It’s our mission at Exhibitus to craft experiences that take your brand from “event ordinary” to “experiential awesome.” This process begins with questions that drive understanding of a client’s objectives and expectations. So, the answers continue!
In our current webinar series, we answer five of your pressing questions in 25 minutes. Below are nuggets of expertise and insights we learned during our August 2026 session, Experiential Story Building: Storytelling for Today’s Experiential Leaders. This session features Stephanie Busing, experiential designer and Jay Menashe, senior director, strategy & growth, with moderator, Lynn Reves, executive vp – marketing and results strategy.
Below are highlights of the response to each question. To hear the full details of each response, listen to the replay of the August 13th 5-in-25 webinar: Experiential Story Building: Storytelling for Today’s Experiential.
Storytelling, as old as humanity itself, is how we pass along knowledge and build community. As marketers, we use storytelling to captivate audiences and create impactful moments. Ultimately, storytelling is the heartbeat of brand strategy. It gives the brand a voice, makes it memorable and ensures every experience extends to the big picture.
Question #1 – Where in the buyer journey does experiential storytelling have the greatest influence, and what are key moments to optimize?
Before creating any activation, in one sentence decide what it is supposed to accomplish and for whom. Experiential storytelling hits hardest at consideration, not top-of-funnel awareness. The event’s job is to move someone from “I know this brand exists” to “I want to know more,” which takes narrative.
Attendees need to be intrigued first to give a story a chance. And the trust it takes to enter an engagement with an open mind needs to be rewarded. That’s why a narrative should be versatile AND universal, allowing any audience member to relate.
Three moments matter more than the rest of the buyer journey combined:
- The pre-show invite that sets the expectation before they arrive.
- The first 3-seconds an attendee experiences your environment. This is when attendees decide whether to walk in or not.
- The post-show follow-up. This is where most brands lose the thread. They nail the face-to-face moments but drop the narrative the second the event ends.
Question #2 – How do you approach building a cohesive story architecture for an experience?
For an experiential designer, the first step is to learn about the client and their objectives. This involves extensive research into the client’s products, the markets they serve, their position in the market relative to the competition, and their current outreach campaigns.
From this information, we can develop a strategic plan. A strategy in any business endeavor is an intentional course of action designed to achieve one or more long-term goals.
We use this strategic approach as a framework to guide our design process, making sure we honor the client’s brand policies, the personas of the target audience and the objectives of the project as they serve the overall corporate objectives.
And we also try to identify if the client is hands-on and has a very clear vision for a project, or if they require guidance navigating the design and implementation processes. We hear “you’re the experts” often from our clients. They often want us to consider the things they have not thought about, and to look into the future scalability of what we design and produce.
Spring boarding from our research and understanding of the client’s objectives, the ideation of design and function is next. Experiential designers have many tools in their toolkit to create a wholistic experience, whether the event is a tradeshow, a permanent installation, or a site-specific live experience. Ultimately, the story is key, and all tools deployed must add to that whole story.
Question #3 – How do you translate audience insights and personas into narratives that feel relevant within an experience?
A persona at a trade show isn’t one person, it’s whoever’s standing in front of you in that moment, and that person changes constantly. The tactical buyer wants proof your solution solves a headache they own today. The strategic buyer wants proof what you offer maps to an outcome they can defend to their boss.
From a creative perspective, designers also think about the personalities, demographics, backgrounds and the potential aesthetic leanings of the audience. What is the buying power they have within a company? Are attendees thought leaders within their companies? What are pain points affecting the whole industry vertical?
There is also the human side of our audience to consider:
- Stress level
- Language barriers
- Cultural diversity
- Current societal trends
Question #4 – How do you strike the right balance between creating immersive, emotional experiences and delivering clear, informative messaging?
Audiences are inundated with messaging all day long. We find that keeping messaging simple is important. Brand logo comes first, then we utilize the primary goal of the event as our guiding light for a tagline.
All of these primary messages lead to the next layer: the supportive messaging. This additional messaging can be communicated in a variety of ways. An exhibit staff talk track, a product demo, educational videos, or graphics located deeper in the event space. These layers invite the audience in, and then provide more information tailored to their needs.
Question #5 – How should marketers think about storytelling across pre-event, onsite, and post-event phases to maximize engagement and long-term impact?
Define what “win” means for each phase separately, then check that they add up to one arc. A pre-event win is usually attendance and anticipation. Onsite win is usually engagement – time spent, conversations had. A post-event win is usually pipeline movement.
The objective should determine the chapter of the story, not the other way around. If the goal is brand awareness, onsite should carry the weight. If the goal is pipeline, post-event carries it and onsite exists mainly to generate the content post-event needs.
Treat onsite as a content collection for post-event, not just a live experience. Capture real footage, real reactions, real conversations while you have people in the booth, then build the post-event nurture sequence out of that material instead of stock recap language.
We look forward to continuing to provide answers during our 2027 webinar series. Please continue to submit your questions here and watch our socials for upcoming dates!