If you ever attended a marketing class, course, degree you probably heard of Everett Rogers and his book “Diffusion of Innovations”. He synthesized very well the level of adoption of new products and categorized the adopters in groups. You can see the graph resulting below:

Source: Wikipedia

It is pretty straightforward and gives you great insights about who you will probably deal with at your next event.

Applying Rogers’ Bell Curve to Events

Events are by definition a new product. Although you may have a recurring events, the intangible, co-productive component of the service will make every event unique and thus new to the perception of the customer.

This model applies to events that last over time (4 days+), although you can definitely apply the same model to say registration process at a given event.

Tension

The element I want you to focus on is tension. Positive tension is key to successful events. Call it passion, motivation, teamwork, drive.

Think about the events you attended in the past. Could you feel the staff particularly helpful, aware of what to do, experienced and collaborative. This is the customer perception of tension.

What usually happens with tension

The image below shows the level of tension and its behavior during the planning and execution of an event, next to the Rogers’ graph.

If we look at the Planning section of the graph, it will be easy to note how the level of positive tension tends to increase, reaching its peak at the beginning of an event.

After the peak, the level of motivation starts a steep descent. This is due to several factors coming in. The staff is tired of repeating the same processes everyday and the overall motivation organically drops.

There are two issues with that

- The level of satisfaction is profoundly linked with the above. Therefore the less motivation, the less the customer satisfaction.

- Only Innovators and Early Adopters will experience your peak. This means you performed at your best with only 15% (and possibly 2.5%) of your customer base.

With goods and tangible products you can afford to address your efforts only to these people. They will talk positively about your product and serve as hooks for the Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

This scenario does not apply to events

Events as intangible services do not stay the same over time.

In cheap words, you need to keep it up all the way to the end.

You cannot afford to miss out on the 75% of your customer base. You need to show them a great level of performance.

A new model

Here is how it should look like:

As an event manager you need to make sure the positive tension of the team stays at the same level for the whole event. It doesn’t matter whether you are managing a 3 months display or a 4 days exhibition. The customer paid for that and expects to get what was promised and possibly more than that.

If you allow the tension to drop, it will be like selling perfectly working Iphones to 15% of your customers and models with cracked screens to the rest.

How to keep the tension steady

- Design shorter shifts.

- Work carefully during planning and make sure everyone (this includes you) knows what to do if things go wrong.

- Do not stress staff too much during the first part of your event. Do not apply pressure and don’t get overwhelmed by the need to succeed.

- Stimulate your staff when they do not expect it. If the staff is responding to a large number of customers do not apply pressure during these moments. Observe and evaluate, only after suggest improvements.

- Treat every customer with the same level of service.

Photo by: perhapstoopink

I know sometime this blog gets too techie. Open source, online platforms etc. For those who don’t want to struggle with complex platforms and so forth here are 5 free templates to use with Microsoft Excel and Open Proj.

WBS, Gantt and Budget. All in one

Download OpenProj and get this template I prepared for you.

Event Toolkit

Are you unsure on what to bring with you at your next event. Be it a wedding or a wine tasting tour you will find a great collection here.

Wedding Work Breakdown Structure

An all time favorite. WBS is a must for weddings.

Event Budget

A simple budget template from Microsoft

Marketing Campaign

A good template to track your marketing campaign for Excel

For more have a look here

I talked in the past about trying to find an open source, free and complete alternative to expensive EM software.  Well Amiando it’s the closest solution to that. They have released a new version of the already great platform. I must admit it kicks asses, to use an allegoric phrase.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think an open source solution would be great but these guys did exceptionally well.

Who should use Amiando?

Mostly those working with events up to 400 people, both professional and not. If you don’t want to bother yourself with messy accounting and looking for a straightforward solution, it does not get any better than this, should you organize a party, a meeting or a conference.

Flexibility

They created a module system in which you add the modules you need. That answers to one of the most painful issues with events. Every event needs different organizational tools. The platform is flexible enough to accommodate very different needs.

Ticketing

They started with the ticketing service and then expanded on that. They addressed the major issue with Paypal. A lot of organizers had troubles with using Paypal for ticketing. They keep Paypal as an option, but they developed their internal payment system in which they take care about everything, invoicing and International VAT charges included. Wow.

