you could include some alcoholic beverages, such as our mobile cocktail bars! 

Staff Parties

Every successful business knows that it takes the whole team to keep you at the front of the pack, which is why surprising them with some cool staff rewards will help to keep them motivated and happy.

Whether it’s a Christmas do, summer knees-up or a party to congratulate your staff for a job well done on a particular project, staff parties keep morale high, give your staff an opportunity to spend some social time together and can even improve communication by helping them build strong working relationships.

However, being in charge of planning the next staff party can be hugely stressful and weigh heavily on the company budget.

Between trying to find a theme everyone will enjoy, a venue that’s convenient for everybody, sorting out the catering and more, it’s important to not let the to-do list overwhelm your enjoyment.

Our advice is to keep it simple.

Throwing your staff a party to thank them for being awesome is a classic team-building exercise, but it needn’t be the Met Gala to be a success!

Whether you go big or small, hiring a simple mobile bar and team of mixologists from Mix & Twist can provide all the entertainment you need, with funky cocktails to boot.

Exhibition Stands

Being armed with some great exhibition stand ideas while you’re planning for an event is essential if you want to draw attention for the right reasons and get people onboard and engaging with your brand.

You need to stand out from the other exhibitors and ensure that your stand encourages people to stop and chat, not just shrug and walk by.

We’ve done lots of work with clients at exhibitions, and while attending, we’ve kept a close eye on what businesses do to make their exhibition stand one of the best!

• Dazzle them digitally To get people to your stand you need to catch their eye. There are some fantastic display accessories available hire, from animated graphic banners to lighting installations. You can even set up podiums with touchscreen tablets and let people browse some media created especially for the occasion.
• Inspire with interactivity There are plenty of ways to get your visitors interacting with your brand, including fun quizzes, treasure hunts and games. The key is to make people feel involved, whether in person or digitally. You can set up an Instagram printer on your stand, which allows people to post pictures with your event-specific hashtag.
• Be unconventional Just because most exhibitions stands are designed as a square, plain space, that doesn’t mean you have to stick to the status quo. Let your creativity run wild with different settings and accessories to transform the space into something that people just can’t ignore as they walk by.
• Freebie: Everybody loves a freebie. Luckily for your brand, they also make great advertising! For a fairly reasonable price, you can have your logo printed on tote bags, pens, mouse mats and whatever else might resonate with your audience to keep you in their minds after the event. Don’t forget to put a business card in there too!
• Entertainment: Make people feel as though they’re getting something extra from your company with some entertainment. For example, you might have a magician pulling business cards from visitors’ ears or hire a branded mobile cocktail bar with impressive, skilled flair bartenders serving up delicious free drinks while wowing the crowds.

Product Launches

If your company is launching a brand new product onto the market, a product launch event is pretty much a given.

It’s an exciting, rewarding part of the process when done right, as it follows months or even years of careful preparation and planning.

Launches are also, nervewrackingly , the first opportunity to measure consumer and investor opinion on your finished product.

Getting the event right is crucial, as it is the number one chance to have all eyes in the market on your brand and promote your idea as the freshest thing available.

The first glance can make or break the reputation of your product.

If it doesn’t go well, it is time-consuming, stressful and unnecessarily expensive to backtrack and get your product back on track and buzzing on the market.

The secret to a successful product launch is actually not making it all about the product.

After all, product launches are first and foremost events as well as marketing opportunities.

The guests’ experience should be as front and centre as your brand new idea.

If your invitees have a great time at the event, they’ll remember your product, be engaged with your company and tell their friends and associates all about the latest introduction to the market.

Make sure you’ve got entertainment and enough refreshments on hand to satisfy all appetites and quench all thirsts!

Client Evenings

How do you keep your clients coming back for more?

Give them a reason to!

Client evenings are an underused resource in the corporate events toolbox, and can help encourage brand loyalty, give your public image a boost and make everybody feel a bit special.

There are a variety of things you can do for your client evening, from information evenings, cocktail parties and conferences.

Client evenings come in all shapes and sizes, from free and open events where anyone can wander in to learn more about your brand or invite-only, ticketed events that have an air of exclusivity while bringing in revenue.

In the second instance, crafting the perfect guest list will be key in making sure your clientele feel like VIPs!

In many ways, client evenings share similarities with networking events, only with a different guest list.

It’s important to provide entertainment, ice-breakers and lots of refreshments to keep people interacting and engaging with your company as long as possible.

Having a Mix & Twist mobile bar at the heart of the madness can be a great talking point!

If they're done right, client evenings are a classic way for businesses to engage their customers, whether consumer or corporate.

The personal interaction with a targeted demographic can build brand loyalty or generate new interest, adding to a customer base and building business.

Corporate events can be a game-changing part of your marketing strategy or staff management plan, making your company a more successful, profitable and welcoming place for everyone involved.

Getting them right is a practiced art, but at the end of the day it’s all about ensuring your guests have the best possible time!