Arran Events, Advertising and Marketing

Most good event planners are a bit on the anal side. That is because “the devil” really is in the details.

And if the details are not well managed, it is very easy for all kinds of problems to occur.

A good example occurred just this week.

I received a call from a client this past Tuesday. She wanted to talk about the party she is scheduled to have for this coming Saturday.

She had done all of the right things including planning and booking her vendors well in advance. In fact, she had booked our services back in February.

The reason for the call? She received a panicked call from her catering hall.

It turns out that they double-booked the time slot for her event.

This catering hall is run by a husband-wife team. The wife generally handles reservations. But her husband had taken down a reservation for another event, a wedding reception. He didn’t see that the time slot was already reserved for my client’s event.

The wife discovered the oversight while reviewing arrangements for the weekend.

The upshot? My client, who didn’t have the heart to displace a wedding celebration, had to reschedule her event on short notice.

Needless to say, the oversight caused my client a great deal of inconvenience. For starters, she is expecting out-of-town guests who will have to change their arrangements.

The hall is trying to compensate by giving my client its use for free.

Nonetheless, damage was done.

In this case, there was little the client could have done to prevent this problem. It was caused by conditions out of her knowledge and control.

The reality is that people are human and screw-ups happen to the best of us.

But you can minimize problems arising from items under your control.

The key is organization.

If you are planning an event, keep a timeline and keep records. The timeline will give you a way to impose order on the endless details by letting you quickly see what has to take place and when.

Records will give you concrete reference so you don’t have to rely on memory. Contracts, receipts, papers, and your notes of phone conversations should be kept in a central place such as a folder.

A diary system based on your timeline will trigger necessary reviews and action on your part.

For example, if you book a vendor’s services and they promise to send you a contract, ask when you can expect to receive it. Then, note the date in your diary. Check it off when you receive the paperwork.

Failure to recieve the contract or any other promised paperwork should precipitate follow up on your part.

Such failures can be caused by any number of things. Papers get lost in the mail, and occasionally vendors don’t properly record an order.

It is rare, but it happens.

Likewise, many providers of party services require the payment of a deposit to secure your order.

Many clients shop around, change plans, or fail to commit for any number of reasons. Depending on the specific product or service, some vendors receive orders from a small percentage of their inquiries.

So a vendor may not follow up if you do not send in the deposit. And you may find yourself scrambling to obtain that service under a short deadline. This is more likely during peak periods when the vendor’s resources are stretched.

A diary system will keep you on track and organized.

Experiences like my client’s are rare. But mistakes do happen.

By being organized and on top of your diary system, you’ll prevent a lot of problems. And you can be confident that you have the details of your event under control.

Ellen Zucker owns Faces & Fortunes, a party entertainment company specializing in providing Caricature artists and Fortune tellers in the Philadelphia area. Her website is http://www.facesandfortunes.com

For more advice on planning your event, visit her sister site, http://www.faces-and-fortunes-partytips.com

Tags: event planners, event planning, organizing a party, party planning, preventing problems

With the Winter Olympic Games in Torino underway, on time and over budget, it feels like a good time to take a minute and look at the lessons the Olympics have to teach us about managing events. To be fair, the Olympics are a massive set of groups with multiple venues hosting simultaneous events with visitors from all over the world. To make matters worse, you only get to do it once, you prepare for years leading up to it, when it arrives you try the best that you can to control the chaos for just over 2 nonstop weeks and then, in a blink of an eye, it is over. While there is a chance that your children or grandchildren will be involved in hosting the Games again, for most people involved there is no next time.

It is still too soon to look closely at what has and has not worked for the Winter Games in Torino. It is not until all the smoke has cleared that they will know how the event really went. I did however, have the good fortune of being involved with hosting the Salt Lake Winter Games (2002) while I was a college student in Provo, UT. Those Olympics are now four years old and time has given us a great perspective to glean some valuable lessons from them and the way that they were managed.

For the sake of learning, let’s skip past the Olympic bid scandal and look at the things that were done right for those games.

Let’s start with logistics in this part of our series – I-15 was under construction for years before the Olympic Games were held, but more importantly, some one had clearly thought out the most popular routes to the venues and where people would be going within the venues. The roads were modified to accommodate the increased traffic and the venues were laid out with the fans in mind. I spent most of my time during the 2002 Olympics at Soldier Hollow, the Cross Country Ski and Biathlon Venue. You could tell that time was spent to design the venue in such a way as to give the fans the most access to the course while making it a great course for the athletes competing. Often times this is a detail that is overlooked for smaller events. The venue will be decorated in a manner that looks great, often times at the expense of functionality.

It is also important to take the time to think through how people are going to arrive and leave your event. Look for things that might make it harder for people to attend and try to handle those issues in advance. I was involved in an event once where there was construction on the primary route. Since the location was vaguely familiar to most of the people attending we sent out flyers warning people about the construction and advising them of alternate routes that were available. Printing little maps on the back of your tickets is also a great way to help people get to your event.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to 1) get to your event and 2) do what you want them to do when they arrive.

Next: Planning a Profitable Event

Josh Francis: Business Development http://www.TicketPrinting.com
Josh spent three years working at Brigham Young University’s Ticket Office before recieving an MBA in Marketing and Technology at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. While at Notre Dame, Josh won the McClosley Business Plan Competition with FlashSeats, a company that is revolutionizing lifecycle management of tickets to events.

