As part of our ongoing Season of Strategy, Laura Whittington, Strata’s Head of Data, is joined by Group Chief Operations Officer Phil Staines to discuss audience psychology and the power of smart data analysis
There are plenty of ways to gauge if your event was a success: attendance, sentiment, pure vibes. But what some organisers are missing is that great events create great data.
When we think about big summer events – the World Cup, F1, Wimbledon, Glastonbury – the energy is unmistakable, even from a distance. If you know where to look, you can see essential context in these events, year to year. An underwhelming Wimbledon that, when you look at the forecast, was plagued by terrible weather. An oddly quiet festival, because politics or oil prices disrupted air travel. For events at this size, we sometimes imagine that they are unaffected by context, but the opposite is true: success is informed by a diverse and fascinating array of data points.
The real value isn’t in looking at one dataset, when it comes to events. It’s understanding how different factors interact to explain behaviour.
Context changes everything
The traditional prediction that England will always lose key football matches in penalties has been upheld by generations of teams, although I’m delighted to say that wasn’t the case this year! As someone who studied sports psychology, I was fascinated to learn about Gareth Southgate’s approach to the problem as manager: he didn’t simply look at whether penalties were scored. He looked at time taken to step in, reactions under pressure, and the psychology of his players.
The more data he gathered, the more insights were revealed with the potential to inform future performance. He found that England had the quickest reaction time of any national team in penalty shootouts, almost rushing1. Without looking at that data point – how quickly penalties were being taken, not just by England but by every national team – that insight might have been lost.
There is a clear parallel here with live events and sponsored events: understanding the ‘why’ behind behaviour, capturing that data, matters as much as measuring the outcome. Learnings from sports psychology often have practical applications when we look at human behaviour more broadly.
“Successful event strategies come from profiling the right people, getting the right insights from them, rather than treating all audiences the same,” adds Phil Staines, Strata’s Chief Operations Officer. “Context is so valuable.”
Before, during, after: building a complete picture
The work of data collection needs to begin from the moment planning starts. Gathering insights into who your audience are, how they act and what they want can begin during the marketing stage, and build as you see who purchases tickets, interacts with pre-event communications and the event website, and who downloads and interacts with any delegate apps or other supporting content. Travel patterns, weather forecasts and geopolitics are useful to build in to your planning, to understand how the event can be best supported.
During the event itself, data collection doesn’t pause, especially in those at great scale like big summer experiences. Crowd movement, social media use, attendance at on-site amenities, activation engagement… these data points can provide fascinating insights and direct leads.
After the event, in addition to post-event communications, there’s now an opportunity to put all your data to work. To understand what truly drove the outcomes seen on the ground. This is where we see that Wimbledon literally performs better some years because the weather materially changes attendee behaviour, and public willingness to join the ticket queue.
When you overlay data – weather, travel, attendance and engagement, for example, you stop guessing and start understanding.
Mia: AI turning insight into action
It’s this logic that helped me and my team to design Mia, Strata’s AI-supported data management tool. Mia connects disparate sources and uncovers patterns humans may miss, and it is custom-built to each client who uses it, to ensure we’re helping organisations to move strategically beyond hindsight and towards predictive insight.
Mia can identify likely behaviours, emerging risks and opportunities in real time. “Mia can help brands with the simplest question, but arguably the most important,” Phil explains. “What should we do next?”
Beyond traditional demographics
When we consider large-scale and strategically designed events, it becomes clear that the future of data is behavioural. As we are able to move beyond traditional demographic tools like age, location or job title, we enter a much more interesting playing field: understanding motivations, sentiment, and the psychology behind decision-making.
I’m seeing emerging opportunities in data analysis around brand sentiment tracking, audience reactions and real-time behavioural signals. Tools that can analyse facial expressions, pulse and body heat, or draw behavioural data down from user’s phone use within event venues. The biggest opportunities come when organisers understand not just what happened, but why audiences behaved the way that they did.
Live events are the gold standard for gathering real audience data, even for brands that exist primarily online – there’s a reason why brands like Shein and ASOS are investing in pop-ups on Oxford street!2 Online interactions can only tell you so much; data from people in real life, interacting physically with your brand, is more powerful.
Getting the right data, the best data, is the first step, but impact comes from what you’d do next. “No matter the quality of your data, if you’re collecting data and not using it to make better decisions, what’s the purpose of having it in the first place?” concludes Phil.
Laura Whittington is Head of Data at Strata. A skilled project manager, she excels at delivering digital solutions to complex client problems, including leveraging AI to produce bespoke tools.
