S2 · E01 / 33 min
Event Communications: What Comms Owns—and What It Doesn't
Events expose every fuzzy brief, late decision and blurred line of responsibility. What should comms own—and what belongs elsewhere?
1 Oct 2026Listen here using Spotify’s player, or open the episode on Spotify.
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In this conversation
Comms is often brought in late, handed logistics, asked to fill rooms and judged against objectives it never helped set. The episode starts there.
Ibukun Taiwo and Grace Thuo talk about what communications should own before, during and after an event. They cover delegate packs, booths with an actual job, hybrid events, realistic metrics, thin budgets and content overload.
The work does not end when everyone goes home. How do you turn an event into ideas and content that keep doing something useful?
Ideas to take back to work
- Set clear ownership before the brief lands.
- Give delegate packs and booths a useful job.
- Choose the primary room in a hybrid event.
- Plan for the life of the content after the event.
Transcript
Machine-generated transcript. This text was produced from the final audio and checked for broad coverage and obvious errors, but it may contain mistakes. Speaker identities have not been verified.
Hello, I'm Ibukun, and I am Grace. We are the hosts of Unmuted Comms, a podcast for comms leaders by comms leaders. This is a podcast about the leadership, influence, and decisions behind great nonprofit communication. We have candid conversations about what it takes to lead communications in the nonprofit sector. These include things like building strong teams, advising executives, initiatives, navigating organizational dynamics, earning influence and making comms a more strategic force for mission and impact. I think events are one of the highest points of stress you will experience as a comms person because like the pressure is so much and you're working
with so many teams and departments, the stress levels are way higher, right? Talking sleepless nights, long coordination calls, last-minute changes. Don't let everyone get me started on travel, airport logistics, people missing their flights. It will literally turn your work-life balance upside down. And the event management people, they have my respect, to be honest. So today we're talking about event comms and I just wanted to start with that.
Thank you, Ibukun. And indeed, I think especially for communicators where everybody else is going to enjoy the event or at least participate, we are fully working, fully on board, fully running around. I mean, there's literally not a minute's rest. We are back and forth. We retire. We start the day earliest, retire latest, and we have to keep the machinery moving. doing. So I know for many, many people events are a sore spot for us in terms of even just managing self. So, I think we shall be looking at different tips. We shall be looking at what you can say the hard thing about event comms, the good, the bad and not so great and have a look at how we can then improve or make our contribution effective.
Okay. What makes events different from other, you know, communication mechanisms is presence. Emails, newsletters, reports, they inform, they can even persuade if you do it well. But an event makes people feel something. It makes them to be feel like they're part of something. So it elevates the experience. events creates literally creates shared experience emotion grants people access to people and places they normally would not have from pros and cons perspective I think the biggest pro for events is that it gives you a stronger sense of commitment for example with an email someone can say oh I know those people I read their stuff but if you host a good event people
will move up the connection grid to understanding, you know they'll say oh I've met them, I get these guys, I want to do something or I want to work with them right and that's really what I think everyone who's hosting an event is really looking for. Of course this isn't an ideal world we are talking just explaining all the framework work for what an event is. And this is also where communications comes in, because beyond promoting the events we provide answers that makes, that elevates the event. Why are we gathering our usual favorite questions to ask? Why are we gathering, why are we convening these events, who needs to be, who are we inviting, why do they need to be there, what
do we want them to do after, what do you want them to film at the events and what story you know are we telling before the event during the event and then what how do we carry that story beyond the moment of the event in fact I'd say that comms is a core part of the event experience so imagine a nonprofit convening policy makers donors community members around something like say maternal health right before the events comms builds relevance you get the right people to attend that's one of the variables but then during it we shift the narrative we help you know create and shape those shared experiences that people are there too you know to live through and then we give
people talking points key messages that we hope will travel beyond that event and so the event itself might last two hours but a good which good event communications, the impact lasts beyond months. So that's the context of communications in an ideal world. Now absolutely we are ideal world would be so good um but indeed we are not so what are the landmines in event communications and um you know where does comes starting where it comes in what is our domain what is under our remit ideally you know so let's just start with the first part in terms of the landmines and invent communications and in my view the biggest one is unclear ownership I think that's where the problems start and where they persist to date budgets are tight resources
