How to Brief an AV Company for a Brand Experience Event

Most AV briefs are late, incomplete or both. The earlier a production company receives a complete brief, the more effectively it can spec the job, source the right crew, and identify timeline problems before they become site problems. The brief exists to get everyone to the same picture of the event before any equipment is ordered or any crew is confirmed.

A good brief answers four questions clearly. What is the event? What does the audience experience? What does the space need to look like? And when does each element need to happen? Everything else is a detail that follows from those answers.

Three things are worth sharing immediately, even if the rest of the brief is still forming.

The event date and load-in window. Crew availability and equipment availability are confirmed against dates. If the date shifts by two weeks, the production company needs to know before anything is locked in. Sharing the date early means you are not competing with other events for crew and kit.

The venue and any known access restrictions. Some venues have specific load-in restrictions, limited rigging capacity or a technical house production company with exclusivity over certain services. Knowing the venue early means these constraints are factored in from the start, not discovered the week before the event.

The number of attendees and the nature of the audience experience. One hundred guests at a seated product launch dinner requires a very different production setup to four hundred guests at a standing brand activation. The production company cannot begin speccing meaningfully without knowing both of these things.

Technical information is often the last thing an agency gathers because it requires a venue visit or a conversation with the operations team. But it is frequently the category of information that creates the most expensive surprises when it arrives late. The questions below identify what production companies need from the venue.

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  What are the available load-in hours? Is there a hard-out time?
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  What are the venue's power supply specifications? Total capacity available and circuit locations.
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  Is there a rigging structure available? What is its weight capacity and are there certified hang points?
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  Are there any restrictions on noise during build? Any events in adjacent spaces?
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  Does the venue have its own in-house technical team whose services are mandatory for any part of the production?
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  What are the floor dimensions and ceiling height at the event location within the venue?

Events briefs change. The stage gets bigger. A speaker gets added. The client wants to include a second room. Revision management is not about preventing changes. It is about making sure the production company and the agency are working from the same version of the brief at the same time.

Two practices reduce revision-related confusion. First, issue brief changes in writing, not during phone calls. Even if the change is minor, send a written follow-up. This creates a record and ensures the technical team are working from the agreed version rather than a note taken during a call three weeks ago. Second, agree a cut-off date with the production company for structural changes. Small content adjustments can usually happen close to the event. Changes to the scale of the LED wall, the stage configuration or the number of screens affect equipment orders, crew numbers and truck space, and have a natural cut-off point after which they begin to affect cost and feasibility.

Changes made during load-in or on the day of the event are the most expensive kind. When an agency asks for a camera to be repositioned on the morning of an awards ceremony, or requests a fourth screen that was not in the brief during load-in, the production company has to solve that problem with whatever is in the building and whatever crew is already on site. Sometimes it is solvable. Sometimes it is not. When it is solvable, it will usually incur an additional cost that was not in the original quote.

This is not the production company being difficult. Equipment ordered that morning is rare. Crew added at short notice comes at a premium rate. Time spent on an unplanned task is time not spent on the task that was planned. On-site changes are a budget and timeline risk, and the right place to surface them is during the technical production meeting, not during cue-to-cue.

The following headings cover what a production company needs to quote and plan accurately. Complete what you know and mark the rest as TBC with a target date for confirmation.