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To create a more powerful experience at the BBC Showcase: A Perfect Planet event, Encore used LED walls and creative lighting to wow the audience.
We like to think that we are rational beings, but in fact, the vast majority of what we think and do is shaped by emotion and not by reason, according to Baba Shiv, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Based on decades of evidence and his own research, Shiv estimates that between “90 to 95 percent of our decisions and behavior are constantly being shaped, non-consciously, by our emotional brain system,” Shiv told speaker and author Matt Abrahams on Abrahams’ podcast, “Think Faster, Talk Smarter.” If you want to persuade people, Shiv said, “first and foremost, you need to play into what the emotional brain is looking for.”
“Events are opportunities to change behaviors…”
— Amanda Armstrong, Encore’s senior vice president of communications and industry relations
Feelings also play a role in learning and memory, making educational experiences that are tied to emotion more likely to stick with us. And according to psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at the University of North Carolina, positive emotions help us think more expansively and make stronger connections with others. Many meeting organizers understand the primary role that emotional engagement and experiential factors play in their events, but more than half — 55 percent — said that they find that emotions are difficult to measure, according to the CEMA Events Maturity Benchmarking Study, published late last year. And in that same survey, a majority said that the return on experience or emotion (ROE) isn’t prioritized, compared with traditional return-on- investment (ROI) metrics.
What Exactly Is Return on Emotion?
According to events solutions company Encore, Return on Emotion (ROE) is a concept used in marketing and customer experience to measure the emotional connection and impact a brand, product, or service has on its customers. Unlike traditional financial metrics like ROI (Return on Investment), ROE focuses on the intangible value created by fostering positive emotional responses.
And in 2022, event agency Haute, (now Brand Revolution), trademarked the phrase “return on emotion,” after a year-long study on the metric in 2021 to determine which emotions are most influential in driving business at events.
How Does Return on Emotion Differ From Its Cousins, Return on Engagement and Return on Experience?
The short answer: It depends on who you ask. To Amanda Armstrong, Encore’s senior vice president of communications and industry relations, Return on Emotion, Return on Engagement, and Return on Experience are “interchangeable,” as all three “measure customers’ emotional connection with an event.”
However you define ROE, she said, “events are opportunities to change behaviors” and emotions are “levers of change” when it comes to designing business events that deliver an impact. “Emotions influence the way people think, feel, and behave,” Armstrong said, and determining what behaviors you want your audience to change will make you “more successful in designing wow moments, space for authentic connections, or engagement tactics when you understand the emotional levers to pull.”
Bridgette Birdie, senior director of global events and outreach at Moody’s, and Amanda Armstrong, Encore’s senior vice president of communications and industry relations, took part in the CL25 session, “Shaping the Future of Events: Lessons from Leading Organizations.” (Whatever Media Group)
Why Design for Return on Emotion?
Designing for ROE also can reach audiences in ways that more traditional RO’s don’t touch. One example is designing events that are more inclusive. According to Armstrong, what younger generations want out of events is “not necessarily, ‘Oh, I got education, but did you design this so that it was easy for me to find like-minded people that I feel safe [with]?’ They’re actually wanting a more personalized, curated experience where their emotions are involved.”
This was echoed by Bridgette Birdie, senior director of global events and outreach at Moody’s, during the PCMA Convening Leaders 2025 session, “Shaping the Future of Events: Lessons from Leading Organizations.” Inclusive experiences “will drive brand loyalty,” Birdie said during the session, and more specifically for associations, “member loyalty and retention.”
Everything You Need
to Know About ROE
This article and those listed below are part of Convene’s April 2025 issue cover and CMP Series story package.