26 May

When you’re preparing a major activation for your brand, you will put a great deal of work into planning and promotion so that you can get the most out of your event, justify the spend and hit the ground running. Yet, you’ll typically have to rely on some temporary staff to support the activation and must ensure they are equally enthusiastic as your core team. Unfortunately, this is a challenge for many organisations in your position as they struggle to find a brand representative that “fits.” So, if you are searching for event staffing agencies in London that will help you find that ideal personnel, what do you need to be looking for, and how can you be sure that you will see eye to eye with the agency?

Building on Your Core Team

To make your company a success, you will have to spend a lot of time choosing the right personnel for key, everyday roles. You may introduce each new full-time employee to a specially developed and targeted training regime to fully understand what makes your brand tick and teach them how to promote it. Using this approach, your full-time staff will always be on the same page as you and your executive team — and you won’t need to worry about message dilution, lack of motivation or loss of focus.

Recruiting Temporary Staff Members

Yet you cannot run a major activation like this with just your core team. Instead, you may need to plan a large number of individual events at geographically dispersed locations and spread over long hours. In this case, you will need to bring in temporary staff to do a lot of the work, and they’ll be the public-facing image of your brand.

Filling a Multitude of Roles

Just imagine the different roles these temporary staff could fill. They could be responsible for demonstrating your brand, offering samples, answering questions from interested prospects and creating that all-important first impression. First, you must ensure that each member of your temporary staff roster is the perfect ambassador of a company and for your brand, but this is frequently difficult to achieve.

Accounting for Special Skills

The position may get even more complex if your activation requires some special skills. They may even need to speak a different language while presenting your brand according to your guidelines and never putting a foot out of line.

Matching Personalities

Clearly, each person has their own distinct personality, range of abilities and drive. Therefore, you cannot expect everyone in a given line-up of potential staff members to excel at a specific skill and be a perfect match for your potential team. Likewise, some people have much more experience than others and might be better suited to a particular task as part of a complex event line-up.

Worrying About the Experience

If you’ve worked with a staffing agency before, you may have had a less than optimal experience. After all, not every agency is focused on finding the perfect brand ambassador of a company, and they often pull from a generic list of available people.

In this case, you may end up with unreliable temporary staff members who may arrive late on the day or not at all. As a result, they may not be “on brand” at crucial moments and, in doing so, create a substandard impression for your organisation.

Justifying the Budget

It’s hard to make a success of any activation if the people who are front and centre do not step up to the plate. And the problem becomes even more painful when you consider that staffing is typically one of the largest line items on your budget expense sheet. It’s tough to pay that bill when you feel you have received a less than optimal solution. It is even harder when you look at the metrics and find that you did not hit your target in terms of marketing or sales numbers.

Failing When It Matters Most

The role of brand ambassadors is crucial to the success of any experiential activation. You can take a great deal of time to plan your event, work hard to create all the visuals and expect a roaring success. Still, if your staff members are lacklustre and off-brand, you’re unlikely to get those dynamic engagements and authentic connections with your consumers.

Taking a Proactive Approach to Staffing

For better results, you should always work with a staffing agency that “gets” these challenges and bases its entire operation on a proactive staffing philosophy. This agency will fully understand your pain and be prepared to listen. They will be responsive, always reliable, and deliver exceptionally high standards for your activation team. In other words, the agency managers will take responsibility for your staffing and ensure that each selected individual is a perfect fit.

Matching Your Excellence

Your brand is first class and has a professional image. Your activation team must match, and your staffing agency should go to great lengths to ensure that each temporary member has the correct personality. They must have the proper appearance, be interested and engaged in what you’re trying to do and have relevant experience. In short, they’ll be the right staff member for your brand and not just there to make up the numbers. They’ll be perfectly happy working in the event environment and enthusiastic to meet members of your target audience. Finally, they will radiate enthusiasm for your brand and remove all those worries you may have had when working with other substandard agencies.

Leaving Nothing to Chance

It is relatively easy for any agency to find staff members looking for a temporary role. After all, many individuals need the work and are prepared to show up on the day. Yet there is a considerable difference between this philosophy and the proactive and selective approach employed by the best agency. These top-of-the-line organisations will never send people just to make up the numbers and will always ensure workers have the necessary experience. As a result, they’ll be knowledgeable, reliable and excited to become the public face of your brand. This after all, is the most important role of brand ambassadors.

Starting a New Journey

Don’t leave event staffing to chance any longer. Instead, look forward to working with an agency that understands what you’re trying to do. Then, as you prepare for your next activation, talk to the management team at eventeem and find out what it means to work with the best in the business.