are at height but the communications function cannot as well be the one that is also running running logistics, running speaker support. I mean there are all these other things that they have been put under. Number one, you're brought late. You're brought in later to the meeting. The concept has been done. The speakers have been contacted. As a matter of fact it's like FYI we have an event in two weeks. We have a webinar tomorrow. We we have this the next day. And you're thinking, okay, so you've been brought into a rubber stamp process in as far as we just need social media or we just need comms to do some comms around it. But what does that even mean? So what kind of
comms am I doing around it? What is the objective of this event? And sometimes you find when you ask that question, you know, it's almost like you come as an irritant, but I always encourage communication professionals stay there, do not be intimidated because at at the end of the day, we should be working towards the same bottom line. So when I'm asking these questions it's because I want us to be on the same page otherwise you could it would be a case of, you know, we told you to post this but you did not and it's because we were not aligned from the word go what I thought was what was requested is not actually what was requested. Number two, please communications
is not logistics, please, please. We are not the ones who should be sitting in to do registration, airport transfers and I know what kind of logistics. Event operations is a huge thing and that should be handled by somebody or an outlet completely separate so that the comms person can focus on what it is they are supposed to do on the value that they bring as the comm's expert. Last minute request, gosh our favorite communicators, that change to the slide, that change through the PowerPoint, that changed to I don't know what then becomes a whole all, it takes up a lot of time and resources that we do not have in a time constrained space. So here you are, you're not asked to put together the PowerPoint or to do some branding
of something or whatever that request is, its speeches, its media engagement, it's all these things. Every last minute request you add into the communications professional, there's going to be a trade off, something is going to suffer because suddenly everything is priority. And And so it really comes off as a time-consuming task that is not the best way to do these things. And that is why you need to bring them up early because then I can already see if this event is in two weeks, what are the priorities that I need to do before then and have them ready into what degree so that we're avoiding the last minute rush?
An unclear success metrics is the other one that I would add out actually college. the fifth one, where in terms of the landmines in event communications you cannot have clear success metrics if even at the onset you did not have clear objectives you did not have alignment right there um right from the start that becomes an issue having likes is not just a metric especially for an event um there needs to be so much clarity about why is this why are we as an organization either convening this event or participating in this event?
And if you're participating in these events, say for example, there's a different convener. They have their objectives. What are our objectives and how do they align? So that you can also see if you are best fit or even who is attending or how even the key messages will be. So there's got to be a very deliberate conversation where the team that has been put in charge to steer this event or attendance, whatever that looks like. Everybody plus delegates has sat down and understood this is why we're going for this event. This is what we are looking at in terms of objectives, in terms our priorities.
And this is how we are all aligning as a team and how we shall measure success. And success is not just gonna be measured from a communications lens but from the whole team. So having said that, what does it mean when we say in an ideal world, you know, what What is communications domain and what should not be our domain? And honestly, I think communications should own the communication problem. We are not there to own the event. We're there to own a communication aspect of the event so we're there to look at the audience.
We're that to look clarifying the purpose in the narrative. We ship in key messages. We're advising on channels and audience experience. We preparing spokespeople. We making sure different communications around the event feel coherent that's what it means about owning the communications rather than the event itself there are very many other moving parts so the operations team will be looking at their own thing, the finance team will be looking for their own things leadership likewise and so forth comms those are the things that should be making it on our list audience purpose narrative key messages channels health, all these things and at the end of the day making it all come coherent. It could
be maybe that you are advising on the best way to do some maybe some kind of registrations or stuff like that but it is important to note that it's a big difference between having a communications interest in something or actually being the one now held accountable just because I've given an idea about registrations or a speaker does not mean that necessarily has to become my accountability. It is a space that we are brainstorming and it is to show that as communications experts, we can speak about many other things apart from communications so that distinction is important otherwise then the event comms becomes this strange hybrid role where the comms team is expected to make the event successful yet we have very little control
over the things that actually determine whether it's successful. For me, the worst one was that late updates like you mentioned. What I call late decisions. Because what do you mean? You're just making up your mind that we should do something at the conference that is just happening three weeks away and the brief is usually something like oh we should do something. And something could be anything. Do you want us to present poetry at a place? Are to dance, what exactly is something?
