What is the benefit of “priming” our audience through Zone Ex?
Did you ever consider that two thirds of your audience’s time on event day is spent outside of your venue or event? According to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, we mostly remember the peak and the end of events, known as the “Peak-End Rule”.
Harnessing this psychological phenomenon, we find we prime your audience to maximise their enjoyment of your event through creating a safe and enjoyable arrival and departure experience (in Zone Ex).
If their journey to and from your event is less than enjoyable, it could be the only thing they remember from their experience.
How often have we heard someone say they enjoyed an event but “getting there/home was a nightmare”?
There are many opportunities to influence your audience’s experience from offering them a resistance free arrival and departure to inspiring moments of delight through brand activations or entertainment.
Your audience spend more time arriving and departing your event than at your event
Prime & Streamline
Your audience’s event experience begins long before they arrive at the event.
Through understanding their transport modes of choice, we can provide a level of service to match. By considering how our audience arrive and depart means we can put systems in place to support getting them from transport hub to entrance and prepare them for search and ticket validation process.
We can create memorable experiences for them from the moment they leave their house and begin their journey to your event. For them, this is where the excitement is. As research by behavioural neuroscientist Prof. Robert Sapolsky demonstrates, dopamine increases and peaks before the reward (in this case the event). People are actually more excited about the anticipation of the event than the event!
There are many opportunities through communications channels, transport modes, motorway signage, train station management and the final transit to the event where we can provide a safe and optimal experience for them.
Designing Zone Ex with intent means we keep them safe as they have a smooth experience. This reduces the risk of long and disorderly queues and the potential for increased safety and security risks. If we can focus on informing our audience and creating order in our design and management as they arrive to the event, processing them through ticketing and search will become much smoother and easier for everyone involved.
Creating a safe experience
The safety risk to the audience is higher outside of the event as we have far less control and access restrictions. The space is dynamic and difficult to control - there are private vehicles and buses on the roads, pedestrians mixing in with your crowd, businesses operating and residents going about their day. In addition, security protection is lower than inside the event as we have unfortunately experienced terrorist attacks and other crowd incidents in Zone Ex in recent years. The most known in the UK is the Manchester Arena attack in 2017 and the Brixton Academy crush in 2022.
To create a safe space in Zone Ex requires early stakeholder engagement and negotiation with stakeholders to potentially close roads, install infrastructure to increase protection, enact legislation such as Public Space Protection Orders, or negotiate operating schedules which may disrupt Business as Usual but will ultimately mean a safe event for everyone involved. There are many opportunities to increasing safety in Zone Ex and the most effective approach is early engagement and developing relationships with stakeholders.
Consider legal duties
In the UK, under Section 3 of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, it is the duty of the employer to keep those who are not their employees safe as reasonably practicable. There is also the Occupier’s Liability Act 1957 for landowners and those who have lands agreements in place.
In addition, Martyn’s Law on counter terrorism is impending, and while we don’t yet know what is required, it’s important we do our best to keep our audience safe to the best of our abilities as they arrive and depart our event.