Is your audience starving for substance while choking on too much flash & trash? People want and need a special recipe of style and substance to feel that the “experience” of your event is worth the time and effort. Serve tasty content by modeling your event after an old friend – the PB&J.

Amazing Event Experiences are just like PB&J Sandwiches

Our daughter McKenna is a PB&J gourmet. She has spent years perfecting her palate and is now the undisputed teenage peanut butter and jelly sandwich expert. She takes two to school with her every day – one for lunch and one to eat on the way! She has developed exacting specifications that guarantee exceptional flavor and experience.

What I’ve learned from McKenna is that amazing event experiences are just like PB&J sandwiches. They are a balance of three things:

1. The bread is substance.

2. The peanut butter is messaging and sticky ideas.

3. The jelly is creative, emotion and interaction.

Here’s how to design event experiences that are valuable, enjoyable and meaningful. Let’s talk about the ingredients first and then how you can benefit from the perfect PB&J Formula.

Bread is Substance

Substance is the “staff of life” for any event, meeting or workshop. It’s the value that people can sink their teeth into. Still, substance doesn’t mean just wall-to-wall facts, information, details and endless documentation. Your content doesn’t have to be as dry as a mouth filled with saltines.

It should be the raw material that brings together the facts you want attendees to know, the results you want them to achieve, and the experience you want them to have. Every attendee comes to an event seeking this bread. Everything else is an extra incentive. So you need to make sure that you are providing hearty whole wheat content and not white bread and empty calories.

Peanut Butter is Messaging and Sticky Ideas

Substance is critical, but it needs to have a direction. The message is the big idea that explains why everyone is there. It’s what every member of the audience wants to know – the takeaway, the action item, the bottom line.

That’s what I explained in Want a Better Meeting Message? Get Three Cows, a Ladder and a Can of Paint! Attendees don’t want long speeches, endless data or facts chiseled on stone tablets. They want the shortest bridge between their needs and expectations – and your desired results.

So the goal is to make the messaging like peanut butter – very, very sticky. Give people big ideas they’ll remember – ideas that stick to the roof of their … brain!

•  Content that provides doable solutions.

•  Content that speaks from authority.

•  Content that is valuable on a personal level. It doesn’t matter if the people on stage think something is valuable. If the people in the audience can’t see themselves using the information and benefitting from it – then your message is lost.

Jelly is Creative, Emotion and Interaction

Nutrition is great. Chewy is wonderful. But you have to make everything easy to swallow. In a PB&J, that’s the jelly. It’s the sweet lubricant that makes the message go down easy and taste great. This is where all those amazing creative ideas and audience engagement come in.

If you’ve ever watched a bunch of 5-year-olds make PB&Js, then you know the problem. They smear on globs of peanut butter, then pile on spoon after spoon of jelly, slap down the top slice of bread and smash it all together. When they try to take the first bite, everything squirts out in all directions and they end up with a gooey mess. At that point, they toss ‘em on the table and walk off. Ask yourself honestly: Have you ever kept adding creative in an attempt to fill up the agenda?

Color, animation and flash are great. I’m the first guy to add music, video, audience participation and performances. But they have to support the substance and the message. The experience and content have to mirror the audience’s needs, motivations and reasons for being there.

Yet when events are planned, too often the creative jumps ahead of the rest of the process because it’s fun and easier. Yep, creative is easy, so we do it first. Messaging, substance and content are hard, so we avoid them and hope we can just recycle and repackage a lot of last year’s material. Like kids making a sandwich, we often end up with a gooey mess. It doesn’t have to be that way!

Content Drives Creative

Start with solid content and then develop creative to help bring it to life.

Use the creative to build personalization and help people relate to the content. Look for new ways to keep people engaged. There’s no fond nostalgia to an audience. If they’ve seen it or done it – it’s old news. Don’t do it the same way again for the same audience. There are lots of ways to present content in creative ways, but don’t confuse style with substance.

Style Versus Substance

Messaging and substance have to be visually attractive, stimulating, involving, colorful and emotional. That’s style.

Style makes the look and feel of the event distinctive. The right style builds a connection to the people who attend. It also is a strong indication of who you think will be attending. It’s a compliment to attend a meeting that is very professional and cool. Still, substance should outweigh style 6-to-1.

Follow The PB&J Formula for Amazing Events

To create an amazing audience experience, follow McKenna’s proven PB&J Formula:

60% Substance – Start by making the majority of the meeting fresh, wholesome substance. Aim for a solid 60%. Just like in a PB&J, you should begin and end with Substance. Everything else goes in between.

10% Creative – Add just enough delicious creative to grab attention and make the experience a pleasure. Just remember, even though you absolutely must have creative, you don’t need too much.

30% Messaging – Finally, make a healthy layer of messaging to provide the Big Idea that holds together the content and your business and emotional messages. Focus on creating a clear, unified message that links everything together. Calls for action. And is remembered.

Put all the elements together in the right ratio and you have what McKenna calls a “balanced bite.” The bread makes it wholesome, the jelly makes it tasty, and the peanut butter holds everything together.

A Balanced Bite

I want you to follow the same formula for an exceptional event experience. Attendees want an experience that is valuable, enjoyable and meaningful. Give them a satisfying balance of substance, messaging and creative. Don’t leave anything out. Really, who eats just a jelly sandwich?

Substance without messaging and creative is impersonal and boring.

Messaging without substance and creative is meaningless.

Creative without messaging and substance is trivial and superficial.

A National Favorite

Did you know the PB&J has been an integral part of American cuisine for over 75 years? It’s so popular that the average child will eat 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before she/he graduates from high school. Of course, McKenna broke that record already and is healthy and trim.

It isn’t hard to create an amazing event experience that will be an audience favorite. Just follow the PB&J Formula.

Provide clear messaging that communicates the purpose, objective and intent. Support it with relevant, valuable, memorable and doable content. Give the content some real substance. Then use the creative to help make the experience enjoyable.

You’ll end up with a satisfying audience experience that will make everyone actually hungry for more.

Let’s spend 15 minutes talking about your next project or challenge. It’s a free consultation so we can get to know each other. Just click on CONTACT US or send an email to andy@ideagroupatlanta.com and get in touch.

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