| 11.24.08 5:10 AM |
The Year's Smartest Strategies and Most Innovative Ideas
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 | The entrance to the Watermill Center's summer benefit in the Hamptons
Photo: aliceandchris.com for BizBash |
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Sure, 2008 isn't actually over yet. But as we get closer to 2009, it seems like a good time to take a look back at the innovative strategies, people, and ideas from this year that are sure to inspire events well into the future.
And, OK, we might as well confess, we put this package together for our final 2008 magazine issues in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, which have already been printed and mailed. So while we didn't feature ideas from all of 2008, we think you'll find some good ideas here nonetheless. Here are all of the stories from that package:
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Slow Fizz
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 | | Kevin Tressler |
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To think of the estimated $70 to $75 million Coca-Cola paid to sponsor the 2008 Olympics in Beijing as a modest sum, one only needs to imagine how much the company spent on advertising and promotions. The games marked Coke’s largest Olympic effort in its 80-year history and demanded almost a decade of planning. Leading those preparations was Coca-Cola’s director of worldwide sports and entertainment marketing, Kevin Tressler, who worked on projects like the Olympic torch relay, emblazoning soda cans across the world with a Mandarin logo, and building a 40,000-square-foot pavilion on the Olympic Green.
Coca-Cola started focusing on the Chinese market just hours after Beijing was chosen as the host city in 2000. How did the company approach such a long-term campaign?
When we look at a host country of a global event, whether it’s the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics, there are different phases that the country goes through. There’s the celebration, because there’s so much national pride involved with your country being chosen to host. Then that country goes through changes. New stadiums are built, and the people rally around how they’re going to welcome the world. This whole phase we could loosely call “anticipation.” Once the torch relay begins, from the host country’s perspective, the games begin. It’s a journey full of emotion and pride. Each of these phases or “moments,” as we call them, have specific consumer insights, feelings, and emotions that we leverage to amplify our brand message.
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Coca-Cola, 2008 Beijing Olympics |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
The Rebound
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 | Sarah Schnell
Photo: Lee Hoagland for BizBash |
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Problem: In 2005, the Chicago chapter of Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (Diffa) saw some unfortunate on-site logistical challenges mar its annual gala, typically one of the year’s most anticipated events. Although the event was successful in terms of sponsorship and auction revenue, problems with the caterer, valet, and venue resulted in some unfavorable guest experiences and, ultimately, a drop in sponsorship commitments in 2006. “In the years leading up to the 2006 event, although increasingly financially successful, we had endured a number of production challenges that many of our sponsors felt were falling short of their expectations,” says Diffa/Chicago gala co-chair Erik Parks. In late 2005, Diffa/Chicago approached Total Event Resources and senior program manager Sarah Schnell to partner with them to produce the gala. “The Diffa committee sources event sponsors, but because of the challenges faced with the 2005 gala, they were having a tough time securing sponsorships. And without sponsors, there is no event and less money to go toward the donor recipients,” says Schnell.
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Diffa |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Car Talk
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 | Andy Fuzesi
Photo: Joe Orlando |
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Change Agent: L.A. Auto Show general manager Andy Fuzesi helped oversee a campaign to change the event’s dates from January to November beginning in 2006, a move that significantly increased its status on the domestic and international car show scene by placing it closer to the beginning of the global show calendar. The new dates led to increased media coverage—press-day attendance rose from 4,000 in January 2006 to 8,524 in November 2007—as well as bigger exhibits and record- breaking North American car debuts. “Media coverage is a big measurement tool for us and for the manufacturers,” Fuzesi says. Last year, Prime Automotive Research gave the show a No. 2 ranking in terms of media importance, placing it just below Detroit’s venerable auto show. The 2008 event takes place November 21 to 30.
Knowing His Audience: “There are lots of auto shows, and although we compete on a global basis, we’ve always said our niche is different than theirs. We’re in Los Angeles—we’re not in Detroit or Tokyo,” says Fuzesi. “We’ve always been mindful about playing up our local characteristics.” This means a huge luxury car market and consumers who love to customize their cars. And it means selling an environmental message in a city where it matters, while being aware that L.A. also has a significant concentration of non-eco-friendly exotic cars.
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Los Angeles Auto Show |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Building a Reputation
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 | Tracy Bowie
Photo: Arash Moallemi/MMPI Canada |
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As vice president of IIDEX/NeoCon Canada, Tracy Bowie is responsible for planning the organization’s annual exposition and conference for interior designers, architects, and real estate developers. Now in its 24th year, the event attracts more than 15,000 attendees and 400 exhibits—more than half of which offer green products—and features 120-plus seminars. In conjunction with the Association of Registered Designers of Ontario (ARIDO), which owns IIDEX, Bowie and her team are making the show more sustainable by using green suppliers and contractors. Here’s a look at the plans for all aspects of the 2008 show on September 25 and 26 at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto:
Promotional Materials: “Our letterhead paper, our business cards, and our brochures are all printed on Forest Stewardship Council paper [from logging operations that have met strict standards]. The expense was a little bit more at first, but we made the decision to do that because we felt it was important.”
Setup: Stronco Show Services is incorporating natural-gas-powered forklifts on site.
Decor: “Although we use the carpet just for IIDEX, it actually goes from the show, is cleaned, and is used again. The carpet is not recyclable carpet yet—that’s coming.”
