Refreshment breaks
You get twenty minutes with everyone in one place, and most of them do not know each other. A giveaway station or a quick game gives people a reason to stand near somebody and start talking.
Conference Entertainment
We supply the gaps between sessions, when delegates are stood in a corridor with a coffee and nobody has quite got talking yet.
Conferences are not exhibitions
They look similar from the outside and they behave completely differently. On a trade show floor you are competing for attention with the stand opposite. At a conference you have a captive audience who are all in the same building for the same two days, and the problem is not getting them to stop, it's giving them somewhere to go when the session ends and the room empties into a corridor.
That changes what works. The kit that earns its place at a conference tends to be quieter, smaller and more sociable than the crowd-pullers that suit a show floor. It also has to survive being ignored for three hours while everybody is in the auditorium, then take forty people in the twenty minutes after they come out.
Where it usually goes
There are three moments in a conference programme where something interactive tends to help.
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Break-out and networking areas
Sponsors and exhibitors at a conference get less footfall than they expect. Something playable on the table pulls delegates over during the quiet stretches.
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Evening receptions and dinners
Once the badges come off, the register changes. Shuffleboard, pool and a jukebox do more for a drinks reception than a stage act that demands everyone stops talking.
What suits a conference
These are sociable, they are quiet enough to talk over, and they reset quickly between delegates.
Pick 'N' Mix Sweetie Stand
From £475
Candy Floss Machine
From £295
Honey Roasted Nut Cart
From £295
The Vault
From £425
Beat the Buzzer
From £395
Virtual Bowling
From £445
Shuffle Board Hire
From £495
Commercial Pool Table Hire
From £650
Football Table Hire
From £295
NSM Digital Juke Box
From £395
Social Media Photo Booth
From £495
Magic Selfie Mirror Photo Booth Hire
From £495
The Hayes, Swanwick
A branded giveaway that keeps working
We have supplied The Hayes Conference Centre every June since 2022 for a national specialist children's care provider. It is a fully branded Pick 'N' Mix Sweetie Stand with the top panel and side panels done in their artwork, branded runs of 500 bags, and tens of kilos of sweets going through it each time.
What makes it work across a multi-day conference is that delegates come back. A stand giveaway gets picked up once on day one and forgotten. A sweetie stand with somebody's branding on the header gets visited after every session, which is four or five impressions per delegate rather than one.
Conference venues we supply
The Megacentre in Sheffield takes a Candy Floss Machine and Pop Corn cart for delegate giveaways alongside The Vault, Beat the Buzzer, Virtual Bowling and the High Striker for break-out areas. The East Midlands Conference Centre on the University Park campus in Nottingham has had a traditional High Striker in for delegate networking sessions. Manchester Central hosts party conferences and conventions in a column-free hall that suits a bigger build, and the ICC Birmingham on Broad Street has taken branded interactive stations for exhibitions since 2019.
Conference organisers tend to book later than exhibitors, because the programme gets signed off before anybody thinks about the corridor. That is usually fine at our end. Being five minutes from the A1, M1 and M18 means a short lead time is a logistics question rather than a problem, though branded artwork does need longer than bare kit.
What we would leave at home
Anything loud. A conference has sessions running in rooms with doors that don't seal, and an arcade cabinet with the volume up will get you a complaint from the AV team within the hour. Anything that needs a big run-up is out too, because break-out space is usually a corridor or a corner of the catering area rather than a hall. And if there is a hosted bar, be careful about anything competitive enough to get shouty as the evening goes on.
What people say
Rachael S said we "assisted me with the planning of my clients corporate event", that "the process was very smooth, product was fantastic but most of all the team on the night were great". A good deal of our conference work comes through agencies and planners like that, where our name never appears on the delegate pack.
Talk it through
Send us the running order and the room plan and we will work back from there. The office is on 0845 468 0590 if you would rather call.