Web 2.0 and Social integration

Finally I don’t have the feeling of being in 1997 while looking at an online platform. These guys nailed the concept of integration with Social Media and Networks. You can actually add Youtube videos or Flickr photos. If you use Facebook you are pretty much used to that but in our field we are talking big news! You are actually able to share information on major social networking websites, get buttons to promote your event as well as

Support

There is a free of charge number to avoid mess ups.

Directions

Very easy just add the address of the location and a Google map.

Amiando Website

If you have done your marketing correctly your delegates should be hungry. I am not talking about the buffet I am talking about your event.

Are the people attending your events hungry and motivated?

Are they impatient to know more about the event, to participate, to get involved to buy the sponsors product to talk about the event when they will be back in their office.

When you feel your audience is hungry it means you have pulled the right triggers.

How do you make them hungry?

Start by giving them control.

How do you make them hungry? Share your tricks!

Photo by: el copilot

Negative Feedback.

Very tough to find, very hard to accept.

Without negative feedback I think I would have been a complete uncompetent.

If I have to think back at my education as well, I still remember those lecturers who had the ability to let you understand what exactly you did wrong.

My idea is that too many times we run away from feedback specially if it’s negative, possibly because we already know we have done something wrong.

The cathartic effect of having a customer telling you: “I did not like that” is our caviar today. Very scarce, hard to find and very expensive.

Please consider that it is a fact that when you are angry or not happy and you let someone know, it is because you care.

My suggestion is to open up our ears and enjoy our caviar next time someone shows up complaining.

I’ve worked for more than 5 years with entertainment and being more specific with discos and clubs. I became what was and still is called a “PR”, a person that gives away “invites” to cool friends to populate the night. I earned a small percentage on every invite turned in with my name on it. In one year time I started to invest my money in club nights and quicker got more control over the event management.

Soon I was in charge of making the list (of people not paying to get in) and selecting people that got admitted into the event. That gave me a tremendous amount of power. I was soon able to ask the doormen to avoid certain people getting in.

For a pretty long period of time excluding others meant being at the top.

As Jedi Master of Marketing Seth Godin states:

“Credit card companies have made billions by selling a card that others can’t get.

Politicians stand up and talk about their (exclusive) religion, or pit one special interest group against another.

And of course, the best nightclubs have the biggest velvet ropes and the pickiest doormen.”

I had to think again

The Social Psychology of Inclusion and Exclusion, By Abrams, Hogg and Marques talks about the anger generated by exclusion. Violent reactions and discontent.

Soon few question popped up into my mind. How many people do we usually exclude from our events? How much discontent do we generate? Are there good reasons to exclude people?

At a club it’s up to the selector personal taste. Sometimes it is about the price. Few other times it is the content that excludes people.

Does inclusion mean populism?

What if the basis of events would be inclusion? BarCamp and unconferences are based on including people, but are not populist.

We tend to think that limited resources automatically mean exclusion.

The smart event planner thinks of ways to include those people e.g. who cannot make it that day, who cannot afford the price of the ticket, who are not familiar with the content.

Just think that:

- Online conferencing is a solution for those who cannot make it.

- Scholarships are a good method to make students attend an important conference and sponsors are willing to fund them.

- Opening an online forum and a blog about your event could help a lot of potential attendees to understand more about your content.

I am sure you can come up with more ideas and I invite you to do it.

It is one of the most adopted and therefore definitely worth a review and interview with its Director of Marketing, Jack Mardack.

How does it work?

Few things that I love about the service:

- There is no standard price. They earn a percentage based on your ticket price.
- It’s customizable. You can pretty much input as many details as you prefer. The event page is greatly adaptable and here are few examples.

Alumni Meeting

Fundraising Event

Social Meeting

- Online secure payment. If you don’t work regularly with events this might be a bit of an hassle to set up. Great tool.
- Affiliate Program. A brand new program where you can promote events and earn up to 35% commission (If you blog about events and have ads you might want to consider this instead of random text ads)
- Tagging, personalized URL, RSS. Welcome to Web 2.0, finally some fresh air.
- Promotion. Eventbrite immediately indexes the event with major search engines. This usually takes forever if you don’t have an updated platform up and running.
- Survey, etc. There are few more you can check them out here

I decided to ask a few questions to Jack Mardack, who was very kind and answered as follows:

What is the idea behind Eventbrite?

