Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance - Vi-gra doesn’t work for everything.

Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

This great military adage has proven itself time and time again in one of the more enjoyable aspects of my job, event planning. So far during my ‘internship’ I have planned and hosted three events ranging from small briefings to large 100-person cocktail functions and the key, I believe, is having a solid planning document that ensures you always know what needs to be done, what has been done, and when everything needs to be done by. 

Stephen Fry once said “An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.” Well ideas like speeches, letters, books and even jokes, can be broken down into a methodical structures and once you’ve got the structure down everything else is just stuffing, events are no different.

Event planning was touched on briefly in the first year unit PR Techniques, but there are some cool tools out there to make the process easier. For example, the websites Trybooking and Eventbrite allow users to maintain a centralized booking system where people can either freely register for an event or pay for a ticket, the websites then generate an automated self-managing guest list. Additionally, Eventbrite gives users the option of using the Eventbrite 'App' so you can tick people off as they arrive. This is really useful for post event follow-ups because you know exactly who and who didn’t attend (don’t rely on RSVP lists).

One of the most important aspects of event planning, in my view, is something that is often overlooked and that is: Why are you actually holding the event? 

Lots of people seem to think that holding as event is a strategy in itself, but events should simply be a tactic in achieving your strategy and not a strategy of its own. Thoughts to ponder include: What you want people to take away from the event; what you want people to commit to at the event (money, time etc.); and how is an event the best use of your resources given your strategy? 

In so many cases, if you just want to tell someone something, you’re better off organising one-on-one meetings with people, it’s cheaper, a little more time consuming, but considerably more personal and interactive and more likely to generate a personal relationships, which is more powerful than any event.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on the importance of post event follow-up. In my previous blog post I highlighted how all good speeches have a skeletal structure that can be used repeatedly: Tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them, the same should be applied to events. Your invitation will tell people what you’re going to tell them, your event is where you tell them, and you should follow-up post event to thank people and importantly tell them what you’ve told them.

So that’s events - until next week.

Ron

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