Lessons Learned On Building A Can’t-Miss Event​

This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Diana Sabb—Founder & CEO of Create Something Amazing, with 15+ years of global event expertise.

gettyI have worked in the ecosystem around Coachella, where the experience of attending is itself a cultural product, and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where the festival itself is almost secondary to the machinery of relationship, influence and commerce that operates alongside it. I have also produced events at and around South by Southwest (SXSW), where the most interesting things often happen outside of the official schedule.

These three events share virtually nothing in format, audience or industry. What they do share is more fundamental: Each has built a gravitational field strong enough that some of the most influential people in their worlds will rearrange calendars and travel long distances simply to be present.

What follows is what close proximity to these gatherings has taught me. Any organization can use these principles to help make an event genuinely essential to its community.

In my view, Coachella is not a music festival that happens to have a distinctive look. The distinctive look is the product; the music is the reason the look has permission to be what it is. The design sensibility of Coachella, the art installations, the fashion, the spatial experience of the grounds and the particular quality of the light in the Indio, California, desert at dusk all create an aesthetic universe that attendees want to be part of. And many attendees are not just interested in seeing the bands; they want to be seen being there.

The activations that become part of the cultural vocabulary at an event like this—the ones people seek out, photograph and share—are the ones that feel like they belong in that universe.

Whatever the aesthetic and cultural contract of the event you’re activating at, your brand presence should feel like it belongs there. It should feel like your brand was invited, not inserted. The brands that understand the cultural context of the gathering they’re participating in, and design their presence to honor and contribute to that context, earn a place in the experience.​

Cannes Lions is an example of how an event can position itself as essential by becoming a calendar anchor for important industry relationships. The festival runs for a week. The relationships it can help facilitate could run for years. I’ve found the most valuable Cannes experiences can often be found in the conversations, lunches, dinners and early morning runs and coffee meetings that happen before the official day begins. The festival provides the context, the permission structure, the density of people and the collective agreement that the week is when important decisions can get made. The ecosystem does the rest.

The lesson for organizations is about the architecture of an event. Building an event requires identifying, with precision, which conversations attendees need to have and designing intimate settings for those conversations, rather than a large footprint. The venue, the guest list, the evening’s architecture, the follow-through—these are craft skills and among the most valuable in this business.​

Cannes also illustrates the compounding value of consistent presence. Organizations with a known ritual and an established place in the event’s social infrastructure carry a credibility that intermittent participants can struggle to reach. Presence, sustained over time, becomes equity in itself.

SXSW is the most interesting event to me from a production perspective because I find it to be the least controlled. The official programming is significant, but in my experience, the culture of the festival has always rewarded the unexpected, the guerrilla performance, the unmarked door in a side street and the brand experience that nobody saw coming because it wasn’t in the guidebook.

The brands that make an impact with an event like this understand its DNA, particularly the event’s audience and their priorities. For instance, I’ve found SXSW’s audience to often include early adopters who are attuned to authenticity and skeptical of corporate intention. Credibility at this type of event can’t be purchased; it has to be earned by offering something genuinely useful and aligned with the community.

Despite having three vastly different cultural contexts, these events have demonstrated to me the same fundamental truth about what makes a gathering gravitational: It must give people a specific and irreplaceable reason to be there, in person, at that moment. The reason must be genuine—not manufactured, not performed, not purchased—and it must be consistent enough over time to become part of how the relevant community understands its own identity.

That’s the standard I recommend holding every engagement to, regardless of scale or budget: Does it create something the right people feel they cannot miss?

Invest in the curated room alongside or instead of the large footprint. Build for the audience’s curiosity, rather than the brand’s agenda. Show up consistently enough that your presence becomes part of the culture.

Ultimately, you should be able to answer the question, “What does your event stand for?” If you can answer that in a single, unambiguous sentence, and if you build every decision toward that answer, you’re in the territory where great events are built.​​​​

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