Cynthia Grzelak - Consultant, Planner, Speaker, Instructor

Chapter 1 

 

Introduction

Welcome! My name is Cynthia Grzelak. My educational background is in literature and journalism with graduate studies in interdisciplinary technology. I began my career in marketing and public relations, where I was introduced to events as a marketing tool. Through real experiences, including trial and error, I learned how to create and effectively coordinate special events.

Through events, I found that I could use my natural abilities as well as my hard-earned knowledge to reach goals and achieve a variety of objectives. Plus, I could have a lot of fun in the process. Events quickly became my special interest. For the past 18 years, I have been an independent consultant providing marketing, public relations, and fund-raising services to a diverse group of clients. During my career, I have planned hundreds of events of all kinds and sizes. I have to admit that I love events. I love the challenge, the novelty, and the excitement of events. I frequently lecture and write on the topic of special events. I'm very excited to be able to share my knowledge and expertise with you. I'm going to tell you everything!

You'll soon find out that as an event planner you must wear many hats and become knowledgeable in a number of fields. In just one day, you might need to be an accountant, publicist, set designer, talent agent, and food critic. Don't let that deter you. If you really want to be an event planner, you can become all that you need to be. In fact, you may already possess what I think are the three most important attributes necessary for success as an event planner.

1. You must be a kid at heart. Kids enjoy just about everything, especially parties. They can host their buddies and pals in an empty cardboard box or just as easily entertain them in a puddle with mud pies. For them, every day is a new opportunity for fun with strangers and friends. You, being of like mind, probably keep your party hat and dancing shoes nearby at all times.
2. You should be excited about the adventure of it all. No two events are ever truly the same, even annual events that have been ongoing for 20 years. The world is changing all around you and your events will change too. You will learn to do new things all the time. That's a guarantee. Boredom is simply not permitted. You and I wouldn't have it any other way.
3. You must remain undaunted by problems that will inevitably arise. People will turn to you to solve all of an event's problems. You can't lose your head when those around you are losing theirs. No matter how new to event planning or how young you may be, when there is a problem, you will be the adult in charge. Sometimes that's scary. Trust me; you'll get over it.

You are going to learn proven steps and methods to produce a great event. We will start with the steps you should use to plan any event.

There's so much to know about themes, sites, food, decor, and entertainment. You will get ideas galore that you can use à la carte or in combination as you mix and match resources to put your own unique spin on your events.

No one does an event completely alone. You'll discover the who, why, and how of working with other people to make your event a success.

Of course, you can't plan an event without also protecting yourself and your guests from hazards, regulation violations, or problems with safety and security. We'll cover those items, too.

Then, ever wonder what would happen if you had an event and no one came? It's not a pretty thought. You'll learn how to promote your event to make sure you have guests, and you’ll learn how to have the guests you want.

At some point, the party's over. You'll find out how to evaluate what really happened, because you may want to do it all over again. Or, you may just want to be sure you received what you paid for.

When our time together is over, you'll look back on what you've learned and feel a new sense of confidence—you'll feel like an expert.

You'll have easy access to industry information. You'll know just where to look—in your own backyard or in the corners of the world—when you need data, resources, or even colleagues in the business.

You'll avoid embarrassing, costly, or dangerous planning errors or production mistakes. Problems can and often do occur. You'll know how to avoid them or fix them quickly when they happen.

Your own creativity is going to be supercharged. You'll be bursting with new ideas and sources of event materials and vendors of all kinds.

To put it simply: You'll have confidence in your own new abilities and will be able to put what you've learned into practice immediately. There will be nothing stopping you.

So what are we waiting for? It's show time.

In this lesson, you are going to discover how to develop a thoughtful and thorough plan from which everything else about your event will flow. You will learn the building blocks that are the foundation of great events: target market, situational analysis, the six P’s, and event planning. 

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Chapter 2 

 

Targeting Your Markets

One of the most basic and yet most often overlooked aspects of event planning is the consideration of who will actually attend the event—your target market.

I can't begin to tell you the number of people who come up with an event idea, go far down the road to making it real, and then realize they haven't a clue about who might attend. They can't identify anyone who would be interested. They've succeeded in creating something special for an audience that doesn't exist. They don't have a target market.

Or, they have so few prospective guests that it doesn't make sense to hold an event. The chosen target market is too small to warrant the expenditure of time, money, and effort that an event requires.

There also are event planners who have an existing and successful event with a well-defined target market. At some point, changes are made to the event without consideration of the target market, and the result is a dwindling number of guests. The focus on the target market is lost, and a formerly successful event now fails.

Target markets are important for any endeavor. Not too long ago, a restaurant chain changed its target market to include younger consumers. The restaurants were renovated with more youth-oriented décor, and the menu was changed. But the restaurant erred because the chosen target market was now too diverse. Eventually, they lost their older clientele and never attracted the younger audience. The business went bankrupt.

