Special Events Planning Guide

Blue Prints for Successful Special Events

Successful special events or corporate events can be the talk of town for many weeks.

The memories of some of the great events can even last for years. They are the most powerful and efficient way to get media coverage, associate and rival businesses' attention. It can also be a opening topic for future dialogue sessions and relationships building.

Whether the special event is a closed door, invited guests only event or a public one, you can be sure that more than half of the people attended a well organised and impressive event will share with their family and friends about their experiences during and after the event.

The challenge for most event planners is to constantly keep up with the demands of their clients, learning new trends, gathering ideas and embracing new technology to execute more excellent value added and speedy service.

Many special events need the event planners be flexible, dynamic and passionate about their work plus creatively mould and innovate events to excite the audience. Great event planners must have the meticulous planning and best technology available to help them in the operations processes. They also need one very important ingredient: PASSION and LOVE for events planning otherwise, the event may lose some of its shine. Just like an unpolished diamond.

Here's 10 tips for special events or corporate events planning:

1. The Bottom Line

Whether you are an in-house events manager or a professional events consultant, many companies do peg all events - big or small to their return on investments (ROI). Some events do not have tangible measurement or a figure on the total sale of products or services.

For example, a company's opening ceremony or media & investors' briefing sessions. So the challenge for an events manager is to manage the company's expectation of the measurable or intangible outcome by producing a total figure on the number of positive media reports, product survey, feedback or even the share prices.

For measurable outcome, a computerize central tracking computation table should be placed out front at the sales desk at these corporate events. (It can also be loaded onto hand held devices like a palm top or even cell phone). It will definitely reflect at least a 80 percent accuracy or more on the sale of your products and services on the same day.

Surveys and feedback from attendees are one of the less reliable and most people are not obligated to provide truthful or accurate information.

Many times, the overall success of a special event is this formula = bottom line + many positive media coverage + goodwill. For a company to do very well at just one event is shortsighted. The consistency of providing great products and services, continuity of good sales figures and acquiring new projects etc for the company after the event is more important.

2. Creative Concepts Vs Sales

Many designers of special events love the challenge of creating new concepts sometimes from the unusual to unconventional (sometimes even weird).

There must be a practical balance between creating new concepts and the ability to "sell" the products and services and positively impacting your client's attendees or guests. Most importantly, generating sales and new sales is key to all successful events.

3. Legal, Safety and Environmental Issues

The challenge of events planners these days are just not simply the legal, work safety, attendee safety and environment issues. After the September 11 terrorist attacks and the bird flu scare, event planners for events and conferences world wide are buying even more premium insurance and having tighter security and checks in place.

Hiring and getting good, reputable security and purchasing insurance is a MUST at any event.

4. Entertainment Auditions and Rehearsals - changes

Entertainment is a BIG part of any corporate events, it can make or break the event. If you have an emcee that mumbles to himself and crack dirty jokes or crack jokes that no one laughs, it is really no laughing matter to the organizer (Sorry for the pun). If you have dancers or models who slipped and fell off the runway, or singers who sang out of tune it will turn into a crisis management to the organizer.

So, auditions prior to engaging your singers, dancers, band or models is a MUST - even for celebrities. List it in your must do list. If audition is out of the question, you must get the DVDs or video recordings of the entertainers' performance. Better still attend one of their performance at the club or another event to check them out.

Nothing is worst than being deceived into believing that the group can sing like Backstreet Boys when they are just a bunch of High School kids practising their vocals during their bath time at the dorms every night.

Even for professional dancers, the dance choreography or steps may not suit your stage, the music is too long or too short for the ceremony etc. Even if you need to pay for the rehearsals, you will have to do so. This is to ensure that the dancers are familiar with the stage and surroundings and the person providing music, sound and lightnings will co-ordinate well together. It will be a nightmare when the music starts and the dancers didn't appear etc.

First impressions are very important for all special events.

5. Learn From Industry Experts

Attend industry conferences to upgrade and learn from both the industry experts and share experiences with other event planners. You will be able to learn valuable lessons, from pricing to security issues, how to formulate contracts and staff motivation tips, projecting professionalism in all events presentations to enjoying and having fun in all your events.

Join and be a member of the events industry! Network and be invited to other special events.

6. Learn & Create Beautiful Experience For Senses

Creating beautiful decorations, atmosphere, music, lighting, mood and food is all about superb designing. This is crucial for any successful event. The minute the guests and clients walk into the event venue, the impact of the decorations etc is to set the mood and expectations. Your guests will expect more great program and the total experience should pleasing to all the 5 senses: hear, see, smell, taste and touch. If you are able to achieve this, you are half way to winning your "battle" - to achieve great success.

7. Food and Food Safety

Food presentation and quality are the main essence of most events. The careful and meticulous presentation, service and how well and exact the food are being cooked, will test your skills in picking and choosing the right caterer and chefs.

Knowing how and where each cutlery should be placed, will assist you when you see the catering staff placing the cutlery wrongly. If you discover this when no one is around to make changes, you can make the switch before anyone finds out. Quick thinking and action saves the day!

Get to know whether your boss or board members attending are particular about FOOD. Make sure you get a good budget for good, quality food. You can't compromise on this even if the person holding the budget for the event only grant you a small budget for food.

Present your case, ask for more budget especially it means that your CEO or the board members are not going to forgive you for providing food "not up to their standards". If your usual trust worthy, high end caterer fail you on this, you really have no choice but to seek another better food service provider for the next event.

Do not attempt to provide raw meat at any event, food poisoning is one main reason for many law suits.

8. Best and New Techniques of Marketing

Learn new and most efficient ways of marketing yourself and your company. Understand your target audience, do a demography and target the appropriate group for this particular special event. Nothing is worst than to invite the masses and try to hit on those that best suit your product's target audience.

Image you have a large turnout of people interested in only collecting souvenirs, winning contests and not subscribing to your products and services.

9. Eagerly Embrace & Implement New, Reliable Technology

An event planner's nightmare is to ask him or her to use an obsolete and user unfriendly technology. Imagine you are managing an event for thousands and the unreliable computer mess up your database? Or your computer systems have limited data retrieving functions and it cannot fully and efficiently draw out important data at crucial moments?

I recommend any organization to throw away that system if it is going to cost you many man hours to unscramble data manually and many overtime hours to ensure accuracy of payments etc. Why frustrate your staff and clients? It will definitely cost you your reputation and sometimes your bottom line.

A wise company will invest in the latest cutting edge technology. You will retain your customers and staff and make them happy. It is a win-win situation in the long run. (In sourcing for the best system - you pay apples for apples, don't expect to pay peanuts for apples. :)

10. Engage the Best Photographers and Videographers

What a shame that your special event turns out to be a great success but your photos or video do not reflect that success!

You do not have great photos to convince the media, stakeholders, investors etc who did not attend that the special event and you have to end up buying one from the media - hmm it will cost you a bomb! If you already have a good working relationship with a great photographer or videographer, he or she is probably a popular one too.

Consider having a list of A to C grade photographers and videographers in case your usual ones are unavailable for your event. Ensure that you book and brief them early, at least a day prior to your event. I prefer to hire a "photojournalist", they can sell your story, product or services better because he is able to capture the story, emotions, mood and the excitement in the photographs at any special events.

Lastly, enjoy every minute of it from planning to the special event day!

to top of page: Special Events

Event Planning

back to Parties Planning Homepage