That box is now on fire…
Responsible events aren’t a trend. They’re a necessity.
Wireless / Kanye. Recent, so very obvious & clear moral, commercial, trust and credibility issues. Mentioning ‘Fyre’ in the event world still raises eyebrows. DaBaby at Rolling Loud. European soccer ‘Super-League’. These are all Google-able but have one common trait. Known risk. Responsibility. Decision-making.
The corporate world is not immune…brands such as SXSW speaker choices, Tesla ‘Autonomy Day’ credibility, BlizzCon 2019 political activism, COP overt fossil fuel sponsorship…
The Wireless case this week doesn’t just affect the brand owners. An entire supply chain has just seen a valuable gig evaporate.
That box is now on fire.
I’ve spent the last three decades helping to sell and produce events; summits, conferences, award ceremonies, incentive programmes, and brand experiences. Thousands of moving parts, hundreds of suppliers, hundreds of thousands of attendees. And for most of that time, sustainability sat in a box marked “nice to have.”
#Eventprofs – your product is in the public eye. The shift in events is happening now. Sustainability & responsibility are not just about carbon emissions, important as these are. Pressure isn’t coming from regulators, though they’re catching up fast for that element. It’s coming from inside the room. From clients who arrive at briefings with ESG (there are three letters in there, not just E) clauses already drafted. From procurement teams who want to know your Scope 3 methodology before they’ve seen your creative. From crew who ask whether you pay the living wage before they confirm availability. The pressure isn’t external anymore. It’s cultural.
What’s interesting is that the events industry has always been exceptional at producing moments, real, memorable moments. The perfectly timed reveal. The room that seems to breathe in unison. We’ve always known how to make something complex appear effortless.
Responsible delivery is just the next version of that craft. Deliver exceptional activations and experiences, and deliver them well. ‘Well’ now means responsibly.
The organisations getting this right aren’t treating sustainability as a layer of compliance bolted onto the production. They’re integrating it into the design – into venue selection, supplier briefing, equipment specification, crew welfare, audience welfare, community engagement & legacy planning. A carbon footprint shouldn’t be a post-event audit. It should be a pre-production creative driver. And what I consistently see is that the tightest of constraints often produces the most considered work.
These organisations think wider than just ‘the day’. They think community, crew, legacy. They think reputation. They think risk.
The challenge isn’t knowledge. Most senior producers already know what good looks like. The challenge is measurement – being able to demonstrate responsibility, compare it, improve it, and tell a credible story to a client who increasingly needs to tell that story to their own board & to their own audience.
That’s the gap the industry is still navigating. And it’s where event:decision steps in.
#responsibleevents #sustainability #ESG #eventindustry #eventprofs