The only thing remaining of that business is their famous chocolate cake. The complimentary cake was a popular tradition for the many customers who celebrated birthdays at the restaurant. When the restaurant closed, an enterprising bakery purchased the rights to replicate and sell the cakes through grocery stores to the restaurant's nostalgic customers. The bakery knew a good and receptive target market when they saw one.

When you first decide to do an event, think very clearly and sensibly about the people that you are trying to attract. You can have one or more target markets, depending upon the nature of your event, but they need to be compatible.

Attendees are the primary target market for events. Categories of attendees can include family, friends, customers, prospects, and strangers. The first three categories are self-explanatory, but prospects and strangers are a bit more complicated.

Prospects might be friends of family and friends who could become friends of yours, potential customers and vendors who in the future might want to do business with you or your company, and potential donors who might want to contribute to your cause or be supportive in some other capacity.

Strangers are the unknowns who might find their way into a public event. They're hard to analyze and track. Your event may be the one and only time you come in contact with them. On the other hand, strangers can also become prospects, donors, customers, friends, or even family.

Sponsors are a major target market. Just watch television or attend sporting events to see how important sponsors are. Special activities must be designed to recruit and recognize them. They will expect special benefits. The lead time to get a sponsor can be considerable. Your rewards can be great in terms of money, products, and reputation, if your event sponsors are chosen wisely.

Advertisers are a target market that businesses and nonprofit organizations often seek out. The revenue gained from advertisers through the placement of their ads can be sizeable. Sometimes it's used to cover some or all of the costs for a commercial event. Other times, it's used as an income stream for a charity event. The lines between sponsors and advertisers can get blurred. The cost to participate and the benefits received usually determine the distinction between the two.

Donors are the target market who bestow money or things on your event and, in the grand scheme of things, ask little or nothing in return. They can become attendees, but sometimes they do not. Donors can be individuals, corporations, or foundations, and they normally support nonprofit organizations.

Media is a target market for highly public events. Event planners court the media when ticket sales depend heavily upon free publicity, when a company's services or products are being featured or strongly promoted, or when coverage in the society pages is important to attendees. Sometimes the whole purpose of an event can be just to attract media attention. New product introductions are a prime example.

The general public is an all-encompassing target market. For example, think about new stores and their grand-opening celebrations. The stores encourage everyone to attend. They use media to attract attention. They frequently co-sponsor special activities with other businesses and organizations.

Within each individual target market, there are additional distinctions. For example, if you're having a sports banquet, are you trying to attract males and females? If it's just males, do you seek boys or men? What's the age range you're looking for? Eight to 18, 18 to 24, or cradle to grave? Do the guests you want live in your town or in a specific zip code in your town? Are you focusing on one or more sports? Which ones? Will more people come for one sport than another? Is the banquet for players, fans, or both? Are you looking to attract low-, middle-, or high-income guests? What kinds of things does your target market like to see, do, buy, and eat? You'll want to know these things and more.

Right now, follow me into our next chapter where you will see target markets appear again, as part of the formula I use to identify the important factors of my events. 

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Chapter 3 

 

Analyzing Your Situation

In this chapter, you will learn how to analyze your existing situation as a part of planning your event. I will also identify and explain the six P’s that I use to identify the most important factors of any event so that you can use them, too.

 

Situation Analysis

By definition, a situation describes the way something is placed in relation to its internal and external surroundings. A situational analysis examines your internal strengths and weaknesses and your external opportunities and threats as they relate to whatever you are planning to do. For us, it's planning an event.

A strength is a resource that is beneficial to you. Examples of strengths could include an unlimited supply of money, a large number of volunteers, and a place that you own that can house your event. Any attribute that is desirable and gives you an advantage for your event would be a strength. You want to utilize your strengths in planning your event.

A weakness is a fact or circumstance that is negative or of little use to you. Examples of weaknesses could include a poor reputation, lack of leadership, and a bad location. Any attribute that can be considered an inadequacy or drawback that diminishes your situation is a weakness. You will need to find ways to overcome the effects of your weaknesses.

An opportunity is a favorable condition that exists in the world around you. Examples of opportunities could include a rising stock market, a public that is clamoring for the kind of event you want to produce, and a great band that wants to perform for free. Opportunities can be once-in-a-lifetime occurrences, permanent conditions in your community, or things that happen every now and then that you can capitalize upon and use for your own benefit.

A threat is a negative condition that exists in the world around you. Examples of threats could include the malaise that swept the U.S. after 9/11, local unemployment, and a new competitor entering your community and taking away all of your customers. Threats are large or small things that endanger you or your organization. They cannot be ignored. They must be addressed in some fashion during your event planning.

