Smirnoff targeting Meetups

October 1, 2008 By Julius Solaris

Photo by: Cristiano Betta

Smart brands are tackling Meetups to get targeted audience and generate buzz.

I already talked about using Meetups to target your audience and create relevant experiences. Last night Smirnoff provided me a case study and possibly a good review.

The London Bloggers Meetup is one of the most vibrant Meetups of the city. Andy Bargery manages it in an exceptional way.

A great mix of professionals, creative people and hobbyists gather monthly to exchange opinions about their passion.

Several brands have taken advantage of such great mix in the last months, to name a few Berocca and Stella Artois.

Last night Smirnoff displayed a great way to engage on a very personal level.

Apart from free drinks , which are obviously more than welcome, they introduced cocktail classes. The bartender customized the drink according to your blog and your persona.

The location was amazing and the PR agency did extremely well.

Smirnoff was very gentle and did not push the night or show a “do this/do that attitude”. The atmosphere and level of engagement raised to the roof.

Some bullet points for you to enjoy:

- Engage on a personal level
- Free drinks are cool but make me learn something
- Spoil me as an intelligent person and according to who I am
- Be gentle, don’t push the night
- Use Meetups to target opinion leaders, organizers are eager to get sponsors.

Vote: 8,5

Filed Under: Julius Solaris, ideas, marketing, party planning, reviews, tips
 

Get things done with Moreganize

October 1, 2008 By Julius Solaris

Moreganize allows you to share polls, surveys and to do’s so you can make everyone attending your meeting happy.

We recently featured Gathergrid and pretty much loved the idea of being able to question your attendees to work out the best time to meet.

Moreganize pushes the concept even further introducing shared to do’s, polls and surveys.

We are all facing RSVP issues nowadays and as the calendar gets crowded we definitely want to make sure that our meeting is going to be a success.

We were impressed by the ease of registration of Moreganize, which ticks off the annoying “I have to register to another service” thingy.

Here are few examples of what you can do with the service.

- Survey
- To do List
- Opinion poll

Link to Moreganize

Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event management, event planning 2.0, ideas, project management, software, tips
 

MikonMixers… great idea

September 25, 2008 By Julius Solaris

Mark just got me in the world of Mikons, a great way to communicate, but most of all a tremendous networking ice-breaker.

When you are networking reaching out to people at events it is always difficult to skim your targets. Most of us do that with appearances but possibly there is no worst method. There is a clear need to identify who is in front of you, at least in a simple way. If I am vegetarian, I want no meat lovers in my network, at least not for the night. Event professionals can definitely help in making things easier.

Introducing Mikons

“It’s an idea in the form of a picture” they say at their website. Nice. I want to know more.

How can you use Mikons to tell your story?

- Create or use a Mikon for your club
- Create or use a Mikon for your clan or guild
- your hobbies: biking, scrapbooking, book clubs, drinking, chess, reading, movies
- your beliefs: religion, political affiliation, gender identification,
- an experience or aspect of your personal story,cancer survivor, entrepreneur,
- a concept you want to share
- your preferences: paper or plastic? coffee or tea? vinyl or digital?

How can I use Mikons in my event?

During event registration, attendees get a custom sheet of iconic stickers that relate to the theme of the event and their personality traits. Event planners can create custom sheets for any type of event and personality traits or professional skills they wish to expose between attendees.

Planning my next networking event it’s definitely easier.

Link to MikonMixers

Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event management, ideas, party planning, templates, tips
 

The credit crunch of events

September 15, 2008 By Julius Solaris

Photo by: Kyle May

The current crisis hitting the financial markets has impacted events. The trend of user generated events is going to shock our market even more.

I already talked about making your event web 2.0 compliant. This is just a part of what needs to be done. There are definitely other trends you need to look at if you are already missing out or if the scenario ahead does not look good. It’s not a case that a popular BarCamp took the challenge and shared their opinion on how they empower the user.

Please answer the following:

Do you work with events, in the same way a product manager approaches a brand portfolio?

Do you feel lost without your event production team?

Is your ROI ridiculously high compared to the resources you use?

Do you run events with scientific committees?

Do you charge astronomic fees to create scarcity, when possibly most of the content discussed is already out there?

If you answered yes to 1 or more, what’s ahead does not look good.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Julius Solaris, barcamp, event planning 2.0, ideas, my favourite posts, open source, psychology of events, tips
 

5 (more) free iphone applications for event planners

September 12, 2008 By Julius Solaris

Photo by: fr3d.org

We really love the iphone and all the cool things we can do with it. As I said in this previous post, it helps me in being organized, do things online and keep track of my contacts in an very effective way. If you don’t have the device you may be missing out on few opportunities.

I felt that the previous post was not complete so there you go.

5. Eventful

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event planning 2.0, ideas, project management, software, twitter