Five Event Wreckers

Make sure you’ve covered every possible detail long before the big day arrives or you’ll be

facing poor attendance. Here are 5 problems that can wreck your event before it begins.

1.  Not leaving enough time for national publicity.

If you want to advertise your event make sure you start early enough. Some magazines are seasonal, monthly, bi-monthly, or weekly. A seasonal magazine would require at least 6 months notice for an ad. A monthly magazine would only require 3 months. If you plan on airing a commercial, radio or TV, you need to factor in rehearsal and recording time, and then approvals.

2. Relying on press releases as the primary way to publicize your event.

Press releases and media alerts rarely result in big stories in newspapers, magazines, or television. They’re a miniscule part of a publicity campaign and need to be part of a strategic PR program that merges with traditional and social media.

3. Not checking all the local event calendars before you choose the date of your event.

If you’re holding or sponsoring an event, check with your state’s Tourism Office, your local Chamber of Commerce, or your competitors calendars to see what other events are planned on your day. Also, consider the weather and have a back-up date planned.

4. Not allowing people to register online.

The internet has become the most prominent way to communicate. Now, people do not like face-to-face confrontation, or even if the confrontation involves speaking over the phone! Most people prefer to communicate through instant messaging, text messaging, or email. If you make registration for your event available only by phone, you will lose a large amount of attendees.

5. Not being aware of religious and secular holidays.

If you plan your event on All Saints Day, Yom Kippur, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Kwanza, Cinco de Mayo, or Presidents Day, you will have a smaller attendance either because many people are out of town over the long weekend, or the region you are in has a large population of people who practice the specific religion related to the holiday and many may respectfully decline to attend your event because they are observing their holiday.

Crisis Communication

The success of any business is based on its reputation. That's why most businesses hire public relations professionals to portray them as beneficial, trustworthy, and concerned members of the community. However, the positive creation of image can be destroyed by one poorly handled negative crisis. A "crisis," in public relations terms, is any event that draws intense, negative media coverage to a company. Crises can cost organizations millions of dollars to repair or can potentially put them out of business for good. A crisis communication plan is a type of “insurance policy” for the long-term health of an organization. Failure to address and contain a crisis can have lasting consequences for the company. Creating a plan before a crisis happens will help to avoid chaos and more danger.

A crisis communication plan is designed by upper-level management, publicity, and public relations professionals to reduce the potential damage caused by a crisis. Crisis communication refers to the flow of information during a crisis among an organization, its employees, the media, and the general public. The work of crisis communication is based on preparation and response. To prepare for a crisis, an organization must assign a crisis communication team to execute the plan. With a plan in place, an organization is more likely to respond to a crisis quickly, take immediate steps to control the message and successfully regain their customers, stakeholders, and the public's trust.

The job of the crisis communication team is to create and execute the overall crisis communication plan. Team members are assigned specific roles, such as gathering contact information from all employees or establishing relationships with members of the local media. The first job of the crisis communication team is to select an official spokesperson. The spokesperson will be the primary contact for all media inquiries. They will run all press conferences and give most interviews during a crisis. They should be very experienced in working with both print and broadcast media. A member of the crisis communications team needs to establish and maintain relationships with the local media before a crisis occurs. Media relations are one of the chief responsibilities of public relations.

Black Public Relations

Also called negative public relations, is “a process of destroying the target's reputation and/or corporate identity.” The objective is to discredit your client’s competitors, usually a business rival. The building of a Black PR campaign, also known as a Smear Campaign, is by definition “to undermine the individual’s or group’s reputation and their social credibility.” This is done by taking advantage of absolute deception and extensive stretching of the truth. Traditionally it starts with an extensive information gathering and follows the other needs of a competitive research. The gathered information is being used after that as a part of a greater strategical planning, aiming to destroy the relationship between the company and its stakeholders. Most of the cases are because of information security related problems, all of which aiming to steal or to permanently monitor the sensitive information of the target organization. If the media will not cover the negative information on their own, then the company has to promote the negative information about their rival, which most companies do not want to waste their time, effort, or money on, unless the destroyed image of their rival will benefit them financially.

However, in the celebrity world, pop stars have in fact gained their fame from what we would consider negative public relations exposure. Black PR differs significantly from the broader definition of manipulation, where the core of persuasion is based on false statements and paid publications. Actually, some of the best case studies in Black PR are focused on the inconvenient truth and secrets of the target and how they were turned against them. That is why sometimes the ability to investigate is of a greater value for Black PR practitioners than the possession of any special deception skills.

