Open Table, Open Minds
“So we felt the obvious conclusion, and the right thing for the Collaborate brand, was to act the way anyone does in a successful relationship ….LISTEN!”
We’ve been running a series of events we call Open Table - three so far, with more to come soon. This idea was born in a conversation we had early 2024 which focused on two industry dynamics and one dirty secret:
- The first dynamic is that we’ve always felt there isn’t really a natural home for the experiential industry – that niggling sense that so many events, thought-pieces and discussions talk about many touchpoints, but somehow ignore live experiences ….despite more budgets coming to the industry each year.
- The second dynamic is that we know client competency in our space increases every year and there’s nothing worse than an agency lecturing brand leaders about their category – there’s a very fine line between playing devil’s advocate/outsider and doing the agency equivalent of ‘mansplaining’.
- The dirty secret we all know is that the big TedTalk-style speakers in our industry are often not the ones rolling their sleeves up and doing the work.
So we felt the obvious conclusion, and the right thing for the Collaborate brand, was to act the way anyone does in a successful relationship ….LISTEN!
With this active listening approach in mind the format of our events is:
- Invite some expert key clients and prospects (so far ranging from eBay, Pinterest, Pepsi, Lululemon, Brompton, Moët to Birkenstock
- and Ford).
- Host in an inspiring venue with the right atmosphere, quality hospitality and a little topic or venue relevant theatre (so far we’ve had pianists, DJs and a free tattoo artist).
- Kick things off with 20 minutes of insights by different senior Collaborate colleagues around a chosen zeitgeist topic:
- OT1 was “How to Achieve Physical Success in an Increasingly Digitally-Obsessed World”
- OT2 = “Building Fandoms”
- OT3 = an audit of trends “Experiential – The State of Play”
- OT4 in June will be “Is Experiential the Last Safe Space for True Creativity?"
- We then sit back and listen to what our experts have to say from both their knowledge and, crucially, their lived experience. This opens a window to insights of how we can better inspire and serve
- all our clients.
We are open to the possibility that OpenTable may change over time. At the moment the intimacy of a domestic feeling table really does lend itself to open and honest debate – we have a strict Chatham House rule
for all events. So the immediate way for this to grow is to do it more often, make some events client specific, spread the idea to our satellites in the Middle East and Asia, and develop a regular location to ease the production side.
But we’ve also got the idea of it being a ‘philosophy’ or ‘movement’ in the back of our minds – something that could shape the industry and improve relations between clients and all agencies. Maybe some point in the future this could morph into us facilitating online client forums and support networks, podcast channels to amplify opinions, or just a big annual social to recap and celebrate. Of course some of these destinations overlap with the traditional role of pitch brokers and media companies – but the key difference for us is that focus on the agency-client relationship and ways to make it work Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
2025 promises to be an exciting year for all of us in the experiential space and we’re all looking forward to listening in. Join us – the door is open.
Martin Severs, Head of Strategy
Ollie Biddle, Senior Marketing Manager
