Just about the smartest thing the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation organizers did at last Thursday's dinner (and they did a number of smart things) was host their cocktails and dinner reception in the galleries of Sotheby's just preceding the Impressionist sale.

Planners of upscale parties, take note; this is a win-win. READ MORE

Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, Leonard Lauder, Nancy Corzine

MY FAVORITE VENDORS

05.01.08 11:21 AM

Clinton Global Initiative Favors Aisling Flowers, Five Currents

Mary Morrison

Mary Morrison joined the Clinton Global Initiative at its inception in 2005 as director of membership. Her current responsibilities as director of operations—working on several large events per year, including the three-day annual meeting in New York—have taken her to Hong Kong to plan for the first C.G.I. International affair this December.

Flowers: “Aisling Flowers has been our florist from Day One. Tess Casey works well with us; she’s made a commitment to the organization because [C.G.I.] is helping to change the lives of people around the world. Aisling takes every opportunity to make more out of less money. Tess is very conscious with our budget, always pushing the envelope while aiming to be eco-friendly. She understands that the people we’re catering to are diplomats and that the events need to be elegant with a socially conscious message. Her work consistently has lasting values: She has created vases filled with apples that were later donated to City Harvest, and her vases and materials are sustainable—sometimes hand-picked from Africa.” READ MORE

Clinton Global Initiative

EVENT INTELLIGENCE

04.29.08 11:05 AM

Lessons Learned From Planning Pageants

Contestants at a Universal Royalty pageant
Photo: Courtesy of Universal Royalty Beauty Pagent

It’s not all glitter and gold lamé for the pros who coordinate beauty pageants. While the contestants have their hearts set on a sash or a tiara, these multitasking planners are juggling anxious competitors (and parents), bus time lines, and sometimes even buckets, if a gown-drenching downpour threatens to wreck the big day.

Don’t get lost in translation. “You’re dealing with girls from all over the world, and there are cultural and language barriers,” says Lark-Marie Anton, director of marketing and PR for the New York-based Miss Universe Organization. “For instance, if you’re trying to explain to someone from a Latin culture that they have to be on the bus by 6 o’clock, 6 might mean 6:30 to them. It might mean come at your leisure.”

Be willing to tweak convention. “The girls were so eager to be shown in a different light,” says Dave Brunetti, executive producer of Miss New York, a franchise of the Miss America organization. “This year, I added a sequence where they had to wear work clothes, weekend wear, or other everyday garb. It was terrific watching them step out of the conception they had of themselves as pageant girls. They wound up in jeans, blouses, real clothes. One gal came in a hooded sweatshirt and workout pants, and it made such an impact because it perfectly represented her personality.” READ MORE

Miss Universe, Miss America, International Mr. Gay, Miss Hawaiian Tropic, Universal Royalty

Q & A

04.22.08 4:27 PM

Tribeca Film Festival Producer Talks About Changing Budgets and "Being in Six Places at Once"

Dalzell's Joshua Cicerone
Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Federman

The Tribeca Film Festival is one of the bigger undertakings on New York’s entertainment calendar, kicking off tomorrow and running through May 4. No longer just an excuse to bring excitement and revenue to post-9/11 TriBeCa, the festival has grown into an attractive showcase for both major studio releases and unsigned independent films. This year’s 920 screenings include work from 41 countries and 110 independent films that will be looking for distributors.

Behind it all, tasked with making sure things don't spiral out of control, is the small team at Dalzell Productions. They’ve been working closely with the festival since Year One, and to pull it off this year, they’ll be enlisting 300 volunteers and clocking a total of 4,800 man-hours. On their docket: everything from 25 gala premieres at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center to public events like the three-night drive-in outdoor screenings. On the eve of this marathon, we asked Dalzell vice president and creative director Joshua Cicerone how they do it and what's changing this year.

The Tribeca Film Festival has grown a lot since it debuted in 2002. How has preparing for it evolved over the years?
I’ve been on it for seven years myself. The first year it came out of nowhere, but because of the urgency of 9/11, it was an appropriate response for the neighborhood. We only had eight or nine weeks to plan it, so we were in panic mode the whole time. Now the panic is a thing of the past, so we can take our time. Every year there is something new, some new program. Having a team that has worked on the festival each year with me has been invaluable. It’s 13 days, and it’s bound to fatigue you. READ MORE

Tribeca Film Festival

TED KRUCKEL

04.18.08 4:08 PM

New Yorkers for Children Still Stages a Chic, Stylish Benefit

New Yorkers for Children's spring dinner-dance at the Mandarin Oriental
Photo: Jessica Torossian for BizBash

New Yorkers for Children is a cause both meaningful and chic (the best combo) and they’ve been that way for years—which is not easy. They do two big-city galas, a fall kick start that always seems to be the day after Labor Day, and a spring fling at the Mandarin Oriental.

I’ve covered both in this forum before. The September party has Anna Wintour and Oscar de la Renta every time I’ve been, (One year I held the microphone for Melissa Etheridge!) Also, of course, there’s the mayor and serious speeches about education and underprivileged students. Good speeches.

The spring event, which took place on Wednesday, is slightly younger and swingier. I think the first time I wrote about it was also the first time I wrote about the Mandarin and its vicissitudes.

After bullying my way in (I’m on the invite list, but it’s one of those events that sells out before the invites mail, which was confirmed for me twice), I went out of my way to get my address updated and bid on the Baccarat vase—even getting a sensible auction volunteer to go a hundred higher. READ MORE

New Yorkers for Children

MY FAVORITE VENDORS

04.17.08 11:06 AM

NRDC Chooses OZOcar

Jenny Chapin
Photo: Virginia A. Acari

Jenny Chapin, the director of special projects for the Natural Resources Defense Council, is committed to green events. She has been working with NRDC since 1999 and produces four big fund-raisers each year, including the “Forces for Nature” gala, which recently honored Mayor Bloomberg. In her 25 years in the events industry, Chapin has worked at the Hudson Riverkeeper, Beth Israel Medical Center, WNYC, and the mayor’s office—her very first job.

