The world has changed considerably for live events in the past few years and so have the people who attend them.
Expectations are higher, attention is harder to earn, and in an era when it’s increasingly difficult to know what—and who—to trust online, our lived experience (in real life, in a room) has taken on a new kind of authority.
That shift puts event planners in the driving seat and at the heart of the marketing mix, especially where brands are concerned.
The competition for that lived feeling, not just from other events but from every other claim on our time and energy, is more intense than ever. In this environment, the organizations investing in intentional, human-centered design look to be pulling ahead.
For years, the global events industry has tended to treat design as a production question, something to be agreed once the strategy is set, the budget confirmed and the venue booked. The result is a landscape of business events that frequently look polished but rarely feel distinctive.
As attendee expectations rise and competition intensifies for their attention, the gap between polish and genuine differentiation presents a commercial opportunity.
Our latest report, Why Design Matters: The Invisible Force Shaping Connection, Brand and Impact, sets out to move this conversation forward. Drawing on research, data and perspectives from practitioners across events, brand strategy, sustainability and urban development, it makes a straightforward argument: intentional, human-centered, human-crafted design is one of the most underleveraged strategic disciplines in any industry, and the organizations that recognize this are pulling ahead.
The report references a five-year McKinsey study of 300 publicly listed companies, which found that top-quartile design performers outpaced their industry peers by 32 percentage points in revenue growth and 56 percentage points in total shareholder returns.
The message is clear: design drives commercial strength.
Designing for human connection
The examples and anecdotes in this report arrive at a moment when the stakes for live events have never been higher. In 2023 the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global health threat. Freeman's research, conducted with The Harris Poll, found that 89% of Gen Z professionals say relationships formed at in-person events are critical to their professional confidence, and 86% want their companies to allocate more spending to live gatherings.
So why should the business of doing business be dull? Isn’t there a place for designing in joy and uplift, creating environments where warmth, inclusion and shared experience are deliberate outcomes?
Tahira Endean, IMEX Head of Programming and author of Our KPI is Joy, has spent decades designing events across the globe and brings a practitioner's clarity to this challenge. Her view is that when intention is right and teams are given permission to design for joy, trust, innovation and growth naturally follow. The classic conference format—keynotes, structured networking, one-hour seminars—is increasingly out of step with how a younger generation wants to engage, and the report explores what a more human-centered alternative looks and feels like in practice.
Designing for brand power
David de Bruijn, Chief Creative Officer at WINK, spent a month at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina, delivering brand work for Corona, the first-ever global beer (and non-alcoholic beer) sponsor of the Games. His conviction is that craft and attention to human detail are what separate a forgettable brand activation from one that genuinely adds something to people's lives. The multi-agency Corona work included TIME CERO, a space designed to help athletes transition from pressure to presence immediately after competing. It began not with a branding brief but with a single human question: if I were an athlete, what would I want a brand to add to my experience right now?
It’s a question available to every event professional regardless of budget, and this new IMEX report explores what can happen when teams commit to answering it honestly.
Designing for sustainability and purpose
Mark Thomason of Elevations and Matthew Burgess of the UK Design Council both make a point that should shift how the industry approaches design briefs: 80% of an event's environmental impact is determined at the design stage, before a single supplier is appointed. Why Design Matters examines what it looks like when sustainability moves from an ad-hoc consideration to an organizing design principle. Examples span exhibition booth design, venue planning and the UK Design Council's initiative to upskill one million designers in green skills by 2030.
World Design Capital 2026
Frankfurt RheinMain has been designated World Design Capital 2026, “in recognition of its long-standing commitment to design for social cohesion, urban transformation and democratic futures.”
The themes running through this report—connection, brand, sustainability and place—are also woven into IMEX Frankfurt's education program and show experience this year.
Several contributors, including Prof. Greg Clark CBE, Matthew Burgess from the Design Council, David Adler, veteran media entrepreneur and editor of Gathering Point News, and WINK’S David de Bruijn, are speaking at the show. The full report also features perspectives from Debut’s Ben Moorsom, Anna Abdelnoor of isla, Art Agent & Publicist, Jo Brooks, IMEX’s Oliver Bailey and Managing Director of Elevations, Mark Thomason.
Want just one takeaway? Then heed these words from Anna Gyseman, Head of Design at IMEX and three-time D&AD (Design & Art Direction) Award winner: "Good design is good business."
Why Design Matters is available to download now. We hope it provokes, informs and gives the global meetings and events industry a stronger shared language for a crucial conversation.
