The Life & Times of an Event Promoter – a light-hearted look at a promoter’s musings: On advertising ……………

Part One – signs! 

So, what is the major part of an event promoter’s job? 

 The clue is in the name – we promote!  Anyone can hire a hall, hire tables and chairs and set it out, phone around and sell some space to exhibitors and create a show. The most difficult part, is how do you let people know about it and how do you entice them to come along. 

This is where a promoter needs their skill, to promote the show to the public and get them through the door and into the show. I was fortunate to have some advertising and marketing experience in my background, but even so, finding what works for creating show attendance has been a long learning curve and is still an ongoing process. 

I freely admit to being a ‘stats junkie’!  I will spend hours poring over statistics and number crunching, working out ‘cost per head’ of various advertising experiments and generally trying to find out the most cost effective way of spending the advertising budget and bringing in people. People often say, why don’t you do this or have you thought of that?  We always welcome any suggestions, but chances are by now, we have tried it and discounted it if we are not doing it. 

In the early days, it was easy.  When I first started shows fourteen years ago, we went around the local area asking shops, salons, cafes, libraries and so on to take flyers and posters and topped this up with advertising boards around the area wherever people walked or vehicles either drove slowly or stopped – approaching a roundabout for example.  This worked well and is still in my opinion, the very best way to get a new show started.  The problem is, we can no longer do much of it for various reasons. 

What has happened in the intervening fourteen years, is that many small, independent shops have gone out of business and chain shops are usually not allowed to take the posters and flyers.  More and more empty shops are appearing in towns, but also in the little parades of local shops in housing developments, which used to be some of the best to get material into. 

The major development throwing a spanner in the works however, was the Government urging local councils to implement fly posting legislation!  It has been illegal to fly-post for years, but historically, local authorities were slow to enforce it.  However, because of the eyesore created by Circus posters still up months after the event, music event posters pasted on empty shop windows and so on, around 2005/2006 the government encouraged local authorities to begin to actively enforce these laws.  

The result is that many now adopting a ‘zero tolerance’ to the activity.  At best, they will remove the signs you have spent hundreds of pounds having made and taken ages putting up and destroy them – at worst, they issue fines per sign! 

We were always very good about retrieving signs having no wish to affect the environment. We drew maps of where they were and on the Monday following a show, sometimes even on the Sunday evening in the summer months, someone was dispatched to retrieve them all and count them in so none were missed. Unfortunately however, there are no exceptions for ‘good fly-posters’, we are obliged to comply with the law, just like the careless ones. 

To get a bit technical, fly- posting is actually illegal under the Highway Act 1980, the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.  Legal measures to prevent fly-posting range from on-the-spot fines of up to £80 per sign to prosecution in a magistrates’ court and use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) with fines of up to £2500!   No wonder we have not dared to risk putting out signage for the past few years! 

 I mentioned this in a previous article under ‘things that go wrong’, but it is relevant here too, so perhaps worth repeating as a funny anecdote among the facts and figures.  My first experience of this new drive to reduce fly-posting when it first became law,  was at our Grimsby show.  At that point I knew nothing about it, but I quickly learned after that day!  At about noon on the Saturday, an officious little man appeared at reception asking for me.  He was a council official and his new job was to enforce the fly-posting laws that had suddenly become fashionable.  He announced that he had counted twenty signs and could fine us up to £350 per sign.  My mouth dropped open so much, it is a wonder my chin didn’t hit the desk!    He was going to give us an hour to get them removed ………… in the middle of a busy Saturday show!  Brain-freeze!  Not for long though, this was seriously going to hit my pocket – one of the quickest and surest reasons to melt brain-freeze!  He was clearly the sort of chap that loved his work and would pursue it to the fullest extent, but after some reasoning and sweet talk, I managed to melt him sufficiently to give us till 7 p.m. that evening – two hours to do it in after the show closed.  The butterflies that usually jiggle in my stomach throughout a show, were past jigging, they were now into a full samba!  I was in no doubt that regardless of it being a Saturday night, come hell or high water, at 7 p.m. he would be inspecting to see if we had complied! 

Needless to say, the minute the venue was secured, we were all off in different directions to retrieve the signs!  We actually had forty-five out, something I saw no reason to inform him of – he had only spotted twenty, but which twenty?  We had no way of knowing, so down the lot had to come.   I have known more entertaining ways of spending a Saturday evening than stumbling through wet grass verges, in the dark and cold, trying to cut down signs with one hand and hold a torch with the other!  By the time we had finished, we were too late to get dinner anywhere, so it was a quick MacDonalds – ughh!  Maybe not entertaining, but certainly memorable! 

Of course, most visitors are blissfully unaware of these laws – indeed, why should they be concerned with them?  If they do not need to advertise anything, they won’t have had reason to investigate them.  We hear the same comments often – ‘You should have put some signs out’, ‘There are no signs’, and so much more.  We would LOVE to do so;  it is not neglect or lack of care, we simply are not allowed.  

As an alternative, we started using AA direction signage.  Most councils will allow the AA, RAC and one designated private traffic management company to apply for planning permission for directional signs.  These signs can be purely directional however, no other information is allowed.  Each council has its own version of what they will allow on them, but in most cases it is simply Mind, Body Spirit and an arrow – no date, no venue name, no other information.  This has very little advertising value, particularly as the earliest they are allowed up is the Thursday before the show, often the Friday.  Even so, I used these for several years in the absence of any other signage, if only as a ‘comfort factor’ for exhibitors. It was comforting for them to see the signs as they approached the show and know something had been done, as they don’t see the mountain of other more effective promotion done in the run up time. 

