A company emails three event agencies: "We're planning a customer conference for about 200 people in November, with a reasonable budget. Can you quote?" Three quotes come back, and the highest is nearly double the lowest. Nobody has asked the one question that matters: what should the company get out of the day? The suppliers aren't the problem. The request was never written down.
What is an event brief
An event brief is a short summary, usually a single page, of what the organizer has already decided and what is still open. It comes before the RFP (request for proposal) and before any meeting with suppliers.
It's easy to confuse with the Event Specification Guide (ESG), a template published by the Events Industry Council. The ESG has three parts: a general description, a schedule of activities and setup orders for each space. It is a detailed document for the venue and suppliers, and it usually gets written after the venue is chosen. The brief comes earlier. It is shorter and about purpose rather than logistics.
A brief is more than a handy summary. It forces the organizer to answer the hard questions before any money moves.
The nine things a brief should cover
A usable brief answers nine questions.
- What must this event achieve? Put it in one sentence you can check, for example "sign 15 new distributor contracts within three months of the event".
- Who is coming, how many, what do they do, and what should they do afterwards?
- When? Give preferred dates, dates that are impossible, and the deadline for a decision.
- Where? Name the venue or area, plus any must-haves such as indoors, central location or parking.
- What is the total budget and who signs it off? Separate what is fixed from what can flex.
- What is already decided in the program, and what is still open?
- What is essential, and what is only nice to have?
- How will you judge success? Say which numbers and which feedback you will use.
- What did you learn from the last event, if there was one?
The first question is usually the hardest to answer, and it's the one good suppliers read most carefully. The guide to planning a B2B event shows how to work from goals down to a plan, and the article on event ROI helps with the success measures.
How specific should the goal be?
"Raise brand awareness" is almost impossible to check. Try writing the goal at three levels instead.
- Business result: the number of customers, contracts or revenue you need after the event
- Guest behavior: registrations, attendance rate, number of meetings held
- Experience: what guests will say when they get home
A good supplier will ask which level matters most. If you can answer, the proposal you get back will fit much more closely.
Should you put the budget in the brief?
Many people hesitate, afraid suppliers will simply quote that exact figure. But without a number, the quotes scatter, as they did for the three agencies above, and you can't tell who is proposing which kind of event.
A range is the safe middle. For example: "around VND 400 to 500 million (about US$15,000 to 19,000), not including gifts". That tells suppliers what format to propose. The article on exhibition budget types covers how to pick a budgeting style that fits.
From brief to RFP
Once you have a brief, writing the RFP is mostly a matter of putting it into a format suppliers recognize, with a quote form, a submission deadline and scoring criteria. The article on the event RFP walks through it.
If you only work with one or two suppliers you already know, a brief still pays off. Neither side has to rely on phone calls and memory, and you have something to point to when extra costs appear.
Common mistakes
The first is writing like an advertisement: "a classy, impressive, unique event". Suppliers can't do anything with words like that. The second is leaving out the decision maker. When six people give feedback and nobody decides, the brief keeps shifting. The third is hiding real constraints, such as "the chairman dislikes a high stage" or "last year a sponsor complained about parking". Put these in the brief. They rule out ideas before anyone wastes time on them.
One page is enough
A longer brief isn't a better one. If yours runs past a page, ask which part is blurring the goal. A good brief takes three minutes to read and tells the reader straight away what the event is for, who it is for and what limits it works within.
If you'd like help writing the brief before you ask for quotes, you can send a request through the quote page.
A clear brief will save you more than a clever price negotiation.