In the digital age, people crave connectivity. This has catalysed a burst of innovation within the B2B events industry, with hybrid and virtual events multiplying around the globe. Today, it is important that the industry sustains this level of innovation. By unlocking the full potential of events, businesses will be able to form relationships to drive growth and create environments that enable them to thrive. Chief Strategy Officers can play a key role in helping to achieve this goal.

Chief Strategy Officers, with their broad outlook and deep insight not only into their own business but also often into their clients' businesses, can play a role in helping business leaders to re-calibrate their view of events. They can help them see events less as one-off occurrences and more as central parts of extended marcomms strategies. They can help to clarify messaging and use audience profiling and insight to create environments and enriched content, which bring people together, and where moments of real engagement can happen.

People have become used to instant connectivity thanks to the rise of virtual events and a wider range of ways to socialise via digital means. The ability to connect with others at the click of a button is now entirely normalised - but, particularly in the case of B2B events, does this enable truly meaningful engagement?

Real connections are built when delegates feel secure to be the truest version of themselves. Event environments should foster this sense of security, for example by providing an accessible mix of virtual and in-person content. This improves connectivity among audience members, but also among delegates and sponsors or the host company. This is very beneficial for both businesses and marketeers.

Chief Strategy Officers plays a key role in achieving this goal, as they prioritise the focus to be on understanding the needs of an audience before an event has event started. This could be, for example, through a simple questionnaire that attendees submit as they register for a ticket, or data gathered from online profiling ahead of the event. Using this information, as well as material gathered throughout the event, a Chief Strategy Officer and their team can design an environment of true connectivity.

The knowledge that we have gained throughout the pandemic should not go to waste. Innovation has seen virtual and hybrid events flourish, with emerging technology helping to gather an unprecedented wealth of rich audience data and insight. Coupled with the efforts made to make events as inclusive and accessible as possible, the sector's landscape has transformed. Rather than thinking of a return to the past, events businesses should be assessing how they can make the events of the future even more relevant, even more effective and even more central to their corporate clients' business success.