How do you begin your analysis? Take a piece of paper and, with a pen or pencil, divide it into four squares. Write words or phrases from your situation that apply to your strengths in one square, your weaknesses in the second square, your opportunities in the third square, and your threats in the fourth square. You must be brutally honest. It won't help your event if you try to deceive yourself or others working with you.

Fig. 1.1. Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Remember that strengths and weaknesses are internal to you or your organization. They are things you can control. Opportunities and threats are external. They exist in the world around you or your business, and they cannot be controlled by you or your company.

If it's a private party you plan to throw, be sure to put down your own strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats around you. If it's an event for a business, club, or charity, put down that organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Here's a simple situation to see how this analysis actually works. Let's pretend that I've filled out my sheet of squares, and here is what I've noted. I want to hold a family reunion. My internal strengths are that I'm a graphics designer and I have a large house and yard. My internal weaknesses are that I'm a neat freak and hate it when people track dirt in my house, plus I can't cook. An external opportunity is that I can see my city's summer fireworks from my backyard. An external threat is that it often rains in my part of the country during the month of July.

What have I learned? From reviewing my data and analyzing my options, I know the following: I could host the party in my yard and make the house off limits. I can custom design the invitations myself, saving a lot of money while getting a personalized design. I'll have to buy or get prepared food from someone. There goes the money I saved on invitations! The time of the party should be near sunset to include the fireworks as entertainment. I'd better rent a tent, just in case it rains.

I now have some, but not all, of the details of my reunion identified. I've only just begun to plan my party. I know that if I do this reunion again next year, I will have to analyze the situation once more. Situations are constantly changing. Every time you and I do an event, we should do a situational analysis. Our strengths and weaknesses may have changed as well as the opportunities and threats around us.

The Six P’s

What's next for us to consider? I use six P’s as a framework to pinpoint other important factors. The six P’s are purpose, people, product, place, price, and process. The easiest way to document this information is to use a separate sheet of paper for each P. If you are working with a committee, it might be helpful to use a large pad on an easel to write down the information. As you finish each P, rip off that sheet of paper and hang it in the room for all to see as an easy reference. 

Fig. 1.2. The six P’s

P1 Purpose .answers the question why?

More specifically, why are you doing this event? You may be doing a family reunion because your grandparents are getting older and you want to honor them. You may be holding an awards banquet because your team needs recognition for their progress and achievement in front of an audience of their peers.

P2 People. answers the question who?

Who is going to attend the party? Who are your target markets? Who is going to help create this event? Who is the caterer? Who is the florist? Who is the decorator? Who is going to entertain? Who are the sponsors? Who are the advertisers? Who are the donors?

P3 Product.answers the question what?

What are you going to do? For example, are you going to have a lunch, a dinner, a cocktail party, a toast and roast, a marathon, a bowling tournament, or any number of a zillion different events?

P4 Place.answers the questions where and when?

Where are you going to have the event? When will you send out the invitations? When will you recruit your committee? When can you begin decorating? When will the guests arrive? When will the reception start? When will the band start playing? When will dinner be served? When will the program start? When will the evening end? When do we have to remove all of our equipment? When does the building close?

P5 Price.answers the question how much?

How much is this going to cost you? How much are you going to charge your guests if they have to buy tickets? How much will you solicit in donations? How much will you ask for from sponsors? How much will you charge the advertisers in your program book?

P6 Process.answers the question how?

How are you going to get the job done? What is on your to-do list, and how will it ever get accomplished? In Chapter 4, we will talk about strategies and tactics that outline in great detail exactly how you will accomplish your goals and objectives.

Using these six P’s will help you identify even more questions than those that I included. The more questions you have, the more answers you'll get, all of which will help create a much better event plan.

Now that you know how a situational analysis and the six P’s can work for you, I'll show you how you can take all of the information you've collected and put it into a formal event plan. 

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Chapter 4 

 

Writing the Plan

I'll be perfectly candid with you and tell you right now that many people who plan events take some or all of the information we've just assembled and then run with it. They begin implementation without taking the time to compile it into a formal, written event plan. Why? Because writing a formal event plan is tedious, time-consuming work.

If the event you're planning is a small and private one for family and friends, you wouldn't need the level of detail included in a formal plan. If you're planning your wedding, you're probably already using worksheets from books you've purchased that, when completed, create a written plan. The need for a written plan and the degree of formality of that plan depends on the complexity of the event. In addition, if you're a consultant retained to create an event for a client or if you're in charge of a volunteer committee planning an event, writing a formal plan is critical to your success.

What kind of insurance does a written plan provide? A written plan contains all manner of detail, including what is going to be done, who is going to do it, in what order it is going to be done, at what cost, and on what timetable. It contains your goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics. It describes everything. The objective is to have no surprises or unanswered questions.

A formal event plan has seven interrelated components. They are goal, objectives, strategies, tactics, budget, timetable, and evaluation.

