The latest issue of the BiZBash Event Style Reporter newspaper includes our Event Planners of the Year cover story, which features Q&As with 15 marketers behind some of the year's biggest events, smartest strategies and most innovative ideas. Their interviews offered lots of insight into the current state of the event industry, and we thought it would interesting to get them together and listen to what they had to say to each other. So we gathered four of our planners for a lunch in the private dining room inside the 21 Club's wine cellar. Whether they spend their time planning a pig roast in Lake Placid, putting together a product launch for 95,000 guests, or bringing a massive trade show to the U.S., these planners all had something to talk about:
Alison Brod, Alison Brod Public Relations
Brod's up-and-coming public relations firm plans 50 to 60 events a year—including product launches, promotional events and fashion shows—for beauty and fashion clients like LVMH, Escada, the Gap and J.C. Penney.
Mark Dineen, CeBIT America
Dineen gathered 12,000 attendees and 360 exhibitors to the Javits Center in June for CeBIT America, the first American version of CeBIT Hannover—the world's largest technology trade show.
Peter Rosenberger, ESPN
Sales meetings, weekend-long parties for clients and a pig roast are just a few of the nearly 100 events Rosenberger plans for the ESPN network every year.
David Shackley, AOL
His Dave Matthews Band concert in Central Park to promote AOL 9.0 drew 95,000 guests—not bad for a product launch. When he's not planning mammoth concerts, Shackley keeps busy with more than 600 other events a year, from employee motivation events to co-branded promotions with other Time Warner brands.
And here's an excerpt from their discussion:
ON HOW THEY COME UP WITH IDEAS
Brod: We look at film tie-ins, fashion tie-ins—whatever's current. Corporate sponsors are also looking for lots of ideas, so they're more willing to do new things. For example, Hershey's sponsored Cynthia Rowley's fashion show, and they would never have done that years ago, but now they're looking for something to be hip and cool.
Shackley: Even within our own organization now, we're finding partners. If we're looking to do an event and we have half a million dollars to pump into it, and we think we need more, we'll go to our broadband folks, or AOL Music, or we'll step outside AOL and we'll look at the Time Warner family, and go to Warner Brothers, or HBO. It's making us work better as a team. We're leveraging all our company-wide resources. If we want to do a tie-in to a movie, chances are we own a piece of it somewhere. We'll say to Warner Brothers, "Hey can we do this, can we do that?"
ON INTERNAL EVENTS
Shackley: We do a lot for employees. We do an employee event every two weeks, whether it's a sneak preview of a movie coming out...We did a Counting Crows concert in Boise and we fed it live to employees who wanted to watch it. So we're doing a lot with our employees, and we definitely see an increase in morale. Everything we do now that's an external event, we do something for the employees. With the Dave Matthews concert in Central Park, they got a Dave Matthews T-shirt and had a chance to buy a Dave Matthews DVD for 50 percent off.
Brod: Has it paid off in the way that people are producing?
Shackley: Our folks work like dogs. If people are happy, then they'll do a better job.
ON WORKING WITH OUTSIDE EVENT PLANNERS
Rosenberger: I get calls every day—I'm sure we all get calls—from three or four event planners: "I'm with Bob Johnson Events, and I'm Bob, and we'd love to do your event." I say, "Hi Bob, it's nice to meet you. I'm really in the middle of something, can you call me in about a year?" And you don't want to put them off, but you have to. Because we're all working within our machines.
Brod: To be the outside event person, you have to pitch in a smarter way. You have to say, "I know you guys are launching Cold Pizza [ESPN's new morning show]. Here's an idea I had for you."
Rosenberger: What is it?
Brod: Exactly. Then you'll actually listen, and that person might actually take the meeting. And you may have a regular PR firm, or event firm, or in-house staff, but because someone brought you the idea, you'll give them that piece of business.
ON HOW NEW YORK COMPARES TO OTHER MARKETS
Dineen: Just because of the hazards of New York as a working city, [CeBIT America] was the most difficult launch we had anywhere in the world. Costs are higher, labor is difficult. I can give you all the typical trade show manager complaints. You're trying to keep costs down, but you still have to deal with the situation that New York is. However, the other side is, our target audience is enterprise only, Fortune 500 only, 200 to 300 employees or larger only—so where else are you going to go?
Shackley: For us, it's mostly the same as other markets. I guess you have the New York attitude sometimes. I don't know if there's a major difference. We go to London, Paris, Dublin—they all have that buzz about them. I enjoy working in all the major cities.
Rosenberger: New York has the savvy. There's the pace of New York, and you can get something done in an hour. L.A. is like New York, of course. But some places you go and sit there and think, "I can't believe we're still talking about this." You're thinking, "Let's go." But with the pace of New York comes a price differential.
Brod: New York guests are very prompt. People complain about New Yorkers, but we're very regimented because we cram so much into our day that we really are pretty prompt and we really do show up. In other markets, like the West Coast, they blow things off more easily, whereas we say we're going to show up, and we may be late because of traffic, but we're there for the most part.
Posted 12.03.03
To read more about our Event Planners of the Year, check out the Winter 2003 issue of the BiZBash Event Style Reporter.