Transportation: “We have used OZOcar for the past four years because they are reliable in keeping with our mission. The company [maintains a fleet of] hybrid cars, and whenever we need transportation service, we always call on them, as we did most recently for the 'Forces for Nature' gala.”

Caterer: “City Bakery is one of the best eco-conscious caterers I’ve worked with. Their food is always delicious, organic, and creative. At NRDC, we recently changed our food policy to serve only tap water and no red meat. One of the new assistants here called City Bakery to place an order and wanted some bottled water. The person taking the order said, 'No, you don't serve bottled water.' When ordering a sandwich with meat, she was told the same thing. I think that's pretty personalized service, when a company knows your policies better than a staff person.” READ MORE

National Resources Defense Council, Going Green

EVENT INTELLIGENCE

04.15.08 12:07 PM

Working Around Contract Caterers

Illustration: Fernanda Cohen for BizBash

There are great caterers, and then there are those whose style could be most kindly be described as “high school cafeteria.” And when the latter is ensconced as the in-house caterer at an otherwise to-die-for location, what’s an event producer to do?

“Unfortunately, you can’t turn cooks into quality chefs overnight,” says Loretta Lowe, a San Francisco-based meeting and event planner. “Once I handled an event at a venue that was used to doing budget weddings, [with] prefrozen appetizers and the like.” Their idea of upgrading the menu, she says, was adding toothpicks to a cheese-cube platter. “The most hilarious bit was when they proudly told me they were serving ‘green bean almondine,’ which consisted of canned green beans and a bag of presliced almonds, which they mixed together and then boiled.”

Obviously, caterers are rarely this off the mark, but great spaces often have contract vendors that you might not book if you had the choice. Maybe they don’t specialize in the cuisine that coordinates with your vision of the event, or maybe they’re just not quite up to the level of cooking that you—and your guests—are expecting. READ MORE

Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Nielsen, Mercedes

EVENT INTELLIGENCE

04.11.08 10:30 AM

Building Buzz With Videos: IMG's Fashion Week Series

A model getting primped in one of IMG's behind-the-scenes Fashion Week videos.
Photo: Courtesy of IMG Fashion

This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.

Not every successful online video is made by event attendees with handheld cameras. Marketers who realize the potential of Web video for enhancing an event experience are also producing professional, high-quality videos to complement their events.

In 2007, IMG Fashion launched a YouTube channel to display videos from Fashion Week events throughout the world. Each video is a one- to four-minute clip focused on a specific runway show, collection, or after-party, featuring interviews with designers and celebrity attendees. Produced and edited by IMG and Smashbox Studios, the videos capture both the glamour of the runway shows and the frenetic energy behind the scenes. READ MORE

Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, IMG, IMG Fashion, Fashion Week, Imitation of Christ, American Express

EVENT INTELLIGENCE

04.10.08 10:30 AM

Building Buzz With Videos: Charmin's Free Public Bathrooms

A consumer video of Charmin's Times Square stunt
Photo: Courtesy of WTC3353

This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.

A marketing event that got significant buzz in both the real and virtual worlds was Charmin’s 2006 and 2007 holiday promotion, in which the company installed free public bathrooms in New York’s Times Square. Accompanied by singers, dancers, and fun facts about flushing, the quirky event, produced by Charmin along with experiential marketing firm Gigunda Group and public relations firm Manning, Selvage & Lee, brought in 400,000 visitors each year. In a pleasant surprise for Charmin, several dozen of those people were so tickled with the happening that they recorded it with handheld cameras and posted the videos to YouTube—sharing Charmin’s event with thousands more viewers.

“The event was all about providing an opportunity for the consumer to engage in the brand in a different and more unusual, innovative way,” says Dewayne Guy, external relations manager at Charmin. “We put a lot of effort into making sure it was interactive, and that lends itself to the visual media. Online video is not something we actively pushed—it happened organically based on the consumer reactions.” READ MORE

Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Charmin

NEWS

04.09.08 1:19 PM

Of Course, Not All YouTube Exposure Is Good Exposure

The moment before the fall
Photo: Courtesy of beck64

Speaking of YouTube videos of events (as we have been this week), today Gawker posted a clip from a fashion show in Charleston, South Carolina, showing a woman falling on a runway, and then falling through the runway. According to a Web site called LiveLeak (what you'll find if you Google "Charleston Fashion Week falling"), the fallen woman is the owner of local boutique K. Morgan, who missed the runthrough of the show—when she would have learned the middle of the catwalk was sheer fabric intended to let light shine through the floor. There seem to be myriad lessons to be learned here. (Possibly among them: Go to the runthrough! Don't make a floor from fabric!) We'll let you take from this what you will. READ MORE

Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Gawker

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Lessons Learned From Planning Pageants

Q & A

Tribeca Film Festival Producer Talks About Changing Budgets and "Being in Six Places at Once"

TED KRUCKEL

New Yorkers for Children Still Stages a Chic, Stylish Benefit

MY FAVORITE VENDORS

NRDC Chooses OZOcar

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EVENT INTELLIGENCE

Building Buzz With Videos: IMG's Fashion Week Series

EVENT INTELLIGENCE

Building Buzz With Videos: Charmin's Free Public Bathrooms

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Of Course, Not All YouTube Exposure Is Good Exposure