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IIDEX/NeoCon Canada Exposition and Conference |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Off the Books
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 | Comic-Con International
Photo: Jonathan Fickles/Getty Images |
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Comic-Con International had, perhaps appropriately, underground beginnings. Its first gathering dedicated to comic books and other popular art took place in 1970 in the basement of San Diego’s U.S. Grant Hotel and hosted 300 attendees. Now, the event includes more than 350 hours of seminars, workshops, and panel discussions, and is the largest of its kind, welcoming more than 125,000 this past July. And those are just the hard-core Watchmen and Stan Lee fans. Major movie and television studios have also jumped on the Comic-Con bandwagon in recent years, with Warner Bros., Universal, ABC, and NBC sponsoring and holding events. Coverage of this formerly fringe event by mainstream press such as The New York Times and CNN has now become de rigueur. Executive director Fae Desmond oversees a board of 13 people, which in turn manages about 80 department heads and committee members. The mission of promoting comic books and other popular art to a wider audience guides most decisions, which are generally made by consensus.
Holy Growth, Batman!
The event has moved numerous times to accommodate its growing attendance. Key to its broadening appeal was a strategy of developing ads that spoke to multiple audiences. “When we first started, our ads were specifically geared to genre audiences, and that had the potential of ignoring a wider audience, who just needed to be exposed to it,” says director of marketing and public relations David Glanzer. The organization developed more universal ads—ones that could appeal to, say, both comic-book and sci-fi fans—and the result was the ability to run a single ad that grabbed the attention of more potential attendees. (For example, an early TV ad featured a man dressed as Thor talking about the event; a later commercial found a man wearing a shirt and tie in a comic-book store, surrounded by movie posters and toys.)
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Comic-Con International |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Food Chain
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 | Lee Brian Schrager
Photo: Seth Browarnik |
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Lee Brian Schrager, director of special events and media relations at Southern Wine & Spirits, is the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which in February drew more than 40,000 attendees and 100 chefs, and raised more than $1.7 million for the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Florida International University. This fall he launched the New York City Wine & Food Festival, which put 18,000 tickets on sale for more than 50 events at more than 10 different sites over Columbus Day weekend (October 9 to October 12), with proceeds going to the Food Bank for New York City and Share Our Strength.
What was the biggest challenge?
Just finding the locations probably took us one year—getting the right backdrop is very, very important, as it’s what makes South Beach. I see the meatpacking district as the nucleus of the [New York] festival. We wanted the festival to be grassroots, local, and to make the meatpacking district come alive that weekend. It’s important to know that we’re not bringing South Beach to New York; we’re not looking to replicate or duplicate what we do down there … and we’re not taking anything for granted. We’re building the events around the venues, not the other way around.
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New York City Wine & Food Festival, Southern Wine & Spirits, South Beach Wine & Food Festival |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Campaign Crusader
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 | Yosi Sergant
Photo: Darius Twin |
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In February, publicist Yosi Sergant helped launch a campaign movement for Barack Obama that was so successful the promotional material inspired knockoffs, spread virally on social networking sites, and traveled to Europe. Sergant, a publicist with Evolutionary Media Group who had also worked as California media adviser to the Obama team, decided to leave his official campaign post to volunteer his PR services. “I wanted the freedom of developing strategies without submitting them up the ladder,” he says. As a volunteer, Sergant helped promote the candidate through what has become one of the most iconic images associated with the campaign—the Andy Warhol-like Obama graphic by street artist Shepard Fairey.
Art History: Sergant first talked to Fairey about contributing to the Democratic candidate’s efforts at an Adidas party. The next day Fairey emailed his design, and Sergant went on to deliver the image to his network of media contacts and coordinate the strategic placement of the posters in front of cameras at Obama rallies, as well as in multiple cities to coincide with local primaries. Sergant has tracked several thousand domestic and international media impressions featuring the image, including an appearance on the front page of The New York Times, more than 10 inclusions in The Los Angeles Times, and coverage in magazines that typically refrain from running political news, like Juxtapoz and Urb.
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Barack Obama, Election '08 |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Home Maker
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 | Jessica Meisels
Photo: Alen Lin for BizBash |
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Problem: Fingerprint Communications owner Jessica Meisels is rightly credited with birthing the trend of the Malibu summer beach house pop-up in 2006, when the L.A.-based firm produced and publicized a Polaroid-branded property on the coast. The corporate-sponsored house hosted events for two summers, while a half dozen or so other brands rented nearby properties to piggyback on the idea and the buzz it created among local influencers and international press. Then a Malibu ordinance limiting commercial events at private residences to four per year—a response to complaints from locals about the traffic, paparazzi, and other nuisances created by the events—threatened the concept this past summer.
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Project Beach House, Pop-Ups, Lia Sophia, LnA Clothing |
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| 11.24.08 5:00 AM |
Return on Investment
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As director of distinguished events at the Illinois division of the American Cancer Society since 2005, Lee Kite oversees the organization’s blockbuster Discovery Ball. This year’s gala netted more than $2.1 million, exceeding the budgeted goal by more than 15 percent and surpassing the $1.8 million haul from 2007. That success is due in part to the benefit’s board of ambassadors, which Kite created to attract the support of local philanthropists and C.E.O.s. The board grew, too, from 27 members in 2007 to more than 70 this year. Each board member makes a financial commitment at the outset of the ball’s planning process, and Kite and her team demonstrate where sponsors’ dollars are going throughout the year.
Proving the Return: “The American Cancer Society has a national program that provides heavy training in proof of sponsorship. Sponsors want to see viability and return on investment, along with an alignment of their brand to a cause that matters to their employees. It is our responsibility to show them this proof. We look at this like a small contract. We have fun coming up with creative, eye-catching packages, which we deliver to a sponsor post-event and which demonstrate all of the placements—photos, programs, clip reels, press clips, etc.—that were promised when the sponsor agreed to support. We also enclose a commitment form for the following year.”
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American Cancer Society |
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