Eventbrite is a self-service event registration and online ticketing platform. The idea behind Eventbrite is to empower individuals, companies and organizations of all sizes with the tools they need to successfully promote and sell-out their events on the Web.

What’s in it for event managers?

If you are someone who is already tasked with managing events and selling tickets, Eventbrite can make your life a lot easier and make you more successful. We give the event manager control over the entire process, from pre-event marketing, to registration, to ticket sales, and even give them powerful customer relationship management tools they can use to market future events or promote other products and services.

What’s in it for Average Joe?

What’s in it for the Average Joe is the ability to go from being an Average Joe to being a successful event manager in about 5 minutes. See previous answer. We’ve worked hard to make our tools as easy to use as they are powerful. The result is that everyday people, from all walks of life, are using Eventbrite to promote and sell-out events of every conceivable type and size.

What’s in Eventbrite’s future?

We’re committed to continuing to enrich our features and to making Eventbrite even more powerful. The future is we will remain focused on providing event managers with everything they need to succeed, and on making it as easy as possible for anyone to make their event a success. What we see for the industry is that many more individuals and organizations are going to become event organizers. This is going to produce an incredible number and diversity of events, many of which are going to try to find their audiences on the Web. It’s going to be a really long tail, and Eventbrite will be there for all of them.

The Cluetrain Manifesto is almost ten years old. I was actually surprised to see it was written in 1999 for two reasons:

- It is amazing to see how it is still relevant to both Internet and businesses. The words of the manifesto sound like a Web 3.0 startup’s mission. They got it right. The people who signed it saw 10 years in advance what was about to happen. Few things are yet to come but I’d bet we’ll shortly experience them.

- Crazy, crazy, crazy. Companies had in front of their eyes the chance to get the most out of the Internet and treat the customer in new, engaging ways. It was there, clearly written and explained. It is SAD to see how only few organizations have embraced these life changing concepts.

The Cluetrain Manifesto is free to read. How the most popular Italian and world’s top 10 blogger, Beppe Grillo, would say, download it, print it and start sharing it around. Give it to your boss, to your colleagues, if possible pass it to the person sitting next to you on the underground.

The Manifesto has a lot of things to say to those involved in events. I went through the 95 Theses and got few that I thought might be of interest.

- Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
I said before than men are not monkeys. Treating your guests as demographics is a giant step toward looking at them as these animals. The human kind is indeed of the animal genre but of the social one. Social media are a great examples of that. Great conversations, great ideas, great feelings and strong emotions that we wouldn’t otherwise experienced. BarCamp and Unconferences should be the role models of every event manager. Empower and connect, do not try to divide and lead because you won’t be happy with results.

- The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

What are you doing to allow conversations among the people attending your event. Are you integrating technologies? Are you aware that recruitment now happens on Linkedin? Do you know that there are widgets you can embed in your website to encourage carpooling to your event? Most of the people attending events such as conferences are only interested in networking. Carpooling as well as online forums or wikis enable networking even before the event.

- The inflated self-important jargon you sling around

Be clear, be precise and be real. Rhetoric and Pavlovian stimulus-response tactics belong to the past. It’s good to have demanding attendees because it means they actually care. Talk to them and tell the truth and do not try to persuade. Allow interaction and hold time and space do not try to be the star of the show.

- We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

How are you talking to your audience. How do you communicate your event. I don’t believe in brochures anymore. Apart from being an environmental disaster (and your customers do care about the environment), I think there are tons of other creative and more engaging ways to get to your audience. Do you have a blog? Have you ever heard of Twitter? Engage, do not try to tell how beautiful your event will be.

- We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

There is not much time left. The economy as a whole is changing. As Seth Godin said this week, during recession times the biggest changes happen such as Google did. Change now because it’s not sure you’ll be able to do business tomorrow.

The email I got yesterday was spam. The content of the spamming manager who sent the email was about registering for an event. He/she did not know it got to the wrong person’s Inbox…mine.

Therefore I decided to blog about it.

