From once a year to every day: creating long term vitality from big events
Using big events as opportunities to reshape habits
We all love a big to-do. The annual parade. The summer fair. The big music festival. The winter holiday bonanza. When trying to bring new energy to a place, “let’s put on an event!” always comes up.
But this strategy alone is mistaken. Thriving places are defined by their daily vitality, not just one time excitement. The layering of recurring positive habits by participants is what brings a place to life. Within the context of our Hierarchy of Events, large events are the last priority.
Large events do have an important role to play once a place is already delivering a consistently positive, daily experience. Namely…
Big events as opportunities to reshape habits.
Start with the why.
So many large events, as a feature of their scale, have a myopic focus on their own success. This is not limited to event focused production companies, but even when the event is put on by an organization with a long term vested interest in the place itself. Budget and logistics alone can easily overtake considerations for how the event can benefit the place it is occurring.
Having shared success define the goals of the event is essential.
Large events give places the opportunity to gain exposure to those who don’t usually visit and provide an experience to attract them. But the awareness and attraction only create long term value for a place if there are positive experiences occurring and return visits when a big event is not happening. The ongoing, positive experiences are essential to the formation of new positive habits. Without them, you’ll be left with relative dormancy between event dates.
To summarize, big events:
Should aim to create success for the event itself and the host location;
Provide opportunities to break through the noise to get people’s attention and get them to visit a place when they otherwise have not;
Are only beneficial to the long term health of a place if there are positive daily experiences occurring at that location when the event is over;
The host location benefits to the degree that the event helps shape future, positive habits of awareness, visitation, and other forms of use.
Strategy in Action: Generating long-term benefits from the Edina Art Fair at 50th & France Commercial District
From 2021 - 2023 The Musicant Group served as the fractional staff for the merchant association serving the high-end 50th & France Commercial District. Each year, the association produced the Edina Art Fair, a premier legacy event drawing over 200,000 annually. Prior to our involvement, the three-day event was seen by many businesses as a disruption—pulling in crowds that didn’t engage with retailers and displaced regulars.
We oriented our event planning efforts to solve for:
How the event could drive sales to merchants;
Continue to generate funds for the ongoing work of the association;
Foster long-term visitation.
In short, how could we transform the event from a one-off spectacle into a sustainable tool for district-wide activation?
Turning One-Time Visitors into Regulars
Our strategies to make these goals a reality included:
Draw attention to everyday assets. We reoriented vendor tents from having their backs to retailers to facing them, ensuring foot traffic flowed past merchants;
Embed events in the district fabric. Moving the busy kids activity zone from a peripheral location into a new plaza that was flanked by shops but lacked ongoing foot traffic;
Connect to the future. Promoting the upcoming summer event series during the Art Fair, building awareness and anticipation for more reasons to return;
Events which are “goal-driven.” Bringing event features into the retailers themselves by embedding artists into participating merchant spaces;
Capture lasting connections. Our team gathered hundreds of new emails during the event to grow the newsletter and keep attendees connected to future happenings.
Impact
As a result of these efforts:
92% of businesses reported a positive or neutral effect on sales, directly or indirectly—a huge shift from previous years.
Hundreds of new newsletter subscribers
Net revenue from event was maintained from past years
Thousands of visitors became aware of the new plaza and surrounding merchants
