A night nobody wanted to leave: the experience script with gLue and aiqfome

It was the end of the night and nobody wanted to leave. In front of a board of notes, the guests at an aiqfome event for influencers started singing in chorus, stretching the last vowel in the tone of someone who wants the party to go on: “Eu não vou emboraaaa”. They had been through a full day of activities and still left messages for the brand. One of them read “te amar é fácil, aiq”. I keep this scene with the care of someone who keeps a note in a coat pocket, because it sums up the series that begins here. When an experience makes people feel something different, they remember it. Writing that feeling is my job, and I had the joy of doing it at gLue's invitation.

How Ton from REC led me to the event agency gLue

Every good partnership has someone who makes the introduction. In my case, it was Ton, from REC, a partner production company here in Maringá. He introduced me to Paula and Diego, who run gLue, and I owe him a thank you that I want to put in writing right at the start of this series. Opening a door for someone is a generous gesture, and Ton opened a door that I walked through with great joy.

Meeting Paula and Diego had that rare feeling of recognition at first sight. Then came the portfolio, then the agency's culture, and the certainty arrived quickly. A scriptwriter reads a portfolio the way he reads someone else's script, looking for the hand of whoever wrote it, and gLue's hand has a demand for finish that you can recognize from far away.

gLue: corporate events and brand experience in Brazil and abroad

gLue describes itself, on its own website, as “a corporate events and brand experiences agency”. It creates and produces corporate events, conventions, activations and incentive trips in Brazil and abroad, with an office in Maringá. One sentence on the website says a lot about the way the house works: “Stories take shape when strategy, aesthetics and operations follow the same direction.”

For a scriptwriter, that sentence sounds like an invitation. It places the story at the center and announces that there is an entire structure ready to make that story happen live, with people, schedules, lighting and logistics. On gLue's Instagram, you can follow the agency's work up close and the care it dedicates to each project.

A four-day event for aiqfome, a Magalu group company

The first challenge I shared with gLue was a four-day event for aiqfome, a Magalu group company. gLue has served Magalu since 2019, and a relationship that long has a consequence every top-tier agency knows: with each delivery, the client's expectations climb another step. The weight of that delivery was enormous, and the responsibility for leading it rested with gLue. That was when Paula and Diego called me in to contribute to the script, an invitation I am grateful for to this day.

aiqfome is headquartered in Maringá and grew through inland cities across the country, as Canaltech reported at the time of its purchase by Magazine Luiza. This helps explain the sensitivity an event for the brand calls for: aiqfome is part of the daily routine of people spread across many cities.

If you lead marketing, brand or HR at a company of this size, you know this pressure well. The event of the year brings the company's name into the room, and every detail becomes a topic of conversation the next day. A flawless delivery begins with choosing who will lead the project, and gLue came to this challenge with the trust it has been building with the group since 2019.

The event scriptwriter inside the agency's team

I want to make the order of things very clear, because it says a lot about how a project at this level works. The leadership, creation, production and delivery belong to gLue. The relationship with the client is between gLue and aiqfome. I was invited by the agency to contribute to the script, writing the emotional layer: what each guest would experience, feel and keep in their memory.

I like to think of this layer as a thread running through the program. The agency designs the event, chooses the venue, sets up the operation and makes sure everything happens at the right time. The script enters this design to give meaning to the sequence, so that each moment prepares the next and the guest reaches the end with the impression of having lived a story with a beginning, a middle and an ending that asks to be remembered.

The scripts and the mechanics of the activations remain confidential, out of contractual ethics and respect for the work of gLue and aiqfome, a brand I hold in great affection. What I can share, and I share it gladly, is what became visible at the end of the night.

“Te amar é fácil, aiq”: what makes an in-person event stay in memory

Back to the board of notes. The chorus of “Eu não vou emboraaaa” and the message “te amar é fácil, aiq” came from the guests themselves, in their own words. That sentence captures what gLue seeks in every project: making people fall in love with the brands it serves. The agency is committed to that passion, and my work within the project focuses on the emotions that turn an experience into something unforgettable.

This is the thesis that will run through all six articles. A well-written in-person event makes people feel something different, and that is why they remember it. The memory of a gathering stays attached to what the body felt there: the shiver at the entrance, the laughter shared with the person beside you, the wish to stay a little longer. When the script gets that feeling right, the guest takes the brand home along with the memory.

For those who decide on the investment, this has a very concrete value. The convention, the launch or the gathering with influencers will compete for space with all the other memories of each participant's week. Writing the emotional layer means working so that this event wins that competition and is still being talked about months later.

What this series on events that stay in memory will show

Over the next five articles, I will share the behind-the-scenes stories I am able to tell about this work with gLue and reflect on the craft of writing for events. The second article covers in-person events and internal engagement, with data from Gallup, the Microsoft Work Trend Index and a study on requests made in person, written for those who handle HR, culture and internal marketing. The third tells the story of Encontrinho da Carola and After da Carola, aiqfome's event for influencers, and shows why the end of the night carries so much weight.

The fourth article covers the activity for licensees that I wrote, also with gLue, and how to make an entire network recognize itself in the same story. The fifth brings together the science of memory and the peak-end rule to think about the moment the guest will remember. The sixth closes the series with what I learned writing inside an event agency's team. The full account of the project is in the gLue and aiqfome case study, here on the Mentoniano website.

In the next article, the conversation moves inside the company. I will show what Gallup and Microsoft data say about internal engagement and relationships at work, what a University of Waterloo study revealed about requests made in person, and how a well-written script turns your team's gathering into a memory everyone shares.