Now there are few things that are wrong with this kind of emails and spamming managers sending them. I’ve identified a few and please comment if you feel there are more it would be of great use for most of us.

- Permission

I know I am a bit repetitive with this but this email confirms that in this case there will never be enough repetition. Seth Godin wrote about Permission in 1999 and it has been cited in Marketing books ever since. Now the spamming manager simply did not read a Marketing book in the last 10 years, or worst she/he read it and thought that it would have been great to do the opposite. I tend to read more than 100 blog posts per day plus two online newspapers. I love to be active in things that I like. Obviously this event wasn’t among the happenings I was interested in. I heard about it and ignored it. Why do you feel that sneaking into my email would have changed my idea?

- Email

The fact that you can send instantly 2 million emails to 2 million people made the spamming manager paranoid. By cutting costs of sending brochures she/he thought that now she/he was able to convince the whole world to come to the event. I think that you should be very careful when you engage in such a megalomaniac activity. A lot of people (like me) will perceive the email as an interruption to their daily routine. An unwanted piece of information about an event the I might have liked made me perceive the whole thing as crappy, badly organized, invasive, arrogant and so forth. Spend your money on social media next time to promote and maybe you’ll engage in some useful conversation and beware of using email just to cut costs.

- Sponsors

The bulleted list that I’ve erased is a long lists of participants, sponsors included. I would be so angry with the spamming manager if I were a sponsor. As an interrupted professional who has just seen his Inbox violated I will now perceive negatively any person, organization, company associated with the spamming manager who sent this email. I think I would withdraw from the event immediately.

- Price #1

I don’t want to go too much in depth analyzing the content of the email as I think that in this case the way it was proposed was inappropriate. Nonetheless, I should emphasize that the spamming manager proposed me a discount of 150$. Early birds are great tools but proposing such a large discount does not help in the perception of the overall quality of the event.

- Price #2

Has it occurred to you that there is a new concept of conferences called BarCamps where people set up the whole conference, invite important speakers, collect the participation of huge sponsors and keep everything free and accessible? I think the invasion of my Inbox is telling me that this event is a thing of the past.

- Location

The event is in New York City. I am in Italy and unless you pay me the trip it is highly unlikely that I will travel to NYC just to attend.

- Content

I hid the content of the conference on the snapshot, but trust me it was completely unrelated to my interests.

This whole accident tell us a great story.

- Watch out who you send communication about your next event
- Ask for permission
- Inform, do not try to persuade with old style tricks
- Integrate the open approach as much as possible
- Be an event manager not a spamming manager

A bit of Background

Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Carl George moved to New York City in 1980 where he soon became actively involved in the city’s art and nascent underground club scenes. During this time, Carl produced several experimental films that are exhibited internationally and are now part of the permanent collections at the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the New York Public Library and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

While still actively involved in the East Village avant-garde art scene, Carl became involved in the fashion and home furnishings industry, ultimately working as an event and fashion show producer. His first fashion show was for the launch of Fendi, North America. He then acquired luxury brand clients Yves St. Laurent, Courreges, Charles Jourdan and Armani - solidly establishing himself as one of the premier event producers in New York, specializing in fashion, beauty, culture and the arts.

For more than fifteen years, Carl George traveled nationally and internationally, designing and producing launch parties, events, and public relations tours for some of the world’s best known corporations and brands including Germaine Monteil, Estee Lauder, Prescriptives, Origins, Joop!, Cool Water, Jil Sander, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Vogue, Vanity Fair and the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1998, Carl relocated to Los Angeles and once established, rapidly acquired such clients as The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Sony, Disney, Warner Brothers, Courvoisier, Jeremy Scott, Guess?, Valentino Rome, AT&T Wireless, Lexus, the Pacific Design Center, Platinum Guild International and numerous private clients.

Carl George’s work is marked by its inventiveness, whimsy and an impeccable attention to detail. Offering an unsurpassed level of service, Carl provides high-touch, “turn-key” service - whether designing unique and functional retail spaces, producing stunning large-scale events, or designing intimate social gatherings for a select, private clientele. You can find him at www.luxevents.com

Let’s see what he told us

- Three attributes the fashion show producer should have.

