Any good conclave isn’t put on by a one-man army. Instead, a Council of Chiefs spends months putting together the best experience possible. Each Conclave Vice Chief on the COC is responsible for some portion of the conclave, but each area of the conclave interacts with each other. It is up to the Section Chief to ensure that communication remains open, regular, and worthwhile, in order to provide the best, most cohesive experience possible for event attendees.
Members and advisers of the Council of Chiefs are busy, high-performing Arrowmen, often with several large time commitments in and out of Scouting. Therefore, when communicating with the COC, the overarching principle should be regular, succinct communication. Long, complex emails to entire groups are very often necessary to give major updates or explain unexpected obstacles. However, with that said, shorter, more frequent contact helps to keep everyone informed and engaged without overwhelming amounts of information all at once.
Communicating As A Team
Regardless of how your team communicates, the conclave planning team will often be composed of a diverse group of Scouts and Scouters. It’s critical that in all communication youth protection policies are followed. All youth protection policies still apply in an online environment. Scouting America maintains resources to help you remain compliant with these policies in online settings. These resources should be consulted by the section leadership, including the section adviser and section staff adviser, to ensure these policies are followed.
When determining how to communicate as a COC, the section leadership should consider the following two questions:
- Which platform is the best for the COC to use?
- How often should the COC communicate?
Communication Platforms
In many cases, email is the ideal communication platform for conclave planning. Practically everyone has an email, and older emails are stored until they are deleted by the user. However, email may not be the best way to communicate with all of your stakeholders, and so it is worth looking into other platforms. The Communications Toolkit contains some other examples of communication platforms that your team can use to communicate more effectively. The section pertaining to these communication platforms can be found here.
In any event, the best way to have regular, valuable, and individual communication is just that: individual. At the start of the conclave planning process, ask each member of the COC to give their best method of contacting them. Record this in a central location alongside each members’ contact information; that way, when you go to look for someone’s information, you already know which method works best for them. This creates faster responses and happier members of the COC, leading to a better conclave for everyone.
Frequency Of Communication
In-person meetings of the COC are essential to putting on a good conclave. However, sections typically have very large geographic boundaries, and meeting in-person frequently is often unreasonable. Perhaps regular meetings could occur on virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Google Meets. Ultimately, the solution to this problem is best found through trial and error. Feedback from CVCs and advisers will also help to make this decision; if CVCs feel as though they are making regular, significant progress (and the section chief agrees), communication may consist only of a few check-ins and calls prior to the conclave. However, if there are issues in making progress or a CVC would prefer it, the section chief has the option to be in much more regular contact with them - perhaps as often as a call once a week. Each CVC and adviser are different, and some will require much more regular, intensive communication than others.
It’s important to remember, though, that even within this variance there must still be consistency. It’s to the benefit of everyone involved for the section chief to contact each member of the planning team, regardless of office, on a consistent schedule. This way, those small questions or problems that never seem to be addressed anywhere else have a time and place to be answered and solved. This contact can be as casual or involved as needed; for example, anything from a simple text message to a scheduled call or meeting will work.
Conclave Brand and Identity
A brand helps to publicly define the most important features of an organization. By utilizing one unified voice, the Arrowmen of the section can better understand what the Section is, what it does, and how conclave can help them to better serve their units, chapters, and lodges.
Visual Design
Aesthetically pleasing designs and promotions draw more attention for the simple reason that they are more pleasant to look at. This doesn’t go to say that all promotions should aim for aesthetic values above all; rather, needed content should be promoted in a way that’s both informative and visually pleasing. These elements also help to create a unified identity for the section. In this way, promotions can be utilized by different lodges and on different platforms; with one unified visual identity, any Arrowman who has previously seen and been impacted by a section promotion will again recognize the work of the section, and have their thoughts called back to conclave and their excitement for this year’s event.
Having an organizational voice is critical for an organizational unit such as the section. As an organizational level between the lodge - a smaller, more local level - and the larger region, the section also carries with it a professional voice and tone in public marketing. The audience for section promotions and materials isn’t just limited to Arrowmen; families, parents, and unit leaders will also look at section materials and pass their own judgment about the section based on the materials available to them.
While creating content with a unit leader in mind may seem daunting, it is also an opportunity to recruit more youth to attend the conclave. If materials are professional, aesthetically pleasing, and communicate all relevant information, a unit leader may be impressed and serve as an advocate for the section and for the conclave itself. On the other hand, scarce information and confusing graphics will likely discourage a unit leader from promoting the conclave to the youth in their unit. If information isn’t easily understood and accepted by all, how can it be expected that the information will be passed along?
Creating A Conclave Brand
Each year, the section must face one of its many perennial struggles: deciding on a theme for the year’s conclave. For more information on assembling this theme, see the theme section above. Once each committee has created a vision of the theme in their work, what’s the next step? For those in charge of promoting the conclave, a conclave brand needs to be developed and distributed as soon as possible.
