As the Giants and the Patriots gear up for their Super Bowl Sunday match, so too are the bevy of corporate planners who are heading to Arizona to host the many related parties. (And so are we—watch for our coverage of the hoopla later this week.) To find out how the planning process is going, we polled some of the top planners, asking them what they thought of the desert locale, the venues, and the vendors.
What’s it like working in Scottsdale?
“The thing about Super Bowl is that every city is unique and has its own challenges. What’s unique about Scottsdale is that it's so spread out, which presents its own challenge, because there are many events, and while we know ours is the best party on Saturday night, we also know that our guests might have other obligations. Here, venues can be 30 to 40 minutes apart, whereas in Miami everything was within 10 minutes.”
—Donna Tavoso, division vice president of creative services and special projects, Playboy
“As a host city, they’ve been great. The NFL does a really good job priming the market, and they pick great venues. It’s great for the state, for the city, and for the folks that live there. It should be really interesting to have the Super Bowl and the Phoenix FBR [Golf] Open at the same time. For people like us, we think the more people the merrier.”
—Jon Gieselman, senior vice president of advertising and public relations, DirecTV “We liked what we found in Scottsdale—it has big-city service with a small-town feel. The people we’ve met with are fantastic, and it’s not too far from Glendale, where the game is being played.”
—Eleni Roselli, vice president of branding and creative, MSL Sport & Entertainment, working for Penthouse
How did you choose a venue?
“We looked at 60-plus venues in downtown Scottsdale, but there weren’t a lot of places that hold 2,000 people, so we ended up having to look outside of the downtown area. We needed at least one or two days for load-in, which is hard because that eliminates a lot of venues that can’t shut down on a Friday night for us. We also wanted a raw space so that we could have creative freedom. Rawhide is a blank canvas. At this point, after nine years, we’ve built a rep as the best party on Saturday night, so we have a comfort level that we didn’t have to be in the heart of Scottsdale. And we have experience to back that up—we weren’t in South Beach in Miami, and we were 25 minutes outside of Detroit, and people were waiting in line 90 minutes early in a snowstorm. And that even shocked me.”
—Donna Tavoso, Playboy
“It was difficult, mainly because if you’re looking to do something at a hotel, it would be easy, but we were looking for such a distinct property, with an outdoor area, a central location, and the ability to host 200-plus people. And we wanted to do our golf program [a hole-in-one event for charity], so we would need a venue that could facilitate that. For us, the house was important, but the grounds were more important. We ended up finding a large estate in Paradise Valley with golf features.”
—Andrew Lipman, business and East Coast communication director, Audi
“Phoenix is our home turf, so finding a venue was not an issue. Finding a unique venue that would give us a blank canvas to fully transform, on the other hand, was more of a challenge. With the development of the new Scottsdale Waterfront and Southbridge projects, and Scottsdale Fashion Square directly adjacent, we saw something in the four acres of undeveloped land that was not apparent to anyone else. When you look at it today, it is nothing more than a dirt plot, but it rests on the most valuable piece of real estate in the state, with some of Arizona’s biggest attractions, hottest nightlife, savvy restaurants, and prime-time shopping surrounding it. The first week of February, the grass will be laid, and a football field, 23,000-square-foot tent, V.I.P. lounges, entertainment stages, and JumboTrons erected. The area will be unrecognizable, and we pride ourselves in turning right when everyone else turned left.”
—Marc Lotenberg, C.E.O., 944 Media
Are you working with local vendors?
“We’re using L.A., New York, and Scottsdale vendors. It’s important to include the local community who know the landscape, especially for valet and security, while also bringing in New York and L.A. vendors that we have existing relationships with and already know our style, needs, etc. Local resources also become limited and more expensive during short periods of major programming.”
—H. Tony Berger, president, Relevent, for Audi and Playboy
“We’re working with local vendors and vendors from L.A. We definitely wanted to use some local vendors to make life easier for everyone involved in planning an event of this caliber. It’s been a great experience as far as the local vendors are concerned; everybody we’ve worked with has been professional and wonderful to deal with.”
