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We know you're always looking for new ideas, products, and strategies. So let us help. Whether you're looking for creative ways to present silent auction items, food trucks that serve tacos until 2 a.m., or performers who can juggle fire and sing opera, we want to hear your questions—however random or specific they may be. Email queries to style editor Lisa Cericola at lcericola@bizbash.com. Some may be selected—and answered—for upcoming stories.
Budgeting for the coming year is well under way, and planners seem to have good thoughts about what they'll be working with in 2010. In last week's poll, 41 percent of participants said they're expecting bigger budgets than they received in 2009, while another 33 percent think their budgets will be about the same. Fewer than 1 in 5 readers expect tighter budgets, and just 7 percent still aren't sure.
This week we'd like to gauge your feelings on invitations and which kinds feel most appropriate these days. Have your say in this week's poll, which is in the left column of the home page.
TV commercial star Kylie introduced Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer at the Windows 7 launch. Photo: Richard Koek
FROM NEW YORK Given Microsoft's enormous customer base—a January 2009 report put the technology giant's market share at 88 percent—when it launches a product, there's always a certain amount of buzz surrounding it. But rather than replicate the elaborate marketing stunt it produced for the debut of the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft took a simpler approach to the press event introducing Windows 7. Inside Skylight Thursday, October 22, some 340 journalists, software testers, and executives from hardware manufacturing partners gathered for a six-hour launch that combined art gallery-style exhibits with live demonstrations and product vignettes.
"We wanted to create an event that represented the product and be mindful of the current state of the economy and the broad consumer mindset. So we set a tone that was simple, approachable, and authentic while demonstrating the excitement we all feel for Windows 7," said Windows group marketing manager Ed Chase, who led the planning of the project. To pull it off, Chase collaborated with Pinnacle Exhibits and a crew of other local and West Coast companies.
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Mustachioed participants at a 2008 Movember party Photo: Courtesy of the Movember Foundation
Movember, an Australian nonprofit that raises money and awareness for men's cancers via mass mustache growth each November, comes from fairly fortuitous beginnings. In its first year, founders just sprouted their whiskers for fun, before realizing the conversations started by ironic facial hair could have a positive effect.
"It just came to us over some beers on a Sunday night in Melbourne," said Movember co-founder Adam Garone. "The original idea was just to bring them back for a joke, and 30 of our friends participated for no particular reason that November. Every guy had a lot of fun, but all of us had gotten grief from bosses and girlfriends over the month."
That was 2003. Garone and his friends had enough fun with their month of mustaches to try it again the next year, but to placate their friends and colleagues, they decided to make it a fund-raising effort.
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Banq—the Asian-fusion restaurant in the former home of Penny Savings Bank in the South End—had a two-year run and award-winning interior design before it reopened earlier this month as Ginger Park. Co-owners Mark Raab and Hemant Chowdry called in Chef Patrica Yeo of Sapa, AZ, and Pazo in New York City to craft an expanded menu of small plates at a lower price point. She brought internationally inspired dishes and focused on Southeast Asian street food to create a frequently rotating list of more than 30 snacks and sharable plates such as edamame potstickers, duck meatballs, and crispy fava beans. Prices range from $7 to $19.
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Helen Devore Waukazoo on the podium with Maria Shriver at the Minerva Awards Photo: Gold/Wong
FROM LOS ANGELES It might be said that 2009 is a year that created a particular need for inspiration and community support—especially in a state like California, where budget shortfalls and the unemployment rate have become notorious. Either in spite of or because of that climate, California's first lady, Maria Shriver, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Women's Conference once again drew masses of women from all over the state to join a packed roster of about 70 high-level speakers and participants at the Long Beach Convention Center.
This year, the program ballooned from a single day to two full days—to accommodate the increasing number of would-be attendees. (Each year, full-day passes to the conference sell out in record time. Tickets this year sold out in less than two hours, beating last year's record of three.) The first day's program, a Day of Transformation, served as somewhat more informal programming, with two 1,500-attendee sessions and six 400-person breakout sessions. "We were getting so much feedback from people who wanted to participate and have access," said executive producer Alexandra Gleysteen. "It's a way to get more hands-on information—how to get a new job, start a nonprofit—all in a spiritual context and a serene environment. It's on a different scale, more intimate, than the main program."
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Waterford Targets More Marketing Mileage With New Year's Ball: Since bringing its signature bling to the New Year's ball drop in New York in 1999, Waterford has been an active partner in the globally watched event. But now the Irish crystal company wants more recognition for that contribution. An upgraded six-ton ball—made of 2,268 Waterford crystals and backlit by 32,256 Philips LEDs—will debut this December after a $2.5 million print advertising campaign. Waterford also committed to an upgraded sponsorship deal, in hopes that some of the one billion people who catch the ball drop this year will also notice who made it. [BrandFreak]
Events Boost Essence Image: Not all magazines are downplaying events, and Essence is even earning praise for them. The title was chosen as one of Advertising Age's top 10 for the year, and the trade credits the Essence Music Festival for being such an appealing brand to marketers. The New Orleans concert series, held over Independence Day weekend, saw 428,000 attendees—up significantly from the already impressive 270,000 it hosted the year before. [AdAge]
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FROM NEW YORK More than 100 members of the gaming and automotive press made their way to the mouth of the Holland Tunnel last Wednesday, where Volkswagen launched both a tangible and video game version of its latest GTI model at the Classic Car Club. To cater to the tech savvy crowd, Volkswagen brought in G4TV's Olivia Munn to host, built several gaming stations, and filled the room with suggestions to guests to post comments about the party to Twitter.
As of the morning after the party, the 2010 GTI became the first vehicle launch on Apple's app store—with a role in a free version of the popular Firemint Real Racing game—so the mobile application was woven into the fabric of the party almost as much as the car itself.
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The staging at Faulkner-Sagoff Centre's Runway event Photo: Avirian Levy for BizBash
Brigham and Women’s Faulkner-Sagoff Breast Imaging and Diagnostic Centre combined fashion and fund-raising at Runway, its first fashion show competition, held Thursday night in the InterContinental Hotel Boston’s Rose Kennedy Ballroom. With more than 400 guests, the Faulkner-Sagoff Centre exceeded its $400,000 fund-raising goal for the evening while simultaneously promoting the work of five local designers from the School of Fashion Design.
“We set out to create something completely different from anything we had ever done or seen done here in Boston,” said Anne Vanderheyden, development events associate at Faulkner Hospital, who oversaw production with Rafanelli Events. “We decided to give ourselves plenty of time to recreate our annual fund-raising event, so we spent 18 months carefully and strategically planning. As our honorary chair, Gretchen [Monahan] was fully onboard with the new idea and was able to put together a fantastic panel of judges from the fashion industry.” Runway marks the facility's 14th fund-raising event. Previous incarnations were typically of the dinner-auction-dancing variety.
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Last December, canceled holiday parties were a popular industry conversation topic, but 2009 looks like it might be a bit more festive than 2008—at least according to participants in last week's poll. Almost half of our polled readers said that they're already working on a holiday party, and an additional quarter of them reported planning a low-key affair in the office. Another 17 percent say that the final decision hasn't been made, and just 11 percent of polled planners have had to cancel their fetes.
Since we're already thinking ahead, what do your event budgets look like for 2010? Let us know what you've heard by partipatipating in this week's poll, which is in the left column of the home page.
