On Thursday afternoon, Microsoft Advertising hosted a so-called digital showcase in its new Aon Center offices, which the company has occupied since late January. Aimed at showcasing branding opportunities in online video to a group of 150 local media buyers, the event included a 90-minute presentation and an ensuing cocktail reception. According to Scott Navarro, market relations manager for Microsoft Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, the event employed mostly in-house resources, and consequently he estimated it cost about 15 percent of the budget for similar happenings in New York and Los Angeles this month.
As his title would suggest, "I'm not an event planner," Navarro said. "But I create content that is often distributed through events like this. Because of that, I need to either work closely with event planners or take [the planning] on myself, depending on what kind of resources we have." And when it came to Thursday's program, "we didn't have a lot," Navarro said. "But we did have one resource: our brand new offices."
Equipped with a table- and banquette-filled reception space, a bar area, a large meeting room, and interactive stations where visitors can test out Microsoft products (one room houses Xbox consoles and games such as Guitar Hero), the offices fit the criteria for the event that Navarro envisioned.
"I used to be a media buyer," he said. "I would come to a lot of these meetings where you're locked in a room and it's either stuffy or too cold, and you're looking at your watch for two hours, wondering when it's going to end." To prevent a similar vibe, Navarro said he wanted Thursday's event to have the feel of an "open house," where "we're hosting clients, showing them our new space, giving them refreshments, and just having something that's a little more causal and interactive."
From a monetary standpoint, hosting the event on site saved Navarro from spending on a venue and audiovisual equipment, which he cited as the two areas of event production that typically consume most of his budget. Navarro also relied on company resources for the afternoon's speaking program. "All of our speakers are internal," he said, "so they're able to cover their own travel."
So what did Navarro put his budget toward? "I'm paying for catering, flowers, and some client gifts," he said. "But the hardest part, honestly, was getting people into the building." With tight security and a potentially confusing double-deck elevator system in the lobby, "we needed to hire the [Aon Center's] security and pay them a little extra to set up a little booth and direct people this way," Navarro said, adding that the building's tricky layout made it worth investing in some "extra signage and extra people pointing."