Tags: Event Management, events, Logistics, Planning, tickets

1. Introduction

If this is the first car show event that you have coordinated, or you are a seasoned promoter, the information contained here will be helpful to ensure that you do not overlook anything at your next show. Depending upon the type of car show there are a variety of things to consider. Car shows fall into many different categories depending upon the show promoter and theme. General car shows are open to any and all makes of cars as well as years making it a bit more challenging given the diversity of possible classes. Often at the open shows there are many classes to help categorize the vehicles. The classes may include; Antique, Unrestored, Modified, 1975 and Older Stock/Modified, Motorcycle, Modified Truck, etc. and the list goes on. The next common type of show is a manufacturer specific show, such as “All Chevrolets”. These targeted shows help to narrow the category variables down a bit, and often have many classes as well. It can still be difficult selecting a best in show between a 1955 Bel Air and a 2006 Corvette Z06. To narrow the focus even more, regional clubs tend to have shows based upon their membership, such as pre-1950 only, Model-T only, and even Mustangs only.

The guidelines that are presented here will give you insight into what it takes to organize a show and make it successful. Note that we will not discuss concours shows since they tend to be very strict on how the vehicles are arranged, and what the owners are allowed to display or not display. Concours judging is measuring a car based upon its original condition when it rolled off the assembly line. Attention is focused on the use of exact correct parts, wires being routed the correct way, and down to the correct finish on the bolts. For concours judging, check out vehicle specific clubs such a “The Mustang Club of America”, and ” Jaguar Clubs of North America” to name a few. A search on the Internet will provide many others. The reason for these strict rules, such as not allowing any show boards or displays is that they want to ensure that the vehicle is judged upon its own merits and not on any other influential actors. If you have read the other E-books that are part of this series, you will realize that show boards, and other displays can definitely influence the judges.

Whether your car show is a local cruse night where a bunch of enthusiasts get together weekly, or a special event it will quickly become obvious that in order for it to be a success, attention to the details and having it well organized is a requirement. These automotive enthusiasts will travel for miles to show off their vehicle and you need to attract them to yours. From the classic hot rod, muscle car, un-restored vintage vehicle, to even a new factory stock car or motorcycle you want to attract these owners to your show. It is equally important that they have a good experience so their work of mouth advertising helps future shows grow even faster.

What you may not realize initially as you attend a show is the many hours and often months organizing a show. Hopefully this guide will help you understand what is required.

2. Getting Started

As with any major event, such as a car show being organized from the start with a plan is required. As with starting a business and having a business plan, for starting an event you need an event plan that will contain many of the same elements, from a marketing plan, and how you will grow for future shows. It is important that this plan contain a time line of everything that must happen and when tasks will be completed including the selection of the dates to the cleaning up of the show area at the end. It can be very difficult to predict how long it will take to complete every task, and at some point something will not go as planned. Be sure to have sufficient buffer time in your schedules, and plan as early as possible.

To better organize your show, the required activities will fall into three categories:
Pre-show activities, Show Day activities, and After Show activities. These activities are completely covered in the Ebook.

2.3 Marketing Plan – Getting The Word Out

As in real estate where they say location, location, location, for a successful car show, one element is marketing, marketing, marketing. As soon as you know what it is you are going to do, and have completed most of the items above, you need to start your marketing campaign and getting the word out. Note that I said “completed MOST” of the items. This is one area where you will be doing many tasks in parallel. You want to start letting people know as early as possible that a show is coming, however early on you do not need to provide every last detail. You must have a Theme, a Date, and a Location as a minimum. Once you have that, you need to start executing on your marketing plan. The following is a general list of elements that should be part of your marketing plan.

2.4 Attracting Show Vehicles

You can have a great venue for a car show, but in order to have a car show you need to attract show cars. Everyone attends car shows with the intent to have fun, and show off their pride and joy. There are many hours spent getting these cars to this level of perfection and these owners are not always out to win a trophy, but who are, a trophy is a key attraction

In order to attract show cars, you need to understand what these enthusiasts are looking for. The Ebook contains a list of why many enthusiasts bring their car to a show.

5. and 6. Spectator Rules and Show Car Rules

There are not only rules for the show cars, but also for the spectators. Many of them may be obvious to most but not all. Some show promoters have opted to post the rules around the show field or entrances. There are a few general rules that that everyone at a show must follow that are outlined in the book. Many shows will hand a sheet like this out at the show car entrance. These rules can be modified to meet your specific needs.

The selections of text are excerpts from the Ebook titled “How To Run A Car Show-
Event Organizers Guide To Car Shows” by Anthony Palmieri

For additional information on how to make an outstanding display and have it stand out even more, take a look at the additional sections and the entire E-BOOK at www.PalmieriConcepts.com

Anthony Palmieri founded Palmieri Concepts after 20 years of creating custom artwork for his own pleasure and enjoyment. This business grew out of a love for motor vehicles and was started to share with others what began as a hobby. After taking his own pride and joys (yes this really started with family pictures and not cars) and combining them with creativity, it became obvious that many others would like to showcase their loves as he has done.

In addition to the custom artwork, he has also written numerous articles on automotive art and car shows covering topics from custom show boards, to automotive theme garages. Links to some of these articles can be found on http://www.PalmieriConcepts.com web page. His goal was to create a business where each and every one of his works of art are custom done just for you with the intention that it would be something that he would display on his own walls. Many of the custom pictures that he has created can be seen displayed at his house.

Tags: car shows, classic cars, events, judging