Neuroscience is coming to events: Nissan

Evaluating event ROI should extend far beyond financial profit, argues Nadine Vienne, corporate events section manager at Nissan Europe.

Speaking to event planners at ibtm world in Barcelona last month, Vienne says we need to re-examine how we measure ROI or ROE (return on equity), with a greater focus on emotional engagement.

"Of course we can measure the result [of an event] from the company point of view," Vienne said. "Usually, when a company gives you a project, they want to see what you will collect with it. So they are focusing on their personal interest in the collection of data.”

Measuring success

Vienne said there are many established ways to measure the number of leads or qualified prospects, whether through scanning systems, bar codes or apps.

She also pointed to the ease of being able to identify a delegate’s country of origin, the number of press articles that are written, and using quizzes and voting to measure knowledge on an issue.

"The company interest and result is important, but it is not enough if you don’t think about the participant's point of view," she adds. "The event is not only about bringing results for the company, it is also about what the participants are really looking for, otherwise the event is not effective. So we have to match these two opposite objectives and sometimes it is not so easy."

Nissan's Nadine Vienne at ibtm world

Engagement is key

Vienne argued that active attendee engagement is crucial—and needs to be monitored and measured as a key metric.

"[In terms of] the mindset of people – there are many tools that can tell you what people are thinking, how people are feeling. And there are ways to measure emotions. Neuroscience is coming into the events industry, and it’s very interesting to experiment.

“There are other ways like facial recognition, but you can also ask questions on how they feel, what they like, what they don’t like."

This article was first published by C&IT