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Analog Events tries to make sure set pieces, like this one at Olaplex’s Bond Shaper launch party at NYA Studios, are designed with reuse in mind.
Jordan Kaye is the founder and CEO of Los Angeles–based Analog Events, an experiential marketing agency that has demonstrated its commitment to sustainability by going through the rigorous process of measuring its entire social and environmental impact to become a B Corp–certified company.
Kaye told Convene that he came from the PR marketing world with his foot in the “entertainment sphere” — think premieres, brand and product launches. When he switched to the “event side of things” specializing in experiential events more than a decade ago, he was struck by the amount of waste an event produces. “We would build these incredible experiences,” he said, “and fill dumpsters at the end. I was like, ‘We need to have Habitat for Humanity come and take this turf that we used for three hours — we have almost an acre of it in this parking lot — and put it to good use.” The same went for other single-use items used for corporate event marketing, like furniture.
When Jordan Kaye first starting working in experiential events, he noticed a lot of waste was created and wanted to change that when he founded Analog Events.
Pre-COVID, Kaye said, there was already a movement for “bigger and bigger” experiential events, and then after COVID, he said, “it was just this extreme of ‘it has to be big.’ A red carpet has to be extreme. We have to take people into the world of the show” for events in the entertainment world. “It’s no longer just a background of logos for a step and repeat. Even on the brand side, you see it at corporate conferences, everyone is trying to one up” their last event or their competitors. The result can be events that generate an “astronomical” amount of waste.
Here’s how Analog helps clients rethink their events to be far less wasteful without looking, Kaye said, like “they cheaped out.”
Connect your sustainability initiatives to the brand. Clients may make sustainability part of their brand, but that is not always carried through in all their activities, including events. Beauty products, for instance, Kaye said, focus their messaging on their cruelty-free ingredients and responsible packaging, but “we’re now just seeing a trickle-down effect: How are we making our photo shoots more sustainable? What does catering for the crew look like? What does our power usage look like for the photo shoot?” That, in turn, he said, translates to how their events are produced.
He said that recording artist Billie Eilish, a climate change activist, is a prime example of someone who has had a “trickle-down effect” on her publisher, Universal Music Group. Analog works with some of the labels under that company, and one of the “no-brainer” decisions at a Coachella event for that client was to make the catering vegan.
Leverage influencers. Kaye said Analog’s “linchpin” is having its clients tap into influencers and celebrities as content creators. Recognizing that not every planner or marketer has access to high-level celebrities and influencers, Kaye said there are other ways to leverage that approach by identifying a stakeholder “who has pull. It could be an attendee who you know is a vegan influencer. Then let’s make sure that we cater our menu to hit their talking points and be sure to tell them what we’re doing — ‘Hey, we’re sourcing materials within a 25-mile radius of this event, from local farms and purveyors, and here’s why we’re doing it.’ Then they’re more likely to evangelize it as well and say, ‘Wow, I went to XYZ event and look what they did.’” Look for the social-media influencers in your audience and tell the story of what you’re doing and why, he said.
Make your messaging a visual part of your event. At the Coachella event, Kaye said, almost 2,000 people attended an off-site party for the record label “and we had messaging there saying, ‘We’re providing X amount of carbon credits just for the shuttles that are being used. The whole event is being powered by battery-operated generators, and we’re having composting on site — so please be sure to help separate your food and support our efforts on this.’ And we had a couple of people post about it, saying, ‘Wow, this is so cool. We had this incredible experience that just so happens to be sustainable.’”
“Composting is usually so easy to bring on site, as well as recycling,” Analog Events founder and CEO Jordan Kaye said, and it’s very easy to quantify.
Compost, compost, compost. Analog works with clients to determine their priorities and then identifies low-hanging fruit — F&B is a “big piece” of the sustainability effort, Kaye said. “Not every client wants a vegan menu, so you pick and choose there. But we always say we’re going to bring in composting.” When a client objects, saying that it’s too costly, Analog goes to the host venue to negotiate splitting or covering the cost. “Composting is usually so easy to bring on site, as well as recycling,” he said, and it’s very easy to quantify. “We can weigh it, we can measure it, we can say where things are going, how much waste is being diverted in the local community.”
The compost that came from an event he produced during Climate Week in New York went back to the farm where the caterer got the food from — a full-circle moment that became “this really cool story to tell,” he said. He recalled having an attendee tell them that their composting efforts inspired her to buy a compact composter to use at home.
Reuse. Set pieces are designed with reuse — not single use — in mind, either to go to the client’s office, stored for future use, or made “a little bit unbranded so flats can go to a local high school for a production set, or a church,” he said. “In L.A. and New York, there are great set recycling places.”
Work with vendors. “On the vendor side,” Kaye said, “the use of plastic has really been an a-ha moment — especially our furniture vendors, who wrap everything in plastic wrap [to protect it for travel]. We will send out a pre-advance to our vendors asking them to use [reusable] furniture wraps and blankets instead.”
Report back. Kaye said clients value the reports they send them after their event that calculate such things as waste diversion, their carbon footprint, the benefit of using a neighborhood restaurant for catering, and using public transportation to bring people to the event. It gives clients the opportunity to share their good work with company leaders, he said.
Educate. Not everyone is on board with sustainability and part of Analog’s work is education. Kaye has found that there can be a big disconnect with corporate clients who may have sustainability included in their mission, but it falls under a different department and is not part of their direct contact’s remit. “We’re still in a big education period with them, saying, ‘Here are three simple things you can do,’” he said. “It changes nothing for your event experience, but it goes so far.”
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.