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Large-Scale Event Management

Read my guest post for BrightBlue Marketing here

Posted Monday July 18, 2011
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A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of a Music Festival

This article gives a great glimpse of what it takes behind the scenes to make a huge festival like ACL Fest come together from a production standpoint. (Go here for a brief description of festival “production”.)

Fests are huge undertakings, even those that are much less ambitious than ACL and similar fests. They require a great deal more time, money and staff than most folks would ever dream. Many lose money in the first few years, even those produced by experienced industry veterans. For more discussion of these points, go here.

Posted Monday January 17, 2011
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The Most Common Festival Complaints

Mismanagement and disorganization unfortunately happen all-too often, usually a result of inexperience and/or poor planning. (See Tips for First-Time Event Producers .) But even the most well-run fests face these common complaints:

“Taking Over” Public Property
Every event organizer on the planet will roll their eyes, shake their heads, and tell stories of cranky citizens who insist that festivals take over and prevent use of parks, a travesty because parks are public property. This one really gets under my skin because I find it extremely selfish and short-sighted. Sure, fests can present some inconveniences to their neighbors for a short amount of time, sometimes up to a few weeks or a month. But parks are there to enhance the community and festivals do that. Given the upside (see below), the community should rally around fests and encourage more. Besides, most areas have more than one park that the public can access at any given time.

Radius Clauses
C3 Presents, producers of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival among other things, has been in the news recently because they are being investigated by the Illinois attorney general on anti-trust issues stemming from the radius clause they put in their contracts with Lolla performers.

A radius clause limits where and when an artist can perform in the region and dates leading up to and immediately after their festival performance. The purpose is to protect the festival from competing shows that could pull their audience away which would result in a less successful festival.

Radius clauses are necessary and the norm not just with festivals but with touring acts in general. Some say that C3’s demands are onerous compared to other fests, but the producers maintain that they do not strictly enforce the clause and work with artists on a case-by-case basis if they want to play shows within the radius clause. There is a powerful and vocal group of anti-C3 folks in Chicago whose complaints may have helped prompt the investigation, which is ongoing as of this writing.

Doing No Good For The Community
Put bluntly, this is bull.

Every festival contributes to the local economy by hiring staff, and by bringing in vendors & suppliers. Those folks all get paid. Then there’s the money spent by attendees to partake of the food, drinks, and fun at an event. Very often there is additional money going into the area at large including hotels, restaurants, parking lots, and shopping. All of this creates an economic influx that can only benefit the area.

Public events are a big part of what imparts quality of life to a city and makes it attractive to tourists. Could you imagine no Thanksgiving Day parade in New York? No fireworks display on the Fourth of July?

What other complaints can you think of? Do you have a good solution to any of the above?

Posted Tuesday September 7, 2010
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How to Make a Festival Great

Booking the right talent and having good vendors is crucial, but everyone knows that. Here are some other tips for making your event great.

1. For key staff positions, such as managers of production, vendors, security, and marketing/PR to name a few, hire people who are experienced in those roles. If that means putting things off in order to raise enough money, then do it. Do not rely on volunteers, interns, family or friends to handle critical elements if you want your fest to have a shot at repeating. This is item #1 for a reason.

2. Start planning early. If it’s a first-time event, start planning VERY early. Depending on the size of the event, this could mean anywhere from 4 to 18 months or longer.

3. Pay attention to details. Well-crafted signage, clear and ubiquitous directions, snappy graphics, plenty of trash cans, extra supplies, lots of entrances and exits (or one big one), just to name a few. And make it all look nice and inviting.

4. Anticipate: weather, traffic volume and flow (both vehicle and foot), tardy vendors or artists, lost or malfunctioning equipment, staffing or volunteer shortages, injuries, security & staffing needed, visits from fire marshals and health inspectors (make sure all permits are in order).

5. Take care of your people. Not just the audience, but that also means the artists, vendors, suppliers, sponsors, staff, volunteers, media, road crews, and anyone else that is necessary to run a great fest. Treat them with respect, feed them, pay them competitively and on time, do what it takes to make sure everyone wants to come back next year.

6. Plan to lose money for the first year or two at least. Even the biggest, most famous fests have lost money in the beginning only to become hugely popular and profitable, including Bonarroo and Coachella.

7. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. As with any business, which is what an event is, start with what you can handle and plan to grow from there. Trying to be everything you want from the get-go has led to more failures than successes in every business, especially festivals.

8. This is not a comprehensive list. Think for yourself. Consult with other organizers. Do your research. Plan for the long term. And be sure to check out the blog tags and the rest of this site for more info.

Have other input? Share!

Need an expert for your festival or event? Check out the About page then Contact Combo Platter.

Posted Monday August 30, 2010
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Are You Easy or Playing Hard to Get?

Today I got the the final-last-ever-please-act-now-or-never renewal notice for my subscription to Fast Company magazine. Despite the many prior notices I hadn’t renewed yet, for no good reason other than it was low on my radar and list of priorities (even though I really like it). But today the renewal caught my eye because Fast Company makes it so easy to do – it’s a pre-printed, postage-paid, perforated card that I just tore off the outer cover. All I have to do is pop it in the mail. Don’t have to fill anything out, dig out my credit card, nothing. Couldn’t be easier – the necessary tool was provided and they’d even done the work of providing all the pertinent info. Easy-breezy.

And that got me to thinkin’.

Making things as easy as possible is simple, good business. It astounds me sometimes how certain companies make you jump through hoops to do business with them.

