How to Plan an Awards Ceremony

An awards ceremony is the perfect event to celebrate the successes, talent and achievements of your team. Whether you’re hoping to simply appreciate employees or acknowledge the successes that were reached from hard work, an awards ceremony can certainly help you achieve all the above.

No matter your industry or sector, award ceremonies are held on both smaller, individual business levels and larger scale worldwide stages. Whether you’re hoping to throw a small or large awards ceremony, they’re fantastic at boosting employee morale and improving public relations for your organisation, when gone smoothly, that is! But planning a successful and memorable awards night isn’t as easy as you may think.

Key Considerations

Although you may have planned previous corporate events before, award show planning is an entirely different experience. From choosing the awards themselves, to finding a venue, deciding on a theme and finding a host, there are a lot of different elements to this one event that presents a unique set of challenges.

Whilst the event needs to be engaging and exciting for the guests, it must also serve a business purpose and meet its targets. Although it won’t have the same budget as the Oscars or Grammy’s, you can still achieve the wow factor and have everyone in the room enjoying the experience!

What is the Purpose of Your Event?

This is the most crucial part of the entire awards ceremony planning process. Without having a defined purpose, there is no point in the event, as it will not run smoothly and be confusing for the attendees to understand why they are there.

The purpose of your awards ceremony could be as simple as a roundup of the year just gone, showing praise for employees or simply more business publicity. Whatever the purpose, it’s crucial to discover this before embarking on the rest of the event planning!

Who Will Be Attending?

This follows on from the above point, as who you invite solely depends on the event’s purpose. Looking to create a positive PR storm? Invite social media enthusiasts and those who work in the industry. Wanting to appreciate your workforce? Invite your employees and their families.

Understanding what your audience likes and would enjoy at an awards ceremony is crucial. If your attendees do not gain anything from your event, they would have seen it as a bad evening. Even if it’s as simple as being entertained, this relatively easy goal relies in understanding your audience - whoever is on the guest list, make sure that they will gain something from attending your awards evening!

What is Your Budget?

It's important to decipher how much you want to, and can, spend on your awards ceremony, as they are two different things.

Whilst you, of course, want the best of the best to make your event really stand out, you need to decide if you can realistically afford to spend that amount on one evening.

Do you want to spend most of your budget on the awards host? Are you willing to potentially miss out on having a famous comedian at the ceremony, in sacrifice for a better venue? These are all aspects of budgeting that you need to consider when planning an awards ceremony, and ultimately comes down to understanding your audience and the purpose of the event.

How Long Should the Ceremony Last?

Whilst you don’t want the evening to fly by, you also must refrain from it dragging on unnecessarily as the result of both is an unhappy audience. Finding the happy medium is crucial, and a great trick here is to break up the ceremony. Present half of the awards, have a mid-way performer and then present the rest of the awards, it makes the night flow better and the mid-way performer stops audiences losing interest.

Consider the Awards You'll Be Presenting

The awards must represent the values of your organisation, so it’s really important to consider the company culture when selecting said awards. Can some of the awards be more light-hearted and sillier? How would your colleagues react to personality-based awards? Is it best to keep them work related and more serious? You know your company best, so this is only something you can decide, but it’s a really important factor that needs to be considered.

Organise a Planning Committee

Planning an event can take a tremendous amount of time and work, with people often underestimating all the above – we know this all too well! Enlisting the help of those around you who are keen to be involved not only lightens up your workload, but also encourages collaboration, teamwork and leadership.

Working with a committee can help the event become even better, as you’ll have different opinions and considerations come forward, meaning everything will be considered!

It’s important to consider here that there can be too many opinions. Don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen as you’ll likely lose direction.

Choose a Theme

Having a themed awards ceremony helps avoid negative patterns for those who didn’t win an award, as they may feel left out and more of an observer than an engaged member of the evening – the creative theme stops this as it adds another layer to the event.

The addition of a creative theme means that all audience members, not just those nominated, have a fantastic evening and remain engaged. With unique entertainment, decorations and everybody dressed to the nines, themes create a truly memorable evening for everyone!

