Phoebe Bramley, Strategist at Identity, makes the case that great brand experiences don’t end at the venue door and that understanding how creators think is the key to building ones that truly travel.
We talk a lot about the idea that a great brand experience has to travel beyond the physical space. The content that comes out of it needs to be just as engaging and memorable as the experience itself.
When we design brand experiences, we’re designing content engines: spaces built to generate moments that spread and live beyond the venue. Great content from an event is more than just a ‘nice to have’, it’s used as a measure of success.
For a long time, the metric was the room. How many people attended? How did it feel on the night? Was the client happy? These things still matter, but they’re no longer sufficient. The audience inside the venue is a fraction of the potential audience for any given experience. The content that leaves with them can be what catapults the experience into being one of the most talked about experiences in culture.
To build those spaces well, we need to understand the people who will create within them. Not just their demographics or follower counts, but how they think, what they need, and what they’re up against. The pressure creators are under is easy to underestimate from the outside. They’re navigating algorithms that shift constantly, audiences who scroll endlessly, and a version of “authentic” that means something different every six months. They’re not looking for a backdrop, they’re looking for a story worth telling.
I recently attended InfluencersLDN 2026 at Stationers Hall. An evening bringing together influencers, agencies and brands to discuss where the creator economy is heading. As a strategist, I went to get inside the heads of content creators and to understand what environments allow them to thrive, and what environments produce the kind of content that resonates with their audiences.
When we talk about designing a brand content engine, it’s not about installing a ring light wall or engineering a queue for a photo moment. It’s about understanding that every element of the experience is also a potential piece of content. Things like the flow of a space, the quality of light in key moments, colour choices and strategically placed messaging. These are not production decisions added at the last minute, they are strategic ones that were made at the start of the brief. When content is an afterthought, there’s no hiding it.
The most valuable thing any experiential marketer can do right now is close the distance between how we think about events and how a content creator experiences them. When those two perspectives align, we can work towards achieving a shared goal of connecting with our audiences. It’s a strategic question, not a production one.