—Eleni Roselli for Penthouse
What’s it like working in Scottsdale?
“The thing about Super Bowl is that every city is unique and has its own challenges. What’s unique about Scottsdale is that it's so spread out, which presents its own challenge, because there are many events, and while we know ours is the best party on Saturday night, we also know that our guests might have other obligations. Here, venues can be 30 to 40 minutes apart, whereas in Miami everything was within 10 minutes.”
—Donna Tavoso, division vice president of creative services and special projects, Playboy
“As a host city, they’ve been great. The NFL does a really good job priming the market, and they pick great venues. It’s great for the state, for the city, and for the folks that live there. It should be really interesting to have the Super Bowl and the Phoenix FBR [Golf] Open at the same time. For people like us, we think the more people the merrier.”
—Jon Gieselman, senior vice president of advertising and public relations, DirecTV “We liked what we found in Scottsdale—it has big-city service with a small-town feel. The people we’ve met with are fantastic, and it’s not too far from Glendale, where the game is being played.”
—Eleni Roselli, vice president of branding and creative, MSL Sport & Entertainment, working for Penthouse
How did you choose a venue?
“We looked at 60-plus venues in downtown Scottsdale, but there weren’t a lot of places that hold 2,000 people, so we ended up having to look outside of the downtown area. We needed at least one or two days for load-in, which is hard because that eliminates a lot of venues that can’t shut down on a Friday night for us. We also wanted a raw space so that we could have creative freedom. Rawhide is a blank canvas. At this point, after nine years, we’ve built a rep as the best party on Saturday night, so we have a comfort level that we didn’t have to be in the heart of Scottsdale. And we have experience to back that up—we weren’t in South Beach in Miami, and we were 25 minutes outside of Detroit, and people were waiting in line 90 minutes early in a snowstorm. And that even shocked me.”
—Donna Tavoso, Playboy
“It was difficult, mainly because if you’re looking to do something at a hotel, it would be easy, but we were looking for such a distinct property, with an outdoor area, a central location, and the ability to host 200-plus people. And we wanted to do our golf program [a hole-in-one event for charity], so we would need a venue that could facilitate that. For us, the house was important, but the grounds were more important. We ended up finding a large estate in Paradise Valley with golf features.”
—Andrew Lipman, business and East Coast communication director, Audi
“Phoenix is our home turf, so finding a venue was not an issue. Finding a unique venue that would give us a blank canvas to fully transform, on the other hand, was more of a challenge. With the development of the new Scottsdale Waterfront and Southbridge projects, and Scottsdale Fashion Square directly adjacent, we saw something in the four acres of undeveloped land that was not apparent to anyone else. When you look at it today, it is nothing more than a dirt plot, but it rests on the most valuable piece of real estate in the state, with some of Arizona’s biggest attractions, hottest nightlife, savvy restaurants, and prime-time shopping surrounding it. The first week of February, the grass will be laid, and a football field, 23,000-square-foot tent, V.I.P. lounges, entertainment stages, and JumboTrons erected. The area will be unrecognizable, and we pride ourselves in turning right when everyone else turned left.”
—Marc Lotenberg, C.E.O., 944 Media
Are you working with local vendors?
“We’re using L.A., New York, and Scottsdale vendors. It’s important to include the local community who know the landscape, especially for valet and security, while also bringing in New York and L.A. vendors that we have existing relationships with and already know our style, needs, etc. Local resources also become limited and more expensive during short periods of major programming.”
—H. Tony Berger, president, Relevent, for Audi and Playboy
“We’re working with local vendors and vendors from L.A. We definitely wanted to use some local vendors to make life easier for everyone involved in planning an event of this caliber. It’s been a great experience as far as the local vendors are concerned; everybody we’ve worked with has been professional and wonderful to deal with.”
—Eleni Roselli for Penthouse