If there’s one clear takeaway from Strata’s latest Making Moments Matter live event (April 23rd, 2026), it’s that the experience economy is booming. Spotlight speaker Oliver Murray, Sales Director at Future Stores, opened by highlighting that 74% of Fortune 100 marketers are increasing their experiential budgets1, and consumers are now twice as likely2 to spend on experiences as they are on things.
With attention spans shrinking – now just 8 seconds, down from 12 in 2002 – consumers are skipping ads and actively seeking out more relevant, immersive moments. Experiences are no longer just a ‘nice to have’; they’re a critical part of the marketing mix.
Here are our key takeaways from ‘Beyond the Event: How Brands Build and Measure High-Performing Experiences’, with Giles Cattle (CGO, Strata), Oli Murray (Future Stores), and Phil Staines (CCO, Strata) making up our panel.
Oli opened the session by introducing Future Stores and their ‘flagship-on-demand’ model, framing a challenge many brands face today: trust. In a crowded and often noisy selling environment, brands might be able to reach audiences, but that doesn’t mean they’re earning attention, let alone moving people from awareness to consideration and conversion.
Consumers want reassurance. They want to feel that the brands they engage with genuinely align with their values and understand their needs. This is where experiences play a vital role. They create space for meaningful, personal interaction – moments where brands can guide customers through a considered journey, rather than relying on fleeting impressions.
Well-designed experiences turn attention into engagement, and engagement into trust.
A key question discussed on stage was how brands break cycles of experiences that look and feel the same as they always have. As events move out of the shadow of media and digital – channels, particularly digital, long backed by data and measurement – they need to continue to prove their value across the funnel.
That starts with strategy. Experiences need clear intent before, during, and after the moment itself. What are you trying to change? Perception, behaviour? Without that clarity, it’s impossible to measure success meaningfully.
Event teams need to challenge the comfort of “this is how we’ve always done it” and push for creative, strategic experiences that stand out and justify their place in the marketing mix.
Measurement doesn’t start when doors open. Insight-led planning is the foundation of a high-performing experience. Audience behaviour, brand objectives, and success metrics should all shape the build from the beginning.
Future Stores spoke about designing for the full lifecycle. Before the event, brands need to be clear on who they want to attract and why. Whether it’s a product launch, brand-building, or community engagement. During the event, live data such as dwell time, footfall patterns, and social listening allow teams to adjust in real time. Why did more people gravitate towards one product over another? What’s resonating in the moment?
Afterwards, performance data should flow into an omnichannel follow-up strategy. Understanding real behaviour, not just attendance, allows brands to focus on genuine interest, measure sentiment, and prioritise quality engagement over noise.
The most effective experiences are built around how people actually behave, not how we expect them or want them to.
That means understanding natural movement and decision-making, from how people enter a space to where they pause, browse, or interact. Small design choices can have a big impact on engagement; a clear takeaway following Future Stores’ decision to build two entrances in their store “as consumers want choice.”
It also requires a mindset shift. Events aren’t just about communicating to an audience; they’re about creating opportunities for connection. While leadership presentations have their place, the real value often sits in conversation: peer-to-peer interaction, breakout sessions, round tables, and informal networking moments.
As Giles shared, no one wants a 90-minute presentation when a shorter, sharper session would deliver more impact. Phil echoed this with a real-world example: as one event he worked on previously grew in size, satisfaction dropped. Bigger wasn’t better; it diluted the core purpose.
The takeaway? Audit your audience, ask better questions, involve advisors early, and treat events as part of a broader, curated customer journey, not isolated moments.
For years, success was reported upwards using simple metrics: attendee numbers, impressions, footfall. That’s no longer enough.
Brands need to lay the foundations for measurement now. They must set clear objectives and map data directly back to strategy, so they can demonstrate how experiences actually shift sentiment. How are people talking about the brand afterwards? What actions are they taking online? Which parts of the experience mattered most?
When these insights feed directly into CRM, brands can qualify leads properly, personalise follow-up, and build longer-term relationships. Participation turns into perception, and perception can finally be measured as performance.
In closing, Giles asked the room how many people currently measure performance post-event. Only a handful of hands went up. But that will change. Performance is fast becoming the baseline, not attendance.
And measurement isn’t just about reporting. It shapes how experiences are designed, optimised, and delivered. From content and format to flow, coffee, and conversation, these details influence human behaviour, build trust, and create experiences that truly matter.
At Strata, we design experiences with performance in mind – from strategy and audience insight through to live optimisation and post-event measurement. If you’d like to explore how measurement can work harder for your experiences, we’d love to talk.
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