A brief is where everything begins. It's the document (or conversation or email chain) that sets the direction for your entire event. And in our experience, the quality of the brief has an enormous impact on the quality of the outcome.
A clear, detailed brief allows an events team to hit the ground running, ask the right questions and come back with ideas and solutions that are actually relevant to your situation. A vague brief leads to assumptions, misaligned expectations and revisions that eat into your time and budget.
Here's what a solid corporate event brief should cover.
The purpose of the event
This sounds obvious, but it's often where briefs fall short. "We need a year end function" or "we want to do a team event" tells us the format, but not the why. What's the goal? Is it to celebrate a big year, boost morale after a tough one, launch a new product, align leadership on strategy, reward top performers, or welcome new team members?
The purpose shapes everything: the tone, the programme, the entertainment, the messaging, even the venue choice. Be as specific as you can here.
Who is attending
Give us as much detail as you can about your guest list. How many people? What's the mix (all staff, leadership only, clients, stakeholders, a mix)? What are the age ranges and demographics? Are there any VIPs or guests who need special consideration? Are there dietary requirements or accessibility needs to plan around?
A 40-person leadership offsite and a 400-person all-staff celebration require completely different approaches, even if the brief describes them both as "a corporate event."
The date and location
If you have a fixed date, say so upfront. If you have flexibility, share the range. If you have a preferred location or suburb in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, include it and explain why if it matters (close to the office, easy access for guests travelling in, specific aesthetic). If location is completely flexible, that's useful too.
The budget
We understand that sharing a budget can feel uncomfortable, like you're showing your hand before negotiations begin. But a budget range helps enormously. It tells us what's actually possible, allows us to make smart recommendations rather than presenting options that are wildly over or under what you have available and saves time on both sides.
If you're genuinely unsure what things cost, share what you're hoping to achieve and we can give you a realistic sense of what's required. That's a much more productive conversation than "put together some options and we'll see."
The look and feel
How do you want the event to feel? Formal and prestigious? Relaxed and fun? Energetic and high impact? Intimate and personal? Are there brand guidelines to stick to or is there creative latitude?
Reference points are incredibly helpful here. A venue you've been to and loved, a photo of a décor style you like, an event you attended that had the right energy. Even describing what you don't want is useful.
What success looks like
How will you know the event was a success? For some clients it's "people are still talking about it a week later." For others it's measurable, attendance numbers, post event survey results, social content generated or leads produced from an activation. Knowing your definition of success lets us design toward it from the start.
What to leave out
A brief doesn't need to be a 10 page document. In fact, some of the best briefs we've received have been a single page of clear, direct answers to the points above. What matters is that the information is accurate and honest. A brief that overstates the budget, underestimates the guest count or glosses over a tight deadline creates problems down the line that are much harder to fix.
Bringing the brief to a conversation
A written brief is a great starting point, but the most effective briefing process is always a conversation. It allows for follow up questions, clarifications and often surfaces things that weren't in the written version, but turn out to be important. If you're working with Floor Seventeen, the brief is where we begin and the conversation is where the event starts to take shape.
Ready to brief us? Get in touch and we'll set up a call.
Floor Seventeen is your go to events and conferences agency, dedicated to turning your visions into seamless, extraordinary experiences that go beyond the ordinary.