And that also ties into what you also mentioned about the metrics. Because the brief was vague, the metrics are also going to not be satisfactory at all. Speaking of metrics, last now that's mentioned was the fact that I think having realistic metrics are also important, especially for comms. Of course, understanding from the leader's perspective, they usually want that idea, they are not too particular about what comms is this, events are doing this, stakeholder management are doing these, they're just like I want this event to happen and you guys go make it happen which is understandable but as the comms person you should that it helps to know what comes responsible for like you mentioned and then
being able to see because this is what we are responsible for this is what we can promise or at least try to deliver. There are some things that are literally just wishful thinking if you're expecting comms to do it, for example, if you have an event and then you want people, let's say you're having an event at the global forum, for example, you're hosting an event, you have a side event, things like that, and you want the room to be full. To be honest, it's not entirely up to comms to do that because we know that not everybody sees the people who want in the room many of them might not even be on social media so they won't even see our social media broadcasts right some of
them might not even receive our newsletters or even read them they might receive them but not even with them or you need them in time to know that oh you're going to be at this event blah blah blah so there are several people that there are separate departments that are responsible for for those kinds of deliverables, right? So just having those kind of mental models I think they are very helpful in being able to contribute effectively during event planning, event prep and then post-events assessments. I don't know what you think about that.
No, you're right. And you know, I think it's that thing of the burden of where we say comms being when you don't understand the comms function that you have in an organization. And I do appreciate, there's a space of yeah let's stretch you grow you expose you but we don't to do that as well at the expense of the actual work that you're supposed to do so when that is not clear that is why then we have got a lot of mixed kind of rules, mixed deliverables, mixed expectations, and I mean for events, I have done the full gamut from registration to literally picking people at the airport because I don't know. The service provider, I can't remember what
they did or not then I had to wake up in 3am in the morning to go and pick someone because my phone number is the one that was there as a contact and this person was stranded at at the airport. I have reviewed, put together the agendas. I mean name everything from logistics to operations to talk about it. I've done it even to rapporteur and so you may ask at what point do you do the communications? Even now looking back sometimes I wonder when, at what point did I do comms in that event? I cannot recall because there's so much happening in, and there was hardly time to actually sit in and absorb it and you know really really make the best of that situation and then give my best. One thing that I see has been working well is preparing delegates. The thing is the delegates are already busy and stressed. They have got their presentations, they've got the concept notes, everything else that they need to do and they've put their own logistics. However one way of bringing them on board with the comms overview is having
a communications park. This is a document which helps delegates understand what you're trying to achieve. It's one thing having a meeting and saying, this is what our objectives are, this what we're going to be doing and leaving it there. But then something that they can quickly refer to, and that park has got all the information they need. These are all the events, these are all of the sessions we have, our key messages, our narrative, how we are positioning ourselves, these hashtags and handles, I mean the social media guidance. So we've done that and then we socialized it through meetings and even We even had one-on-ones where needed because we are able to show them this is how you, this
is a key message. This is your session, this is how you can integrate these key messages in your session and even in your networking or some other kind of discussion it could even be a conversation starter and that was found to be really useful so it's not just about giving the delegates information but actually giving them tools and the context to become part of the comms effort they also get to help you because sometimes you don't always have comms at an event or you have limited comms. So they become by extension, helping you to do your work through generating content or even just engaging with it. The other thing that we see if you have a booth, this
is a whole other conversation in itself, a booth needs to be given a job. A booth in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's only that when there's no clarity about it, it then just becomes this space where we have to use it just because we have to be there. But if it's given a job, proper JD, that is an understanding why is this booth here? What do you want to do with it? Then it becomes a part of the event journey, the event experience for the organization. So you have to know who is going to be there, who's available and what information they need to know because the booth is an entry point to your organization. It's where people come to learn more about you. So it's not just branding in the physical space and a place to issue out flyers.
It has to be a very intentional approach to ensuring that this is your entry point organization. Another tip, if you're a comms leader, please do not make yourself the bottleneck. As a head of comms, a big part of my role is just giving the team enough confidence and ownership and context. I want them to be able to feel confident in their skills and to represent communications. I don't have to be in the room and that for me is a big win. Then there's another thing is about content, where it's very easy. And even for me this is such a big learning point where I'm really learning and trying to learn how to balance content from an event. There's a tendency and the temptation to capture everything and publish everything. However, the organization is not just about these events. The organization has got many other things that are taking place. So balancing it in the right way because audiences are receiving comms from the organization, they're during after
alongside everything else that the organization is communicating. So you have to think intentionally about the rhythm of the content, what needs to come out immediately, what can wait and what, you know, deserve departure, you can visit it later and you know what does not even actually need to be published at all. Let's not forget that, you now, yes, the event gives you a lot of content but that principle doesn't mean that your audience needs all of it at once. and finally is to say that comms, event comms is about designing communications around the journey and not the events. You have the before where you're looking at how to prepare the people who are participating amongst many other things.
