Branding
The importance of holding global standards and local expertise in the same hand
Same brand, different worlds – Ian Cummings, global CEO of Nteractive, on why global event consistency is won on the ground
f you ask people what
I consistency means for a global event programme they’ ll probably describe a branding visual exercise – the right logo, the approved colour or brand palette, a stage set that looks identical whether it lands in London, Singapore or São Paulo.
For a long time that was a fair definition. If the look and messaging arrived intact in every market, the event was considered a success.
That definition no longer holds in today’ s connected world. Brands are now running programmes across several continents at once, audiences expect far more in return for a day out of the office, and sponsors want proof that their investment paid off.
Consistency has shifted from how an event looks to how it performs and whether it delivers quality content, food and networking. And performance is a much harder thing to standardise.
Consider how a brand is judged. Gartner ' s 2024 Technology Marketing Benchmarks Survey found that among high growth technology companies, in-person events generated the largest volume of marketing-qualified leads of any channel, alongside search. If events are doing that much commercial work, the experience itself carries real weight – and it cuts both ways. An attendee in one city may never cross paths with a colleague attending the same brand’ s event on the
Ian Cummings
other side of the world, yet both walk away with a view of the organisation based purely on how their day went. If one spends it stuck in queues and unsure why they came, while the other leaves having learned something and made the connections they wanted, no amount of matching brand guidelines will paper over the gap.
The bar has moved The scale of the industry shows what is at stake. UFI ' s Global Exhibition Industry Statistics put the number of exhibition visitors worldwide at roughly 318m in 2024— 318m opportunities to build trust or erode it. There is no change in the volume of events, but the scrutiny they are under has increased.
“ There is no change in the volume of events, but the scrutiny they are under has increased”
“ At Tech Jam in Bangkok, held at the IMPACT Forum, the decisions that mattered most there would never appear in a set of brand guidelines”
For years the industry focused on production value: the set, lighting and visual finish. While these things still matter, they rarely decide whether an event succeeds. Time poor audiences will forgive a modest stage, but are far less tolerant of poor communication, long queues, thin content or an agenda that has little to do with why they turned up.
American independent market research and advisory firm Forrester ' s experience bears this out; when it rebuilt its global events portfolio in 2026, it cited direct attendee feedback that“ more content isn’ t the answer – relevance is”, and restructured around in-person connection, peer networking and learning built on shared professional challenges rather than on how impressive the room looked. They are, in short, marking events on whether they helped them get something done.
Why local beats central Things get harder the moment a programme crosses borders. There is a persistent belief that you can guarantee consistency by flying the same senior team into every market. Experienced leads do matter, particularly for launches and high-stakes moments, but a great deal of what makes an event work cannot be picked up on a flying visit. Supplier relationships, venue quirks, regulatory detail and what an audience in a given country actually expects: that knowledge is accumulated by people on the ground over years, not briefed on arrival.
We have seen this first-hand. When we took on the creation, sale and delivery of the sponsorship programme for a major technology company’ s AI Tour series, a large share of the events sat in APAC – Mumbai, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Auckland, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney among them. In several markets, success depended on identifying, onboarding and managing local agencies. Over three
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