• strong organizational skills

• excellent communications skills (written and verbal)

• a thorough knowledge of art and fashion history, current, global art and fashion trends and movements, and a strong vision for production and set design that refers to all of the above.

- What would you recognize as the most important stakeholders when running a show?

I would answer that it is always the client and your ability, as a professional event producer, to listen and collaborate closely with the client to insure that you help them to obtain their vision, goals and objectives by enhancing the overall effect.

- The day of the show your survival kit will definitely include…

• A very smart and enthusiastic assistant who listens well and exceeds all of my expectations.

• A “right hand man / woman” to work the front of house and call the show. Someone, like myself, who has years of experience in live show production.

• An on site laptop with a printer to constantly update the show run and production schedule - up to the very last minute.

• A professional lighting / sound crew who want to please the fashion designer, and who understand my event design and the mood of the room, and who work to exceed all of my expectations.

• A professional public relations firm who will check in guests, handle celebrities, greet everyone warmly and seat all guests quickly. Manage all print and electronic media by positioning them advantageously and according to importance.

• Assign one of my best staff members to “shadow” the fashion designer / client and tend to his / her every need for the duration of the event.

• Excellent hair / makeup teams under the direction of positive and highly artistic lead designers who know how to collaborate creatively with me and the fashion designer (no bitchy ego please) and who also possess great time management skills (very important). I always use and recommend David Michaud of www.michaudbeauty.com Quite simply the best in the biz.

• Good digital cameras and super fast printers to record any and all last minute changes to the looks or models wearing them.

• Professional dressers who come to the job prepared with kits for instant repairs, last minute pinning, sewing, fixing of broken earrings or heels. I always assign team captains and work with dressing “teams” this way.

• Professional models who arrive on time and in shape and who listen well. Models who “feel” the clothing and who feel beautiful wearing them. No actresses or actors please! I try to always give models some good runway prints after the show for their portfolios. They really appreciate it.

• Chilled pink champagne popped the minute after the designer takes his / her bows.

- The most memorable location that has hosted one of your events

It would have to the the “Platinum Rocks” show at the Couture Jewelry Conference at the Phoenician Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona sponsored by Vogue Magazine and the Platinum Guild International. I used gorgeous Ford models, set up the industrial, black rubber runway outside under the full moon and stars, had two $125,000 custom designed Harley Davidson motorcycles at the ends of the “T” shaped runway.

The models were outfitted in hard core punk rock fashions from a variety of sources including Gaultier, vintage Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Frederick’s of Hollywood, thrift shop leather biker pants and chaps, and “barely legal” mini skirts… and to top it off, each of the girls was wearing $1,000,000 worth of platinum jewelry accented with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

Music by Heart, Pat Benetar, Courtney Love and Blondie. At the end of the show, two big fat biker Daddies mounted the Harley’s, revved up the engines and drove off of the runway with a beautiful biker chick /model on back. The audience of 1000 spectators went wild.

- Tell us a difficult situation you have faced and how you got out of it

Every event has hair raising complications that arise. A professional event producer handles them quickly, efficiently and intelligently and moves on.

- What would you suggest to those that want to be involved into the business?

Have a well rounded knowledge of:

• Art history
• Marketing
• Public relations
• Geography
• Cultural anthropology
• Graphic design
• Product design
• Architecture
• Design history
• Fashion history
• Develop your communication skills (written and verbal)
• Learn to write an effective, award winning creative proposal (practice, practice, practice)
• Learn how to write an accurate “estimated” budget on an excel spreadsheet
• Become an effective networker
• Learn how to promote yourself confidently without fabricating or being overbearing
• Practice proper business protocol.
• Work for the best. Listen closely. Say less. Learn. Learn. Learn.
• Dress fashionably - however that best describes you.
• Take care of your money and it will take care of you.
• Always pay your vendors, in full and on time and they will never let you down. You will also gain respect and a great reputation generally.
• Keep your clients and contacts close. Treat them carefully, judiciously, and with respect.
• Read newspapers, periodicals and newsletters every day (most for free online)
• Keep your finger on the pulse - better yet, become the pulse!
• Stay ahead of the curve
• Never be afraid of competition. It’s healthy.

Thanks to Carl for sharing such great advice and experience. I invite you to read more about Carl at www.luxevents.com