Event Planning

The Ultimate Guide To Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events

Judy Allen

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470738627
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This bestselling all-in-one guide to the event planning business is back and better than ever, fully updated and revised to reflect the very latest trends and best practices in the industry. This handy, comprehensive guide includes forms, checklists, and tips for managing events, as well as examples and case studies of both successful and unsuccessful events.

Judy Allen (Toronto, ON, Canada) is founder and President of Judy Allen Productions, a full-service event planning production company.

1

The First Steps: Initial Planning & Budgeting

Designing and producing an event—whether it be a meeting, corporate event, fund-raising gala, conference, convention, incentive or other special event—has been compared to directing a movie, but is actually more like a live stage production. It is a high-wire act without a safety net. Once your event starts there are no second chances. It’s done in one take and there are no dress rehearsals. You can’t yell “cut” and re-shoot the scene. You are simply not able to predict—as you can with a movie script—how your guests and suppliers will interact and react. But you can plan, prepare and then be ready for the unexpected. Never forget Murphy’s Law : what can go wrong, will go wrong.

At one poorly planned event, the event planning decor, staging and lighting setup crew arrived days in advance to do an extensive setup for a poolside event complete with a dancing water light and music display at a privately owned venue. They found, to their horror, that the swimming pool had been filled in months ago but no one had notified the event planning company, and the event planning company and their suppliers had not been back since contracting to do a pre-event (pre-con) meeting, nor had they outlined swimming pool requirement stipulations in their vendor contract or event function sheets. Extensive decor and a lavish fireworks display—at great expense to the event planning company—had to be brought in at the last moment to create a new fantasy look that would appease their client, who did not need to have that added stress mere days before what had been a long-anticipated special event.

Although you are not creating an Oscar-winning movie, it is always important to remember that you are creating something that may be a lifetime memory for someone. Any event, whether it’s for 50 or more than 2,000, needs to be as detailed and as scripted as any film production, and so does the budget. Budgets for meetings, corporate events, product launches, conferences, conventions, incentives and special events can go from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and today it is very common to have them run in the millions of dollars. An event program is considered successful if it has no surprises on the day of the event and at final reconciliation and exceeds event objectives.

Before you begin designing your event, you need to first determine why you are having your event or taking part in an event. This is referred to as defining the event objectives, and there can be both primary and secondary objectives in each event. Event objectives will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. Understanding why this event is being held will help you (and your client) to lay out the company or client objectives—both tangible (day of) and intangible (long-term) returns—so that you can then select the right style of event that will be capable of delivering them. Using a business convention as an example, a company can be an exhibitor at a convention, an attendee at a convention or an event sponsor; be represented by a company speaker; attend seminars; or host the gala farewell, a hospitality suite or an evening event for select conference attendees. Each of these event scenarios will bring different returns to a company on their investment of time, money and energy, and it is important to see which style of event will provide the most value and produce the best results in meeting the company’s objectives. The Executive’s Guide to Corporate Events and Business Entertaining: (Wiley, 2007) provides an in-depth look at key event styles and outlines in detail the company and event objectives each will return.

Examples of Different Event Styles

• Board meetings

• Business meetings

• Client appreciation events

• Conferences

• Conventions

• Corporate shows

• Custom training seminars involving emotional and physical challenges

• Employee appreciation events

• Executive retreats

• Gala fund-raising events

• Incentive travel and premium programs

• Naming rights

• Product launches

• Product placement

• Special events

• Teleconferencing

• Trade shows

• Webcasts

Once you have set your event objectives and determined the best event style to meet them, you will be able to strategically design an event that will be tailor-made to target those needs (you can find explicit strategic design principles I have created and strategic planning case studies in The Business of Event Planning [Wiley, 2002]). The next decision is to establish the scope of the event. Two criteria will determine this: money and objectives.

Determining Your Event Objectives

In order to design an event that delivers results and a return on the investment of time, money and energy the company hosting the event expends, the event must be crafted to meet guest expectations, as well as the company’s. You want to create event anticipation, maximum guest attendance and full participation in embracing the primary and secondary purpose and message behind the event.

Event objectives can be both tangible and intangible and can be met pre-event (if a qualifying sales objective, for example, is required in the case of an incentive program), during the event, and post-event, and become the bridge, platform and positioning to meeting the next level of objectives for future events. An event objective must have value to the company holding the event, those taking part in the event, and cross over from professional to personal benefits and vice versa.