This applies as much to events and festivals as anything else. Certainly most events try hard to make things great for the audience, as well they should. But how easy is it for everyone else to get involved and stay engaged? Event staff, participants like vendors and artists, sponsors, volunteers, suppliers – a critical key to a successful event is to make it a no-brainer for them to come to the table with their A-game. Again, I have at times been astonished at some organizations that take so much for granted and act like they’re doing you a favor by allowing you to be part of the action. That leads to high turnover. Bad business.

Don’t play hard to get. Be easy.

Posted Tuesday May 20, 2008
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Street Teams

Record labels and independent musicians have been utilizing street teams to deploy on-the-street guerrilla marketing tactics for a long time. But mobilizing these fans can be a complicated exercise in logistics and time management.

Now there is an online software platform available for managing street teams no matter where they are. A great idea whose time has come and something events also should look into. It’s comprehensive, user-friendly, with built-in quality control and incentives for the best street teamers.

Check out Fancorps.com.

Posted Tuesday April 22, 2008
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Head's Up for Event Producers

Now more than ever it’s imperative for event and festival producers to be on top of their game in creating unique, interactive ways for sponsors to get involved. More money is being spent in this marketing category, but it’s being allocated to fewer events overall. Meaning, sponsors are eschewing the shotgun approach and instead looking for ways they can really dig into an event and be an active participant. The days of throwing up some signage and calling it a day are behind us for the most savvy marketers, and savvy event producers know this. This means it’s harder to compete for sponsorship dollars, an already highly competitive arena. So if you’re not in the game, then get in now or you’re out.

I could outline an exhaustive list of things you should already be doing to attract sponsors, starting with mobile media and online social networks. But instead I would suggest you research events that are similar to yours but perhaps bigger and see how they pull it off. Some music events that do an excellent job are Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival (same producers); Coachella and Stagecoach (ditto); and South by Southwest. Even if your event is not music-related, you can still use these examples to get great ideas.

Posted Sunday March 30, 2008
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Behind the Scenes

The current strike by TV & movie writers is an excellent example of the critical yet often overlooked talent and hard work that is required to produce…. well, just about anything that people want. Witness the recent cancellation of the Golden Globes, the highly touted kick-off for the all important awards season.

Just as in Hollywood, events and festivals require a huge amount of heavy lifting – literally and figuratively – to be pulled off. I often half-jokingly refer to my love of festival producing as a type of brain damage, and folks with the same affliction always nod knowingly.

Posted Thursday January 24, 2008
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Tips for First-Time Festival/Event Producers

This advice also comes from personal experience of having known lots of very nice, cool people who were producing various types of events and who made critical errors that can kill an event’s success and hopes for the future. And that would be bad. Your event should be a success!

Start early.

It will take MUCH longer than you think to round up all the necessary elements, especially financing/sponsorship, and that goes double for events that are new and therefore have no track record of proven success and viability. Sponsors, and other partners as well (staff, security, venues, ticket agencies, performers, exhibitors, permitting agencies, etc.) will likely require some vetting of your event, and that takes time. Those folks have their own internal systems for budgeting, decision making, and timelines. Not to mention lives of their own. So if you expect to pick up the phone and hear Joe Major Sponsor tell you he’s putting a 4- or 5-figure check in the mail tomorrow – you’re dreaming. And he’s probably thinking you’re an amateur and a schmuck for even asking. And he would be right.

It will cost probably five to ten times what you think it will. So again, start early.

For a one or two-night club “festival”, give yourself at least 3 months. The bigger the shebang, the more money needed (probably, unless you have rich friends or a family member who owns, say, Target). And time is money, money time. So give yourself plenty of time to raise plenty of money to pay for the costs you know of plus all kinds of things that you haven’t thought of yet.

One thing your event should not live without is in-kind donations. These can range from pizza for the crew to gifts for participants or decor for the venue, all kinds of stuff. A great in-kind donation is credit or gift certificates for a hardware store. A strange event phenomenon is the constant lack of adequate amounts of duct tape, zipties, or tools. This is the event equivalent of losing one sock while doing the laundry.

Do everyone, most especially yourself, a major favor and get someone with experience to work with you, or at least advise you. You wouldn’t want a weekend tinkerer to rebuild the engine of your classic car would you? So get someone with some real experience, which will probably require at least some money, which will take time to raise.

This goes for all event interns, volunteers, and day-of staff who think they’ve gotten it down. That may be the case, but probably not. Being familiar with onsite execution is only one part of pulling off a great event or festival. Many events have full-time staff that work year-round.

Be advised that most festivals lose money the first 2-3 years or more, so be prepared for that. This holds true even for internationally known events like Coachella and Bonnaroo, which of course are in the black now but they didn’t start out that way.

A white paper that covers this topic much more in-depth is forthcoming. If you have anything you want to see addressed in that, lemme know.

Posted Tuesday December 18, 2007
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Give the People What They Want

Burger King is dropping their sponsorship of the NFL at the end of this season because they have been “dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for local promotional activities resulting from its NFL role”, according to a report in Promo Magazine.

Seems like this should have been a great partnership all the way around, but sponsorship requires ongoing effort after the deal is sealed. Sponsors need to “activate” their sponsorship by creating unique promotions and tie-ins that leverage the relationship. Event properties need to give everything they can to make sure sponsors have the ability to do that.

Now, I have no idea why things didn’t work out in this particular case. Because this was a high level deal worth millions, I very seriously doubt that the individuals involved lacked the know-how to pull it off. Maybe they just didn’t like each other.

But it’s an important lesson in sponsor-event relations: there are always plenty of events for a sponsor to choose from and never enough budgeted to get into all of them. Finding a replacement sponsor to make up for the lost revenue takes a lot of effort which takes a lot of time, and time is money. Good event producers get that.

Posted Monday December 10, 2007
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