• February 28, 2025

5 key behaviours shaping brand experiences and events

5 key behaviours shaping brand experiences and events

5 key behaviours shaping brand experiences and events 1024 683 micebook.

Behavioural insights reveal more than just shifts in what motivates people to attend events. They also highlight what people are seeking out within the experiences themselves. By analysing these insights, brands can grow in tandem with the event landscape, and strategically adapt to better meet the needs of their audiences.

Following extensive research and analysis, First Event has unearthed five of the leading behaviours that people are expecting brands to reflect in the experiences they craft. The agency shared these with key clients at its recent First In event. Here’s the key highlights from the research…

Active Achievements

People want to leave events with a sense of achievement, ready to action the key takeaways and strategies their favourite brands have equipped them with. As more and more people are looking to future-proof their skill-sets, with 49% of adults actively participating in learning, brands should look to offer the platforms, communities and expertise attendees need to improve their skills in a chosen area.

However, brands need to make sure that they are catering to this need for life-long learning in a way that is flexible, fun and truly inclusive, demonstrating a precise understanding of their audience’s interests and learning styles.

Tech-nically balanced

In a world that is becoming increasingly hyper-connected, defined by daily digital overwhelm and rising phenomena such as brain rot, people are looking for a refreshed approach to digital integration.

However, this doesn’t mean that people are moving away from technology altogether. Instead, they’re looking for technology that will enhance, rather than overpower, their real life experiences, with 44% of global B2B event attendees stating that they wanted technology to make it easier to engage with their event. For brands, this means looking at ways that tech can elevate your attendee’s enjoyment of the event, rather than replacing core moments of it, or becoming the focus of it.

Craving Connections

Even though we are more connected as a global society, people are also more lonely than ever. To combat this, people are looking for events that prioritise empathy and intimacy, meeting their need for more meaningful connections, rather than just a greater number of connections.

With 51% of event attendees in the UK saying they were aiming to try new experiences and connect with others in 2024, brands need to ask themselves how they can foster deeper and more intimate interactions at their events, curating spaces and experiences that encourage people to truly open up.

Self-care Seekers

Against the context of a national stress epidemic affecting nine in ten UK adults, and a constantly rising cost of living crisis, people are rethinking their relationship with wellbeing and their health, with 65% of UK event attendees saying they want events that help them take control of their wellbeing.

As well as evaluating this on an individual level, wellbeing and health is also being reprioritised on a much larger scale, with people also seeking experiences that enrich the wellbeing of the planet and their local communities. Ultimately, people are looking for experiences that make them feel good, both in the long and short term, in order to improve their physical and mental health.

Values forward

With value-led spending on the rise, it’s no surprise that people are showing similar behaviour signals when it comes to the live experiences they’re seeking out too. People are now looking for events that feel like a manifestation of their values, with experiences that help to bring them closer to the things they care about most.

Increasingly alienated by faux-activism, people want events that remove the friction and barriers between them and the causes that matter to them. But rather than adding these values to experiences at surface level, brands need to embed themselves in the causes and values they support and promote, to avoid being painted with the faux-activist or green-washing label.

Read First Event’s full Unlocking Experiences report for a deeper dive into the generational lenses shaping today’s event experiences

Download here now

 

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