The worst situation is when a company does not have a clue about what happened, when a random journalist happens to write something or reveal something about the company out of the blue. No matter how much the public or the media pressure you for an immediate response, don't give it to them. Try to remain calm, get all the facts of the story that they have so far, and then give an answer on behalf of the company. It is not a very good idea for more than one person to answer on behalf of the company because usually stories get mixed up.

So when things don't go to plan don't bury your head in the sand and don't try and cover things up unnecessarily. Use your crisis communication plan and remain calm. Never say, "no comment,” and make statements clear and short.

Publicity vs. Advertising

Don’t expect publicity to work like advertising.  Advertising content is something you pay for such as: radio/TV commercials, newspaper ads, banner/billboard ads, etc. However, publicity can basically be obtained with absolutely no cost to you. Publicity is free content through a third party that appears in the media. It is what others say about your company or product. Publicity content can be found in an article that some journalist just happened to write after one of your company’s big promotional events, or when you release new information, for example, through a media alert, about your company or about a new sales promotion to an editor and he decides to do a feature piece in his publication. The worth of this publicity clearly depends on the amount of circulation a particular publication receives.  The key objectives are to keep releasing press releases with new information about your company or product that will be interesting to your consumers, and to have promotional events throughout the year to keep your company’s name stirring through the media. The media will pick up on the press releases and events, and consumers will view your company through their story and believe that the information is purely from their third-party point of view. Obviously, most consumers who look at a newspaper or billboard ad automatically know that they are being sold something, but if they hear or see it from a third party about your company, they will be more “attracted” to the information and over time the impression of your company will remain positive in the consumer’s eye.

Below is a link to an article by Apryl Duncan, who writes for About.com. The article “10 Differences Between Advertising and Public Relations” gives a concise understanding of what I am trying to convey in this post. The article is focused on “public relations” rather than “publicity,” but since they are so close in the way they work together I figured the points that Duncan makes are valid and relevant to my blog.

http://advertising.about.com/od/careersource/a/10advpr.htm

Marketing Partnerships

Choosing Your Partners

When choosing a partner, you have to review the pros and cons of the future partnership, and you have to look at all of the brands rivals. Obviously, the product of your partner will be branded and will have competitors in the marketplace. Questions such as: “How will this partnership benefit the company?” and “What are the requirements of the partnership?” must be reviewed thoroughly. A partnership can benefit a company with sales and/or through image. Does this product generate enough sales to boost yours? Does your company want to be associated with the image of this particular brand? Requirements of a partnership may require a certain amount of promotional events a year, or a certain amount of promotional ads a year. Will the amount of your budget money spent on events and ads be worth it? Will these events and ads generate the sales boost you are looking for?

Creating Collaborative Promotions

Collaborative promotions are usually beneficial to both partners. These promotions may be an event to celebrate the new partnership and their product or an in store sales promotion including the partners product as an incentive. For example, the event may have a theme describing the product and promoting its brand. You may want to invite public figures who have used or are in support of the product and have them speak or do a signing. An in store sales promotion may consist of a coupon for the promo product, or as an incentive for purchase the product may be a free gift with the purchase of a certain dollar amount to increase sales. The event and/or sales promotion can benefit both partners. Through the event, media circulation will build image and awareness of the product and company, and through the sales promotions, the company will obviously have an increase in sales and the product will gain awareness through the users who received a “free sample” and a certain percentage of the consumers will in turn come back to purchase the product upon their satisfaction.

Production Management: Location & Entertainment

Production management is the logistic planning of what occurs at your promotional events. Everything from time management, contracts decisions, conflict resolution, communication trees, and approvals just to name a few. All of these factors affect the event from actually happening.

Location

Choosing a location has to be in sync with who you invite and the theme of the event. If you are inviting celebrities, the venue has to have that luxurious, red-carpet feel or you can forget about them attending your next event. In this case, the venue must be secure. Security agents must be hired and do a run-thru of the building. In most cases, celebrities who agree to attend an event, require at least two security agents to escort them in and out of the event. Another important feature the venue must have is a “green room.” A green room is a private room where the invited celebrity can take a break, touch up their make-up, change their wardrobe, etc. Usually this room provides refreshments and hor d'oeuvres. Specifications may be upon request of the celebrity’s publicist. If multiple celebrities are invited, usually they do not expect their own green room unless they are representing the event’s company. Also, if models are involved in the event, a separate green-room is reserved for them as well.

If most of your attendees are members of the press and corporate friends, then the venue should be elegant and chic. You want them to feel important, but not to the point of making them have to feel stylish. In these cases, most will attend in business attire.