In common conversation, the words goal and objective are often used interchangeably. For our purposes, they are separate and distinct. A goal is broad based and comes as a result of having achieved objectives. An objective is something that is specific and measurable. When you succeed at achieving an objective, you are on your way to reaching your goal. There can be many objectives to reaching a goal. It all depends on what your goal is.

A very simple example will be helpful. If you were on a professional baseball team, a goal would be to be the World Series champs. One of your objectives would be to beat the team competing with you to qualify for the World Series. You can see from this simple example how the goal is broad based and how the objective is specific and measurable.

Strategies explain how you plan to achieve your objectives. They describe your methodology. For example, if your goal is to become a caterer, an objective could be to become an expert cook in two years. One strategy would be to attend a culinary arts school. Another strategy, for the same objective, might be to get a part-time job working for a professional caterer.

Tactics are action plans that contain all the little details about the implementation of your strategy. I consider tactics to be the master to-do list. Tactics describe all the fine points that must be accomplished. When you are writing tactics, you can be as brief or as comprehensive as you prefer.

If you are going to pass your plan along to someone else for implementation, you will probably have an end result that more closely resembles what you hope for if your tactics are very comprehensive and descriptive. If you are implementing the plan yourself, you might find that you can get the job done with a less-detailed description.

Using my earlier example, if one of my strategies was to get a part-time job working for a caterer, some of my tactics would include researching caterers in my area, preparing my resume, applying for jobs, and going on interviews. I could also spell out the activities I would have to do for each tactic. For example, to research caterers, I might search the Web, look in the phone book, contact a national caterers association, and on and on.

Your budget is part of your plan. Every event must have a budget. It can be very simple and should include both income and expenses. Income items typically include ticket sales, donations, sponsorships, advertisements, and any other categories that capture money that is coming in, such as raffle tickets or auction proceeds. Expense items include site rental, food and beverages, decor, entertainment, other rentals and equipment, printing, and postage.

The budget should contain sufficient detail to capture the elements of income and expense that will be necessary for useful analysis of variations between the budgeted and the actual amounts. An accountant is always a good resource to help create your budget's format.

A timetable is also part of your plan. You can create a timetable using sophisticated computerized formats or a simple 12-month calendar listing. Your objectives are not only specific and measurable, but they also have deadlines. It is typical to use the deadlines from your objectives and work backward to set deadlines for your strategies and tactics. Be realistic about the time it takes to get each job done.

Last, plan to evaluate your event when it's over. It's not over until all the paperwork, such as thank-you letters, has been completed and the bills have been paid. Evaluation is not done by one person. This is when a group evaluation is most constructive. Involve the key individuals who helped create the event. Discuss the achievement of your goal. Analyze what happened with your objectives, strategies, and tactics. Get feedback from guests. Check your budget. See where you did well or where things went wrong. Be honest. Take notes. Keep them for future reference. 

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Chapter 5 

 

Summary

Whew! You're probably glad this lesson is over. We've covered a lot of research and organizational material in a really short time. Your time, however, was very well spent because you know how to identify what you need to know for each event and how to use that information to prepare a plan.

You've learned that a well-defined target market can make or break your event and that you can have more than one target market as long as they are compatible. You'll pick and choose your target market from attendees, sponsors, advertisers, donors, media, and the general public. You'll seek out your attendees from family, friends, customers, prospects and, sometimes, strangers. You'll even go out and gather data that will help you get into the minds and hearts of your audience, because it's helpful to know what kinds of things they like to see, do, buy, and eat.

Your insight about your markets and your situation will be right on track. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats will be front and center in your mind each time you analyze your situation. The six P’s of purpose, people, product, place, price, and process will become an effective planning tool for you, just as they have been for me.

And, while you are developing a written plan of action with the detail and formality appropriate to the complexity of your event, you'll never forget that goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics remain the backbone of all of your events.

Because we've done our homework on the rather serious side of event planning, we are now free to get into the creative and fun side. Our next lesson is going to take us from reality into fantasy. We're going to explore the magic of themes.

"To theme or not to theme?" That’s a question we'll explore. All kinds of interesting stuff you can rent, buy, or use to create a theme will be unearthed and discussed. Great themes, tried and new, will be exposed to excite your creativity. Please join me in a world of make-believe.

But before you get to the next lesson, be sure to do your assignment, take the quiz for Lesson 1, and then join us in the Discussion Area. 

 

Supplementary Material 

Claritas—You Are Where You Live  http://www.clusterbigip1.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20

This site gives you access to free market research information from one of the top providers of precision marketing solutions in the United States.

American FactFinder  http://www.factfinder.census.gov

This site offers popular information, tables, and maps for the 50 states—their counties, cities, and towns—and American Indian reservations.

Canadian Statistics  http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm

This site contains statistics from the last census in Canada.

2001 Census-Australia  http://abs.gov.au

This site contains census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.