• May 2, 2025

The Collective Perspective: Balancing creativity and budget in business events

The Collective Perspective: Balancing creativity and budget in business events

The Collective Perspective: Balancing creativity and budget in business events 1024 683 micebook.

The Collective by BCD M&E’s recent Collective Creative Perspective event brought together some of the agency’s key clients from sectors including tech, pharma, and finance to explore the role of creativity in business events—and how to balance that against the ever-present challenge of budget.

Through a series of workshops, roundtables and keynote sessions by show creative director Luke McCabe and presentation coach Bob Caren, the event delivered fresh insights into how creativity shapes inspiration, strategy, and success.

Participants defined what creativity means to them, shared sources of inspiration and discussed real-world challenges like budget constraints and stakeholder buy-in, and shared ways to scale creativity practically.

Dan Umney, The Collective’s director, creative services, kicked off with an emphasis on making delegates feel something—because emotional resonance is what truly drives lasting memories and message retention.

Creative challenges

Attendees shared the biggest challenges their organisations face when trying to push creative boundaries, which included risk aversion and stakeholder resistance to innovation, budget constraints and compliance hurdles, creative burnout, short timelines, and brand constraints.

The Collective team offered their four golden rules for making creativity work:

Purpose: Be laser-focused on what the event must achieve.
Openness: Embrace fresh formats and bold ideas.
Collaboration: Work closely with agency partners for aligned outcomes.
Learning: Build on past successes and refine weak spots.

Keynote insights

Bob Caren’s keynote went deep on why creativity works: because humans are wired to remember emotions, not facts. He explored barriers to creativity in organisations such as lack of time to innovate, and lack of purpose, and advised corporate planners to give people “incubation time” to absorb new ideas, and craft sessions to spark curiosity—not just deliver content.

Luke McCabe challenged attendees to reimagine event content through the lens of custom-crafted performance, sharing some real-world case studies. His “show creative direction” approach transforms traditional programming into emotive, high-impact storytelling moments using live art, bespoke visuals, and theatrical design.

Creative Versus Budget

Budget was a constant thread through the day’s discussions, with many participants agreeing that budget dictates creative outcomes, and creativity is often deprioritised until venue, logistics, and F&B are accounted for.

Participants noted that creativity is wrongly perceived as expensive and can be deprioritised when budgets shrink.

Agencies should help clients make a business case for creativity by demonstrating its value. Success metrics include emotional engagement, audience sentiment, social media traction, post-event surveys (like NPS scores), and long-term Return on Relationship (ROR), not just ROI.

The overall message of the day was that creativity isn’t a luxury—it’s a tool for connection, transformation, and impact.

 

Join Our Community

Join our community and receive the latest trending industry news in our weekly Departure Lounge and exclusive invites to events