You have the during, how we are making it easy for people to engage and find what they need Because there are many other organizations in that space who are also doing what you're doing Who are also at the event So how do we make it easy to know what we are doing and find it easily And then there's the after, how do you keep the momentum How do you get the value of the event moving So that is not just a simple, we came, we saw, and then we went back home The team, how would we organize ourselves as a communication team So that the communications for this event is not dependent on one person. And lastly, the content. How do we sustain the conversation without overwhelming people?
So let's discuss comms support for online versus offline events, you know, from comms perspective or operational, you know, the operations aspect of comms. Is it possible to truly satisfy both? It sounds unintuitive but I'll explain how how it's a valid consideration. You cannot optimize equally for both of them. I'm just going to start with that unless you have a lot of resources to produce two equally rich experiences. During COVID, I remember that we had the conference which used to be an international conference we had every year and people from all over came. We had speakers from different countries. During during COVID we still had that conference but there were just about maybe 10 to 15 people
on site including some speakers so we actually had to spend more time thinking about the online experience you see so the mental model I that mental model of the primary room and secondary which is not automatically primary is always physical the online in secondary they are literally objectives where do going in and prioritizing online is better for example if the goal is scale public education geographic reach or content distribution for example you need to prioritize online you're launching a report it can't be the physical is just one moment the online experience is literally what is going to ensure that it travels it goes viral it gets covered by the right people the online is the priority
the express online has to be intuitive for online participants because there will be many people I mean if even if you have a whole for example it can only house how many people but their online experience is you know it's almost boundless at less cost so the expense has to be in treating for online participant that's to be easy to have those viral moments people have to be able to start the conversations or continue the conversations they asked me a lot of of excitement, you know before the day of the event. We see this in the tech sector sometimes before there is a new iPhone or announcements, you see people already having those discussions people are already sharing memes online, you
know and conversation so the actual announcement or the unveiling of it at an event you realize that yes they might have been resources invested in that particular moments but a lot of the heavy work was done before and would also continue after so I think these are things that we sort of leave on the table that we don't consider and because the default is always oh you just want to do the physical thing and then just set up the zoom link and into the online will take care of itself but I think there's particular situations that the on-site outside preparation is actually a service of the online.
That's an interesting take, I don't think even I've ever really given much thought so for me it's also a learning because I am learning from you so I even have questions about that aspect of virtual and does it sometimes feel like a short change if you are attending virtually and maybe the people who are in person have paid for it. What do you think? Or is that another conversation? It's definitely worth exploring. I think, okay, just from my own personal experience, I remember there was a particular event that happened in Nairobi, ironically, because now I'm based in Nairobi. I couldn't join. This was around maybe 2016. And it was a tech event.
I was working in tech back then and it was really there was a lot of excitement you know the announcement the speakers were people i really wanted to listen to and hear what they had to say the online experience was not it for me i couldn't you know because um then live stream wasn't all that good um you couldn't have because they were there was the main plenary and then there were side events events of which sometimes you know the resources I think for that particular conference the resources didn't allow them to be able to live stream every side event so that was also another challenge so you could only listen to this because that spoke during the plenary or the main sessions
right and people I really wanted to engage with or listen to them or ask questions if possible where in the side events you know so things like that so I was on perpetually online trying to find anyone tweeting about what some of those people were saying I think one of things that really helped then was there was a particular person who attended one of the side events and I was interested in and the person was treating you know if I was sharing some of these that speaker was saying that really helped it made my day let me put it that way so those are some of the ways that I feel like we leave some opportunities off you know on the table or other, we don't consider that there are people who would like to be in this room but
don't have the access maybe it was a paid event you know things like that like there's a whole brainstorming that we can have around it but just to consider the fact that you're having the conference and then not all the sessions accessible to people online and their participation also sometimes people asking questions online, but those questions are not even reaching the speakers. So many things, I think so many things. I guess this is why you're saying optimize it for your online audience because they're the ones who are most likely to miss out more than those who are already in attendance.
