Recap Obsession Dialogues 2022

How data can improve your events? Good question. During this edition of the Obsession Dialogues, we showed that data does not have to be a complicated obstacle. But a valuable commodity that we can benefit from. We started a dialogue about this with our regular clients and other marcom specialists who had gathered in Fort de Gagel on 12 December.

  

For the second time in a row we got the opportunity to organize our own Obsession Dialogues event. The Dialogues give the chance to talk about the event profession together in order to be able to grow sustainably with each other. We give a prelude by means of a relevant theme, the dialogue follows automatically.

Joint start

After a sustainable lunch and the opening of host Tom Vaessen and Account Director Hans Klaver, Dimitri Bonthuis was the first to take the floor to inspire the audience with stories about his experience as a representative of the sports world in the program team of Fieldlab events. This organization held 29 test events during the corona pandemic in order to assess whether it was possible to come together responsibly and safely. In these studies, data was of course indispensable to investigate the risks and to convince the government of their point. Data from Fieldlab eventually formed the basis for the corona opening plan in the Netherlands and Belgium. Then Bathilde Meulenbelt of Dentsu and Mitchell van Dooijeweerd gave a sneakpeak of their deep dive sessions.

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The love story between data and events

After the joint start, people could look for depth during the deep dive sessions, the first of which was inserted as a true love story. During the session 'The love story between data & events' we crawled into the heart of the target group. To do this, Bathilde Meulenbeld, Insights and Effectiveness Consultant at advertising agency Dentsu International, and Hans Klaver told all about gaining insight into your target group through data. "When you're not working on data to get to know your target group, you leave the target group very anonymous. You do not get into the skin of the target group. Data helps to get a complete picture," says Bathilde. The participants also set to work on creating a true 'dating profile'. They had to answer a few questions in order to form a psychographic description of their target group. In this way, everyone learned which questions are relevant to a watertight target group profile. As Dichtwater put it: "If you don't even know who it's for, how can you know if it's hitting?". On the basis of an Empathy folder and tools such as the CCS model, the participants were helped on their way.

Sustainable Savvy

During the session 'Sustainable Savvy' we started a conversation with each other to see what we are already doing in the field of sustainability when organizing events and where there is room for improvement. This session turned out to be very necessary for many, because the pre-sent survey showed that no less than 75% hardly ever use data to measure how sustainable the event has been. The session was led by Mitchell van Dooijeweerd, Sustainability Manager at the Revolution Foundation, and Donna Steijn, Obsession's sustainability manager. They learned to convert the sustainability goals of their organization into event-specific sustainability goals. On the basis of their own sustainability checklist and the insights of the most circular festival in the world, they were encouraged to provide briefings for the future with concrete goals for making events more sustainable.

High five!

During the closing, we immediately applied data in practice and had attendees evaluate, write down their insights and share new themes for the next edition. The five fingers gave us a literal handle with which we could capture what the most important insights of the day were in one image. See what was top of mind for everyone after a day full of inspiration and conversations.

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A poetic closer

As a grand finale, Reinier van der Veer, better known as Dichtwater, took the stage to let the experiences of 'Save the Data' reverberate through the fort in an inspiring poem. Our team's favorite passage?

It ensures that you do not communicate incorrectly.
Don't miss the mark and ruin budgets.
And data that sounds cold, but hot and cold that combines.
Like a crepe suzette with ice, flambéed at the end.

We can look back on another successful edition and kick off the new year with enough knowledge for new plans, ideas and impactful events. View the full photo album here.

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How data can help you?

Do you want to know more about the content of the presentations and how data can help you to make events better? Inquire about what we can do.