It's crucial to remember that the theme must suit your audience, as if the theme doesn’t engage or target them, it’s a waste of resource. Make sure you understand your audience before looking into a theme.

Pick a Venue

Possibly one of the first thoughts that comes to mind when planning an awards ceremony is the venue. The type of venue you pick will, inevitably, affect the events success.

The size of the venue must suit the number of attendees, as you don’t want many guests crammed into a tiny room, but you also don’t want a half-filled hall. Your theme and budget also impact the venue, as you don’t want an upscale art gallery to host your more casual awards evening. Does the venue have adequate AV, technology and branding capabilities? This is another factor that can impact your venue choice.

Provide Catering and Refreshments

Food and drink can make or break an event. Provide too little and guests are likely to complain, whilst providing not enough options will defer guests with certain dietary requirements. Researching into catering companies, or venues that include catering (depending on your budget) is important and can't go unconsidered!

Set a Floor Plan

Much like a wedding, it’s important to think about who sits where. You don’t want your award winners having to walk from the back of the room to the stage as this can take up some of the already limited time you’ve got, whilst also simply being quite annoying. Put the winners towards the front of the room with easy stage access if possible.

Consider your table placements to ensure that there’s plenty of room for people to move about without feeling cramped – it's important to utilise all the space you have for the event.

Consider table size if you’re having a sit-down meal, the seating plan and the proximity of the tables to the stage, all these things can be easily forgotten about but are so important to consider!

Consider Entertainment

Band, comedian or magician? There are many entertainment options for your corporate awards evening. Entertainment acts are fantastic for multiple reasons, the most important being that they make the event more memorable!

If they are a big household name, the guests may post them on social media, which works as fantastic PR and brand awareness for your organisation!

There are many different options here – get in touch with us to discuss your options on +44 (0)20 7607 7070 or email us at info@speakerscorner.co.uk

Reliable Tech Equipment and Support

We all know how painful technology can be when it goes wrong - the dreaded corrupted file, the angering video buffering circle and when your laptop suddenly decides everything needs updating right when you need to go on a video call.

Tech failures ruin the flow of the event so it’s imperative that everything works smoothly. Have dedicated technicians on hand in case anything goes wrong, triple check that you’re signed into any relevant accounts and that everything is up to date before the event just to be on the safe side!

Hire an Awards Host

Having the perfect awards host is key to making your event a success. They add a touch of glamour to the evening and can mean a lot to those receiving rewards if they get recognised by someone they admire!

The ceremony host is arguably the most important person in the room, so it’s vital that they are the perfect fit for your audience and event.

We have an abundance of incredible awards hosts and presenters available who will do just this!

Set Up a Program of Events

Planning the evening’s timings beforehand will help you be as organised as possible on the big day. From arrival times to food servings and entertainment start times, there are many elements to an awards evening that must work in unison to ensure for a smooth event.

Planning timings beforehand will also ensure that you do not miss out on any element of the ceremony, as you don’t want to have reached the end of the evening realising you’ve forgotten something!

Amplify Your Event on Socials

Showing off the incredible work you’ve put into planning your awards ceremony is great for many different reasons. Not only is it fantastic content for your social media channels, it also markets your business as one where there is fantastic workplace culture, which may drive interest in recruitment!

Planning an awards ceremony requires huge amounts of organisation and planning, however they are incredible events that are loved by attendees. Who doesn’t love a fabulous evening where you celebrate yours and your co-worker's achievements?

Align with a Media Partner

If you have the budget to, working with a media partner to promote your event in a magazine and/or publication can be a fantastic asset to really boost attendance and excitement for the event, whilst also elevating brand awareness!

We understand that planning such an important event can be rather overwhelming, which is why we are here to help. We do the hard work of finding the perfect awards host, presenter and entertainment for your awards ceremony.

Get in touch with our friendly team, who will be more than happy to help make your awards evening the best it can be – give us a call on +44 (0)20 7607 7070 or email us at info@speakerscorner.co.uk