S7E2: Behavior Change in Events

Hello, my favorite people on the internet! Dr. K here, and I am so excited to be back with another episode of Experience University! Today’s episode is all about the different roles and careers in the event industry. I will also explain the role of a behavior change designer in events, which is a term not often used in the industry. Be sure to follow along for more episodes in the coming weeks!

Today we are discussing:
Free Masterclass Offerings on Behavior Change Design (0:55)
How Events and Roles Change Based on Society (2:44)
Description of Roles in the Event Industry (4:38)
Behavior Change Designer in Events and Other Industries (9:57)
Future Training Series (16:38)

Go to this NEW website for more information and additional resources!
www.experienceuniversity.org 

Connect with us on our socials!
Facebook: Experience University
TikTok: @DrKDoesParenting @EventswithDrK
Instagram: @kristin.malek

Transcript

Dr. K:

You are listening to the Experience University Podcast with Doctor K. Season 7, Episode 2.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Experience University, where we aim to educate, inspire, and empower individuals who wish to design transformational experiences. Now, your host, Dr. Kristin Malek.

Dr. K:

Hello. Hello, my friends. Yay! Week two of season seven. I am so excited. I have got such great content for you today. I mean, I know we always have great content, but this is particularly interesting. Back in the spring, I offered through my LinkedIn and my Facebook, a free master class to individuals who were curious to know more about behavior change.

What is behavior change, behavior change design? How is it different than event design and change management? It was so incredibly popular and I got so many messages from it that I decided to do a second offering of it. Just a free 90-minute master class. And what exactly is behavior change design? And then I started giving it away as a freebie for people when they heard me speaking on other people's podcasts.

If you listen to Season 7, Episode 1, then you heard I've been doing just a ton of podcasts. My name's on a circuit somewhere, but I've become a guest on a lot of different types of podcasts. And this master class, this recorded master class at that point, had become my freebie like, thanks for listening and I'm going to post that freebie link for you in my show notes below if you want to watch the whole master class.

Now, of course, my master classes are super interactive and there were breakout rooms and discussions and all of those have been cut out. So the 90-minute master class is really only like 40 minutes. I think when you cut it down to the nuts and bolts. But in today's podcast episode, I want to give an overview and a summary of some of these important concepts because this is really important to know.

Now, of course, if you're listening to this podcast, you know something about the event or experience design industries. I'm not going to dive deep into the history or the brief history of meetings and events just know that events have changed based on where our society is. So for example, the Industrial Revolution led to the need for these organized events and the need for skilled individuals to plan and manage these logistics.

Alongside that, the world's fairs and great exhibitions really brought in that need for that risk management portion because we're talking about literally millions of visitors all coming together in one area. And then as businesses continued to expand, we needed to upskill as event planners or managers to include things like trade shows, product launches, and conferences. So we're just constantly having to upskill in the different areas of our lives. And now we're talking on a global level mega-events, the Olympics, the World Cup. We're talking technology, we're talking hybrid events, virtual events. We've really kind of matched this industrial economy to knowledge economy, to experience economy, and to transformation economy. 

The role of the event planner, event designer, and event strategist has also evolved. Now, it doesn't mean that this one position has continued to evolve. It's not like a baby that then grows up. There are now all of these alternative career paths, alternate career paths that are completely viable career paths within the event industry. It's just people don't necessarily realize all the different potentials. I deal with this when I'm talking to interns, my employees, or students all of the time.

And there are just so many different aspects within events that it was worth covering on its own podcast here. So we're going to start with the event coordinator. I consider this me, Dr. K, I consider this kind of that base level. Oftentimes this event coordinator role could also be within an executive assistant position. some duties could be offloaded to virtual assistance, but the event coordinator is really all about logistics. They're about operations. So when you think historically of I'm gonna bring 50 people together in a space. This would be those types of things. I'm going to call a caterer. I'm going to make sure rooms are reserved. I'm going to make sure that we have enough seating for 50 people and call the AV person or set up a projector. So this is really all about that venue selection and timeline and is just very operations-specific.

And then as we look at the evolvement after logistics, what's after logistics in terms of events? After that, in my personal opinion, I do wrap event management as kind of a half step from logistics. Now, the concept, the pure definition, the title of an event manager or director of events could really transcend any of these roles. So I'm really looking at the competencies within them.

So event coordinator is logistics and operations. Now, of course, event managers can also be logistics and operations, but I'm looking at the evolution away from just being logistics and operations. And to me again, the opinion of one with lots of education, we're really looking at the event design role after this. So we have that event logistics and operations, which really to me is a lot of project management and we're moving into design now, this includes creative director, creating these cohesive, visually appealing kinds of environments looking at and incorporating the client's visions and themes and atmospheres. So we're really starting to incorporate that decor and lighting, floral, color schemes, graphics, all of the branding elements. So this is beyond just logistics. We are now going into the design, the marketing, the branding, making sure that this is all-encompassing. 

Now, one of the major issues with the event industry, anybody will tell you this, is that we do not have consistency in naming, and this makes it very difficult to find jobs to understand what's included in jobs because you might have an event coordinator that includes all of these roles. You could have a director of events that is just logistics. And so it's very frustrating within the event industry because our naming is not consistent even within our own industry and then across industries, there's no consistency there. So take the naming with a grain of salt because I can already see all of my lovely type A listeners being like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I do that in this other role. Yes, we're taking the meat of the roles and the job duties dot dot dot and duties as assigned and we're kind of breaking those into levels. 

