How do you brief an event staffing team?

By the We Are Play team · October 2026

The brief we see most often is a sales deck. Campaign idea, mood board, hero line, a slide of logos. Almost none of it helps the person who will be on their feet for nine hours handing out wristbands.

That person needs three things: where to stand, what to say in the first ten seconds, and who to call when plans change. Write for them and everything else follows.

Dates, venue and shift times decide who is free, so we need those first. But the most useful paragraph you can send is about the first hour.

At the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival at ExCeL London, Square Enix knew exactly what was coming. Every fan needed a scan, a wristband, a goody bag and a booklet before the keynote. And most of them would sprint straight for the merch stand.

That one paragraph shaped the whole plan: thirteen on scanners, and a separate desk of four for media, cosplayers and access needs. The biggest team in the building went on merchandise, and the client asked us to grow it again in the final fortnight. Tell us when the rush comes and where people go first. We can work out the rest.

“Brand ambassador” can mean handing out samples from a tray. It can also mean a ten-minute demo to someone about to spend £400. “Host” can mean smiling at a door or running a VIP lounge.

The title tells us almost nothing. A sentence about what the person actually does, hour by hour, tells us who to send. Someone brilliant at stopping strangers in a queue is not always who you want explaining a contract to a trade buyer.

Write the brief for the person working the door.

Fans at a convention, delegates at a summit and families in a shopping centre need different people.

This matters most with fan audiences. The players at the Final Fantasy XIV festival notice instantly when staff don’t know a Lalafell from a Lopporit. So we recruited people who play, and briefed them on the practical side.

If your audience has its own language, put it in the brief. We’ll find people who already speak it.

Nobody reads a 60-page brand book the night before a shift. What gets read is one page: what it is, what it costs, where to buy it, the questions people always ask, and the things the team must never say. Health claims, changing prices, digs at a competitor – spell them out.

If the product needs real training, budget for it. On a UK and Ireland VR headset launch, every one of our ambassadors went through the retailer’s own training before their first shift. The job was measured on demos per hour, sales and accessories sold, and nobody sells something they’re still learning to switch on.

2,750+ shifts in 59 stores. Every ambassador trained before day one.

Uniform sizes, where bags go, which entrance the team uses and whether there’s anywhere to sit on a break can read like admin, but they decide whether your team turns up on time, warm and in the right shirt.

Expensive kit gets its own line: who signs it out, who signs it back. On the VR rollout, demo kit was shared between ambassadors on different days, so every handover was agreed with the store manager and photographed.

And put briefing time inside the shift. If you want people on site at 8.15 for a 9am door, the shift starts at 8.15.

We plan for changes on the day. A queue may need closing, a ticket may not scan or a guest may ask for something new, so your brief should name the person on your side who can decide on the day. At ExCeL that chain was one overall event manager, six event managers and fourteen team leaders, all on radios, each with their own patch of floor.

Name the person who can make the call on the day.

A written plan can only cover so much. The day before the Final Fantasy XIV festival opened, after packing extra items into 6,000 goody bags, our team walked the whole show with the client. By the time the doors opened, everyone on the floor had already seen every queue, every exit and every experience they were about to run.

Half an hour on site before the public arrives is the cheapest training you will ever buy.

And if your brief isn’t finished, send it anyway. We’d rather have a rough version early and call you about the gaps. Just leave out personal details about guests or staff.