A conclave brand isn’t as extensive as the section brand discussed above. Rather, imagine promotions highlighting the theme and specific activities of the event in the weeks and months leading up to the conclave. Any promotion that couldn’t be copy-pasted from one year into the next is part of the conclave brand. This brand matters because it addresses that all-important question: what’s new this year? How will conclave this year be a different experience from the one I attended this time last year? A conclave brand serves as the face of these changes by communicating, visually and in written materials, that this conclave is distinct and worthwhile.
The greatest assets of any section are its members. When creating a conclave brand, remember that: look for members with interest and willingness to learn. Find those with needed skills and background, such as knowledge of graphic design and promotion, but also remember that anyone can be trained. Pull together those who are passionate about the conclave and what it has to offer and give them guidance in promoting the specific benefits and ideas of the conclave.
For more information on how to create a strong conclave brand, refer to the Communications Toolkit’s guidance on brand and design, found here.
Guide to Conclave Promotions
A section can spend an entire year working hard to put on the perfect conclave for Arrowmen, bringing together years of experience and trial-and-error into an experience that’s truly unforgettable. However, if no one is told when and where the event is, all of that effort will have been for nothing. While this is a rather extreme example, it remains true that Sections need to effectively market and promote their conclave in order to excite Arrowmen to attend and bring their friends.
In-Person Promotions and Promotional Materials
No section could exist without the support of its lodges, and lodges receive key support from the sections they reside within. Unsurprisingly, this relationship extends to promotions as well. Sections across the country have found success in providing lodges with ready-made promotional materials, asking only that the lodges repost or share them on their own social media platforms. Many other sections print a banner or provide flyers to lodges. In these cases, sections will usually take on the responsibility of printing and physically distributing materials to lodge chiefs and advisers.
Lodges and sections share wonderful, mutually beneficial relationships: it’s in the best interest of any section chief to use this relationship for the benefit of their conclave.
Marketing Conclave Content
In all event marketing, specificity is key. Promoting the good food, fun activities, and the evening shows carries weight, but carries notably less weight than promoting the Saturday night barbeque, the lodge kickball championship, or the national chief singing karaoke during the Friday show.
Among all sections and all Arrowmen, a common complaint emerges: conclave is the same every year. Traditions stagnate and excitement turns to drudgery as old ideas are brought up as new, and the key, small changes from year to year go unnoticed by the larger audience. Perhaps the easiest way to remedy this comes in the marketing of the event itself. Those planning and marketing conclave know better than anyone what will be happening, and (most likely) how the weekend has changed. In order to excite Arrowmen, remember to keep promotions specific and unique. Why will this conclave be one you don’t want to miss? What can participants look forward to when they wake up on Saturday morning? Remember to promote these elements, and promotions can’t go wrong.
For ideas as to how specifically to do this, reflect on examples found both in and out of Scouting. How does the local high school market school events to the student body? How do community organizers get uninterested community members to spend their Saturday traveling to and enjoying their event?
What Promotions Work?
Section E9 hosts the largest conclave in the country, routinely hosting over 1,500 Arrowmen at one conclave. The section chief and officers of Section E9 have regularly filmed a music video that promotes this conclave while parodying a popular song. See: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, 2017, and 2015.
This promotion is time- and labor-intensive, involving coordinating many individual schedules, booking the facility, editing, scriptwriting, and onsite filming, among other elements. However, it’s also a promotion that’s likely to be widely shared and remembered, and the investment of time and energy may be worth it.
Determining which promotions work and which don’t will vary from section to section. Some sections, such as Section G16, have found that the time and effort they put into social media promotions year-round yields results that merit their investment. Other sections may find that in-person promotions at events are more effective and choose to spend their time developing resources to facilitate these promotions. The best tool to recognize what does and doesn’t work in your section is through feedback - consider polling conclave attendees and figure out which promotions reached them, or polling Arrowmen online in the months prior to establish which communication medium they check most often.
Communication Resources
Communications Toolkit
A toolkit designed to provide basic communications guidance to lodges and sections. This is a good reference to check with as you are planning conclave communications.
Elevator Pitch Template
A template for a sample event description that lodges can use to promote conclave at lodge events.
Promotional Slideshow Template
A promotional slideshow to use to promote conclave to a lodge, section, or chapter audience.
Phone Call Script Template
A template for a script that could be used to call Arrowman personally to promote the conclave.
Promotional Email Template
A promotional email template that could be sent out to section members to promote conclave..
Conclave Guide
A handout detailing one way that your section can ensure delegates remain informed of conclave activities throughout the weekend.
Sample Packing List
An example packing list that could be sent out to delegates in the days leading up to a conclave.