Sometimes a venue will be available and you book it, but then someone important unexpectedly comes into the city and overrides your reservation. What do you do? In my experience, this has happened plenty of times and you just have to deal with it and make the best of what the next best thing is. A “Plan B” is essential when is comes to locations. This is one reason why invitations are so hard to get approval for because the venue or times may change at the very last minute.

Entertainment

When booking entertainment, you have to be mindful of who you are inviting. If you have a celebrity attending your event representing your company and/or promotion, try to invite people from their “circle” and stay away from inviting their rivals. If your event is for the corporate world, try not to invite corporate rivals, unless the event is meant to be social and not for business. Nevertheless, you want to book entertainment that is appropriate for the event and venue. You don’t want to have too big of an entertainment act for a small venue, and vice versa. Just keep these little things in mind and your attendees will enjoy. Other obvious thing such as contracts and agreements should be dealt by your legal department or staff.

Face-to-Face Marketing: Promotional Events

Event planners need a complete solution to increase event attendance and decrease event costs. By organizing the event planning and management processes, you can focus your time on strategic decisions rather than repetitive, time consuming tasks.

Planning the Event

When planning an event, you must think of where, when, how, and why it will happen. The venue has to have that “wow” factor to impress the attendees, and the date and time cannot conflict with any other press-worthy event in the area. The way the event is coordinated, including accuracy, enough time notice on all approvals, correct equipment rentals, and how many people for maintenance and crew are hired all have a great impact on how smoothly the event runs. Make a timeline; this will help you make deadlines. Lastly, the reason for the event must clearly be stated either in the theme of the event, or a program that is given out, or a slogan representing the company. The “why” of the event, the purpose, has to draw people to the occasion, make them want to attend a fabulous event.

Attendees and Invitations

When deciding who to invite to your event, make a database. The organization of a database of contacts will be extremely helpful when doing mailings as this will prevent you from mailing one thing to the same person twice. When this happens, the recipient will automatically feel how impersonal your intentions are as “you” have forgotten about what mailings that particular person has already received. Recipients want to feel that the invitation was made especially for them, by you. Lastly, study your list of attendees. Know what company or publication they are from, and know their job titles. By knowing this information off the top of your head, you will increase the affect of your conversations with business.

After the Event

Re-cap your conversations with your attendees. Make note of their interests from the event. This will help you to have a better and accurate follow up with them in the future. Understand what went well and what went wrong, if anything did. Make checklists of what was used or rented and how many. The more information you gather for each event, the less hectic the process will be. You will know exactly what you need and when you need it for the next events deadlines.

What is Publicity?

Technically speaking, Publicity is the management of the public’s view of a certain company, product, or public figure. Sometimes Publicity is grouped under a marketing department because it is also an element of the promotional mix. My job as a publicity associate is to work with the Marketing team’s promotions and, together with my team, publicize them. Managing publicity, in short, includes: promotional event planning, editorial/product placement management, and planning editorial meetings to discuss the company/client’s future ideas/collections with various Editors.

Behind the scenes of these three job components comes a lot of stressful work. Planning and coordinating all events includes booking: the venue, the caterers, the entertainment, the celebrities/spokespersons, the maintenance crew, the fashions/stylists, the photographers/camera crews, the security, and finally, getting invitations out to the most important people – the press.

Members of the press need to receive invitations for the events with adequate timing for follow up and correspondence. The time of these professionals needs to be respected and treated with diligence because they are the people who will make your event worthwhile with all the editorial placements well worth more than any marketing budget would want afford.

After an event, a publicist must track and document every editorial/product placement. What I mean by documenting these placements is, every print or web editorial has a circulation number, the number of people who read a particular magazine, newspaper, or website. Since, the works of publicity cannot be physically counted, the circulation numbers of the editorials featuring the publicist’s promotional events give a net worth of that placement and can then be accounted for in budgeting purposes.

Publicists do get the luxury of VIP status at A-list events, constant party invitations, and traveling perks. However, these are all intended for networking experiences. Publicists need to do their homework on who they can and cannot mingle with. For example, if a company partners with Reebok, that company’s publicist cannot mention a word of business to a publicist from Nike. They need to network with various people in different fields to collaborate with for future events. Publicists need to be completely update-to-date on latest trends and corporate financial news. They have to be able to represent their company in the “blink of a eye,” so to speak, with just a quote or a paparazzi picture.

Publicists are on call 24/7 and are essential to a company/client’s team. Through my experiences in Publicity, I will give you the behind the scenes scoop and colleague-to-colleague tips of what to expect in the profession of Publicity.