So the first level would be logistics operations, and the second level would be that designer. And in this, we're really looking at project management and marketing. The next layer of what I would consider in event roles would be that strategy, this event strategist role. And this is where we're starting to dig into the data, the target audience, the outcomes, the KPIs, we're really trying to develop that strategic approach for the event as part of the overall objectives.

Where do we need events? Where do we need those live touchpoints or those online touchpoints? How does the event work within the overall marketing strategy in addition to the marketing strategy within particular events? So different levels, we're really monitoring and analyzing data before, during, and after the event. We're looking at ROI, insights, and recommendations for improvement based on these metrics.

And we're really working closely with the business strategy teams to align events with the organizational goals. We're really seeing how these events fit into these larger frameworks. So consider this at the next level up. So we have logistics and operations and then that design and marketing and now we've got the strategy role and these are all very different, very different competencies.

In this strategy role, yes, you're gonna have your project management and marketing, but you're also gonna have integrated communications and business and research methods and data analytics and technology. And this really is that next involvement. Well, then I take that, Dr. K, opinion of me, I take that and I elevate even that into behavior change designer.

Now, if you go to LinkedIn and you type in the search bar behavior change designer, you're probably gonna get a couple of hundred responses and I'm friends with most of them actually. And when you look at them, you're going to see that the concept of behavior change design is so drastically different across industries, I don't know, similar to events that this is a well-accepted term. But this is what I am labeling as the next evolvement from that strategy role. 

To me, a behavior change designer is designing events and experiences that change behavior and mindset. That is my particular strength, that's my focus area. And so I'm going to explain to you what that means to me. 

Now in marketing, advertising, and public relations behavior change is looked at a lot in terms of getting you to buy things. So marketing and advertising is looking at, OK, who are you? And what do you need to be convinced to buy our product or service? And that's what we're gonna do to get you to change your behavior to buy our product. In this case, there are a lot of people who talk about ethics, you are literally messing with people's minds to get them to buy your product. And this is kind of an interesting viewpoint on that. So in marketing and advertising, this position might not be called a behavior change designer, but there's a lot of behavior change design within these fields. 

The second major industry that you see behavior change designers is within, I don't, I don't know if like the industry has an official name, but I would say in kind of the recovery or rehab fields of getting people to change away from addiction or other really negative or detrimental behaviors into becoming a state productive member of society and really helping people kind of overcome some of their, their mental health or psychological issues. That was probably not politically correct. I apologize if you're in one of those industries and I just totally killed what you do. I am not within that particular industry though, I have been on several grants to help design events and experiences for the substance use, disease, and disorder communities. So, I do have experience within them, but I'm by no means an expert to be able to speak on behalf of this industry. 

So then, how does this play out in events and experience design? So designing events and experiences that change behavior and mindset, we're really leveraging psychological techniques and behavior change models to influence and encourage individuals to change their behavior and adopt new habits.

And because of the complexity that this is, we're really having to delve into human psychology, identify motivations and triggers and barriers, things that would influence behavior change. We have to have a wide variety of backgrounds. Not only are we following an iterative design process because we're having to prototype test, and refine preventions based on all of the feedback and the behavior data and change that we're tracking, we are tracking these behavioral outcomes, and we're evaluating the success of the designs. This requires quite a lengthy background. And this is where the fact that I'm a polymath has come to my advantage.  I'm obsessed with learning about all the things and seeing how they all overlap. 

So, of course, we have project management, marketing, integrated communications, business research methods, data, and technology similar to the strategists. We're also adding here, psychology, behavioral science, user experience, education and learning sciences, anthropology, neuroscience, cognitive science, neurolinguistics, and then the communications point in terms of storytelling and narrative. All of those things. 

That's where I have really thrived in getting to know this by being a master practitioner in neurolinguistics. I'm even like a certified reiki practitioner. I am like all over the gambit. I think I had a client the other day and he was like, Kristin, how many certifications do you actually have? So I pulled up my CB and my resume and I looked. I had 27 certifications across 7 or 8 different industries. And I just want to know how it works and how we change behavior.

And this was actually, I was very fortunate as I said on the last episode, to be invited to do a TED Talk. And this TED Talk was specific to higher education because that was the theme of this TED Talk. However, my TED Talk was all about designing an event series to change behavior. The context of this particular one just happened to be within higher education, which ironically was my only higher education client at the time compared to all the corporations, organizations, and communities that I work with. But it was really kind of fascinating and I highly recommend if you're interested in seeing and hearing some of these behavior change principles in effect within that event area. 

So when I think about behavior change, I really think about a wide variety of different areas. But I do think that this is a very specific sub-segment in the event and experience design industry. I don't know of many people that are doing it outside of myself. I know some people who say that they do it. But they don't have the background to really be able to say that they are changing mindset or behavior. They're just kind of tracking some surface-level changes. 

I have had so many people reach out to me after my master classes and say, please teach me what you do. I'm so fascinated and it's just so in-depth because again, it's so cross-industry. But with this information, I am going to be launching a training series and that training series should be coming out next month in October. I'm super pumped about it. I'll be giving two keynotes and then also a breakout session at an upcoming IAEE Expo Expo, but then two keynotes in other places.

And so we'll be launching these trainings before doing those things. So that should be coming out next month. So stay tuned to listen to all of those. I really hope that this podcast episode kind of enlightened your mind about the different levels and the evolvement of the event industry and where we're going, where I think we're going in terms of our profession of a specific segment that we can all specialize in and continue to impact the world with that.

I always, always, always appreciate your time. I never take it for granted, and I am so pumped to be back on the episode. Shoot me a message. Leave me a comment. Don't forget to rate five stars wherever you're listening to this, and I will catch you on the next episode.

Speaker 2

Thanks for listening to the Experience University Podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode.