Corporate events are the mainstay of the most successful brands, but are often underutilised by small or medium-sized businesses.
This list of creative corporate event ideas shows that creating interactive, immersive face-to-face experiences for staff, clients and prospects can take many simple yet innovative forms.
There’s something creative you can do to spice up your events, suitable for every budget, event type, industry and occasion. Let’s dive right in!
8 corporate event ideas your staff and prospects will love:
Corporate comedians
Hiring a corporate comedian for your events will help bring light and laughter to almost any occasion, whether it’s your annual Christmas party, key industry award ceremony (they typically host the proceedings and also perform a short set), or just a way to say thank you to your team.
“Laughter is a bonding experience and a good corporate comedian will have researched your business in advance so you get a bespoke service with humour that is appropriate for your industry,” says full time circuit standup Steffan Alun, who has years of experience with corporate gigs:
“They’re also great at working out who to talk to so your team will have something fun to talk about later.”
Digital Graffiti wall
Digital graffiti walls let your team explore their creative expression in a risk free version of this subversive and exciting art form. Because this is a famously rebellious art form there’s no need for any great artistic talent, so everyone can get creative in a fun and inclusive way.
You can choose a range of backdrops and screen overlays for your graffiti wall, giving you endless options for adding your own branding. And any art created can be downloaded as a memento of the event.
Projection mapping
Corporate spaces can be all too familiar for your staff members, or a bit generic for your audience. What you really need is a way to use the space itself in creative ways. Fortunately, corporate event space can be totally transformed with projection mapping technology.
This can be used to turn an industrial space into a relaxing forest scene, or bring the wonders of outer space into your meeting rooms. You can set the theme to match the topic of your presentation. Projection mapping can be used in conjunction with surround sound audio and even wind machines to create a truly transformative environment for seminars, workshops, lectures, presentations, pitches and more.
Creative talks
Google regularly holds talks for their employees that are then distributed online. They cover a wide range of creative and innovative topics. Most creatives and experts enjoy talking about what they do, and your team will benefit from all the inspiration and tidbits they’ll pick up from these talks.
Speaker ideas include popular athletes, novelists, comic book artists, tech founders, programmers and more. And the great thing is that you can film the talks and publish them with your corporate branding. A great way to generate appealing content as well as providing value for staff and customers alike.
Synth workshops
From pop to dance, synthesizers and modern music making, production and DJ technology hold fascination for many. A great creative idea for a corporate event is to invite in a band, DJ or producer to bring in their equipment and give your team a guided tour of their gear. This would be particularly great for tech firms, engineers and creative agencies alike.
This is also a great event to invite your clients or prospects along to to show your business is a hip and innovative proposition.
Office music gigs
Everyone loves music, and it can be a great way to help people relax, set the tone for parties or give your conference a memorable ending. If you’ve seen the Tiny Desk Concert series on YouTube, you’ll know how easy it is to fit a whole band into a, well, tiny, space.
Popular events guide Skiddle took this one step further and, after noticing that many employees book festival tickets on their office computers, they decided that they would bring the festival to the workplace of one Manchester accounting firm.
Escape room
If you have a small team, or could break your team into smaller groups, these creative puzzle solving adventures are a great idea, and extremely doable on a budget. These are fun and make for great team exercises as staff have to work together to escape from locked rooms in a range of themes, from Harry Potter, to Sherlock Holmes to having to escape from the office before the boss returns! They are popping up everywhere so there’s very likely to be one in your area.
VR experiences
Virtual reality provides a unique, totally immersive journey into exciting digital worlds. These immersive headsets are still very expensive and only extremely dedicated Gamers own them, but anyone who experiences these amazing devices will have an almost world changing experience
VR can be rented and set-up in any space size, and usually involves mapping out a physical area of any size which becomes a virtual space which users can safely walk around to explore mind-blowing virtual worlds.
Alternatively, you can even use VR headsets sitting in a chair, so they can suit a range of contexts. And large screens can be used so a group of people can see each VR journey from the participant’s perspective.
Games range from shooting galleries, to racing games and flight simulators, to exploring Egyptian tombs using 360 degree video capture technology.
Discover even more corporate event ideas with TMA International
We hope these creative corporate event ideas have inspired you to find exciting ways to engage with your audience and your team members. For more event ideas check out our monthly brochures, brimming with corporate events – from Lady Gaga concerts to Premier League matches, Escape Rooms and more.
