Plan the guest list first. The content will follow the people.

At Advertising Week New York, Gary Vaynerchuk made two claims in the same session, according to Marketing Dive. First, experiential should be planned mainly as a source of shareable social content. Second, three people at an 80-person dinner can affect a business more than a potential 10 million people.

The second claim is the one worth keeping, and it argues against the first. An 80-person dinner works because of who is sitting at it. Plan it for the camera, and the guest list starts to change. The seats go to whoever photographs well and posts often, and the three people who could have moved the business get harder to place.

Content from a good room is a byproduct. It is useful, and it should be captured. A room built backward from the feed is a different event with a different guest list.

Plan the guest list first. The content will follow the people.