It takes time to be able to come up with creative campaigns that will get people talking, that will go viral. Trust me, every comms person hopes to go viral with their posts, but it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes you can tell when an idea has the potential to go viral, but it takes time to come up with those ideas. You know, you need to brainstorm, sometimes you need to test and test and then if you go, oh, I think this is resonating, then you can now go bigger, right? But we don't get all those opportunities, especially in the nonprofit because the comms budget is usually one of the, you know, the leanest and for, of course, we understand why,
Okay, but then we also need to push because if you do want the right comms results, you need to invest in it. Like a wise man would say that you can either have it fast or cheap or good, but never the three of them together. That should be a comms slogan by the way. We we should be hanging it in our comms offices. And you just point at it, like someone get a request and choose your hand here, what do you want? Exactly. I like that. It's also why sometimes push for less events so that we can go deep on the ones that we've agreed to. You can't be rather than trying to host every event or have a booth at every event which costs money and spreading ourselves. Can we have one flagship event that we have more autonomy over? And
then we can do all this, right? Then of course, if there's still more resources, we can then spread them across some other strategic platforms. Of course, not every NGO, it won't work for your NGO or non-profit. Not every NGO has that convenient power or the status to be able to say, okay, we are hosting our own event and we are going to invite people. But for those who do have that choice, I think it's a consideration. It doesn't always have to be physical and then the virtual is the afterthought.
You've held an event, so then what? So let's talk about post-event because I think alongside there's the part where the event is going on and people are sharing their tips kind of thing. But you as a communication expert, you have the opportunity to extend the life of the ideas that have been put on, have been brought out during this conversation. You've got, here you can start identifying some key moments, insights, the strongest point, and then build this out in different kinds of content formats that will resonate with your audience.
And you know sometimes it's even better because you are able to say link, let's say you had that you had, let's say you had a report that has been there maybe you've even talked about it perhaps before you amplified it but maybe didn't gain the traction needed and this could be let's see a way to bring it back if there's something about that report that you can link to some of the things for example that came out as insights that's a great way to do two things at once. You know you are talking about what came out and you know you're still drawing attention to the reporting in linking those two conversations so find a way to extend the life of the ideas that are there. And even after the event, look at the event
story should look at what did it actually bring out? What do they change? How are we moving forward? Because sometimes there's also event fatigue. People are like, oh, we're always meeting, we always talking about the same things, then what? And many times, even when you attend events, especially global events where they release their post-event reports, you'll find and oftentimes people will want to see, okay we came, we met then what has happened since then? And even for you as an organization, you can always pull that out and say, you know, we went for this event. Maybe we had, I don't know, SMEs pitching for this and this and after that were able to work towards them, whatever that looks like. What are you able to do after
that so that you can actually bring that out as some of the turnaround moments, so to speak. people who are not in the room, I think this is what for example Ibukun was saying. Thought videos, articles, briefings, quotes, visual summaries as well work really well by the way and people are able to use that, save them, share them, whatever that looks like. So reach to those who were not in their room. They're oftentimes the majority and they also want to, sometimes they're already in the choir so they know why they're following you. Other times they want to be given a reason to actually you believe in, and here's an opportunity to do that. So short videos always people engage much better with those, find ways to bring that to life. And so it's not too heavily jargon-laden and stuff like that. And visual summaries, I'm a big fan of visual summars as well, as another example, in terms of thought leadership pieces, media, whatever that looks like, just find a way to reach those who are not in the room.
assets for sure that have got a longer shelf life, do not only focus on what happened there. There's some recordings which are evergreen. One strategy, for example, we use is if you're going for an event and we already know the speaker list and we know that these are the speakers who are coming and we really have a good rapport with many of them, we book them in for like five minutes, seven minutes maximum because we know time is of the essence at an event. And in those seven minutes, we are asking them three to four questions. One will probably be the question from that event, the other three are not and those other three as stuff that you would use along the content pipeline
later, later, because we know at one point or another we're going to collaborate with these guys so we're gonna have something that is evergreen so we don't focus only on the questions for that particular event and because we knew it's not always easy to find these people at any given time and meet with them. When we have an opportunity, we completely maximize it. So that is one way that you can look at how to give, you know, have speaker insights and recordings that are evergreen and have a long shelf life. I think event comes in one of those things that every, there's a learning, every single event is literally new things not one, new things to learn because none of them comes in the same way.
Yeah, literally fighting for the life Ah my goodness So you keep growing this body of knowledge and knowing you know what Just because I had this webinar last week This is a different team A different webinar Everything is different for this week So I may have some learnings from there They may translate Others will not So you're literally on your toes And just understanding some of the best ways to go about these things Thank you for joining us for this episode of Unmuted Conversations in Comms Until next time, let's keep the conversations going
Hosted by Ibukun Taiwo and Grace Thuo
Music: ‘Uplifting Bass’ by Lily J, via Mixkit