For example, one company had an objective of creating an event—or a series of events—that would result in having their staff become more productive, increase morale, reduce accidents in the workplace and bring down per employee health care costs. In order to do this they focused on an employee and work environment well-being theme with the top-level performers taking part in what would turn out to be a yearly three-day all-expenses-paid incentive program to climb a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado. This main event—one of many ongoing events tied to this event’s objectives—centered on achieving specific individual fitness goals and has proven to be an outstanding success, with more employees qualifying every year. Their company’s health care costs have been reduced to half the region’s average—which is a savings to their company of $2,000,000 a year—and meeting this one event objective alone more than pays for their total event investment of $400,000 per year. In addition, over the years the company has been able to bring down their worker’s compensation costs from $500,000 to $10,000, and they have created fitter workers, who are more productive and who now have a higher morale both personally and professionally.

How Much Can You Spend?

The first thing you need to do is to establish how much money you can set aside for the event. Even the smallest event requires a serious financial commitment. You may decide that you cannot afford an event at this time or may need to do something different to bring about the results you are looking for.

Remember, it is better to wait than to stage a shoddy event on a shoestring budget. And referring back to the conference example, you may decide that the event dollars that you have available would be better spent having company employees attend the conference as participants—where they are free to network by day and not be tied to an exhibit—and hosting an innovative, private, upscale dinner exclusively for the key people you want to spend quality one-on-one time with. Sponsoring what would be, due to limited event funds, a bare-bones budget “gala” dinner would give your company more visibility, but it may not reflect the company image you are trying to project. Spending the available event dollars to entertain 50-plus guests in the manner you know is required to impress your target audience, as opposed to trying to stretch those same dollars to cover decor, entertainment, food and beverage for 1,000 conference attendees, most of whom your company will not be doing business with, and in the end producing an event that is not in keeping with your company standards, would be the way to go.

One supplier did this so successfully that their dinner event—set on the stage of a well-known theater (which was closed to the public for the evening) with the stars of the show in attendance and putting on a private performance for them—was the talk of the conference the next day and really made their company stand out. Their invited guests had taken part in an event that made them feel like stars, while those who had not been invited aspired to be on the select guest list next year. They also hoped to make a business connection with the company employees at the conference, who (because they were there as attendees and not staffing an exhibit booth) had time to step out of the conference with prospective new clients and enjoy multiple coffee breaks, lunches, etc., with no time restraints. This company generated more industry buzz and secured future business in this two-tiered event approach than they would have had they spent the dollars they had available differently at this particular conference and time. When they assessed their company objectives—short- and long-term—they could easily see which style of event would best fit their event intentions.

It is important to always determine ahead of time how much you can spend so that you can then select the appropriate event style and plan the event to fit the budget. It is a good idea to do a rough estimate of anticipated costs and inclusions before anything else because, very often, budget approvals from the higher-ups are required before an event is given the green light.

By doing a preliminary budget based on your event vision wish list of inclusions, you will know what will be doable and what will not. For instance, if a company was planning an incentive program and their wish was for a seven-night stay in a specific destination, they would quickly be able to determine if the airfare used up the majority of the budget. If it did, they might have to decide if a three-night stay, which would keep them on budget, would also help them accomplish their goals. If it were determined that a seven-night stay was necessary, then concessions would need to be made. Perhaps they would have to choose a location closer to home, or they may need to devise a way to come up with more funding, such as by soliciting industry or supplier sponsorship of specific event elements.

Tip

To obtain additional funding, consider approaching other industry members or the company’s suppliers. Be aware, however, that you may not want to align yourself with one supplier over another, or to risk crossing business ethical lines. For more information on business ethics and business entertaining, refer to Event Planning Ethics and Etiquette (Wiley, 2003).

The company may need to look to other means to increase their event budget or look for other creative, cost-effective solutions that could involve partnering with another company and designing an event that creatively combined what each company could bring to the table to produce an event that would be a standout.

At one very upscale book launch celebrating glamour, millions and millions of dollars’ of diamonds were brought in for guests to enjoy wearing and be photographed in while they were there. One woman was sporting more than 20 million dollars’ in diamonds for her once-in-a-lifetime photo. The diamonds were brought in by Brinks trucks and 20 armed guards, and the event area was turned into a seemingly diamond-dazzling fortress (but remember Murphy’s Law—two guests slipped out a side door that had not been secured to enjoy a private dinner in the hotel restaurant and caused the event organizers concern). But while the impact of the millions of dollars’ of diamonds was major, the cost of having the diamonds on-site was not.

At midnight all the diamonds went back and the only hard costs for this very effective event element—where the objective was t...