Last year however, the AA almost doubled their quotation to me. To put signs out for the Elsecar show for example, was going to cost over £600 + VAT.   This was entering the ‘serious money’ zone, so out came the stats and the number crunching started.  It transpired that in the past two years, no show had ever reached double figures on the number of people that came because of the AA signs.  At the previous Elsecar show, only three people indicated that it was the AA signs had brought them to the show – at £600, that would cost me £200 per person……………. PLUS VAT!   They pay me £4.75 to come in, or less if they are a concession – the conclusion is quite obvious!   The AA signs are a nice extra, mainly for the comfort of exhibitors,  if we ever get back to the times where there is spare money in the coffers.  They are not however, a viable means of spending advertising budget! 

We always try to get a large banner on the roadside at the venue itself of course, but even this is not as easy as you might assume.  Our Chester show for example, charged £600 + VAT to have a sign outside.  We paid it, but we did not get 151 full paying customers tick that this is what brought them into the show, which is the number required to cover its cost  - it was actually less than 20!  Cleethorpes gave me the dimensions for their sign in feet this summer - the numbers were right, but it should have been in meters.  It was only when we turned up and found the sign to be almost a third of the size we could have had that the mistake was discovered,  Had we gone ahead with Uttoxeter, they would not have allowed a banner at all.  Best of all though, was our lovely Monastery, who would only allow our banner on days when they were not hosting a Corporate Event or a Wedding.  Needless to say, that banner was up and down like a yo-yo!

During this last year, we have noticed other roadside signs creeping back.  Not on the main roads, where they are removed immediately, but on byroads, in nearby villages and so on.  I now face a new dilemma - I am not entirely comfortable putting up signs knowing what I do about fly-posting laws, but if others are putting them out and we don’t, we appear negligent rather than law abiding in the eyes of those who don’t realise the issues.   One antique fair promoter told me he does it and absorbs the fines as an advertising cost – certainly a school of thought.  Maybe a few village signs might be an idea once again. 

In order to judge how effective our advertising is and what works, we operate the Prize Draw at every show.  Every visitor is given a free entry card for this to win a prize of considerable value – usually a really nice crystal piece, something visitors will be attracted to but perhaps not afford to buy for themselves.  On the bottom of the card is the question, ‘What influenced you to come to the show?'  There follows a list of options, newspaper/magazine advert, banner at venue, flyer sent by post, flyer picked up in shop, poster, BSSK website, other website, exhibitor newsletter, BSSK e-mail and so on and a tick box next to each.  We count the number of cards per show to find out what percentage of the visitors filled one in. It is always over 60%, but most often in the 70 – 80% bracket, surprisingly high!   

Of those filled in, some will ignore the question and some will tick multiple choices. This and the missing 20 – 30% means it is not an exact science, but overall, we get a good indication from these cards. Going back years and without exception, between 80 -95% of the cards completed fall into two categories. These are ‘Flyer by Post’ and ‘Word of Mouth’. The other 5-20% is made up of everything else!   The two categories are pretty near equal too – if flyer by post gets 720 hits, you can be sure word of mouth will be getting somewhere between 670 and 750!   It runs that close every time, no matter what the door figures . In the early days when we didn’t  have a mailing list, 'Advertising Boards' and 'Word of Mouth' worked in tandem in the same way.  Gradually as the mailing list grew, Flyer by Post took over from Advertising Boards, but boards still brought in the most new people. 

Hmm, maybe I should follow in the footsteps of that Antique Fair promoter after all! 


Next instalment: Advertising Part Two – ‘Flyer by post’ and Media advertising.

The Life & Times of an Event Promoter - Floor Plan, What Floor Plan?

The origins of the phrase ‘Floor plan?  What Floor Plan!’ (Occasionally and only in times of greatest stress ‘Floor plan?  What ‘bleep’ Floor Plan!’)
So, you might be asking, what is the big deal about a floor plan?  Indeed, in the now immortal words of that lady referred to in the last article, “……………how hard can it be?  You stick some tables in a hall, charge people to have a table and charge us to come through the door!  Its’ a win-win situation.”

 Hmm, well it is not quite as simple as that.

Having acquired a venue, the first thing one needs to know is how many stands can be fitted into the space.  This determines the revenue the show could make if fully booked and when this is added to all the other costs such as advertising, printing, postage, staff, insurance, table hire, marquee hire, and a list of other bits that goes on forever, the cost of the stands can be calculated.

We do a site visit armed with a large tape measure and draw up a plan.  We take measurements between every door, and mark the position of fire exits, power sockets, fire extinguishers and any other feature. Once back at the office, we convert this to a computer CAD drawing.

Once the room is drawn up with all the features in place, I usually start by fitting in just single, 6’ trestle tables, leaving gangways the size required by health and safety guidelines and a 2’ or preferably 2’ 6” gap between tables.  The plan may be changed several times while we decide the best way to lay out the room, should the blocks run this way or that and so on, but the result is a nice, neat plan with the maximum number of single tables possible.

So, we have a nice, neat plan of the room with neat blocks of single tables.  Booking starts and then the fun begins.  Of course, only about half of the bookings want a single trestle table!  We get bookings for doubles, L shapes, tables with couches, tents or just space for an exhibitors own stand.  Next are requests for space behind the table for boards, banners or extra tables, or to get wheelchairs, pushchairs or scooters in.
Then we have the ‘extras’.  All our terms and conditions and every bit of booking related paperwork states that the booking is for a single table (or double etc).  In reality however, exhibitors bring extra tables to deepen the stand, small tables to add on the side, racks, rails, shelves and all manner of extra bits that they wish to squeeze in.  In most cases we do our best to accommodate these and where we know about them, to work them into the plan from the outset, but the 2’6” gap between stands gets more and more compromised until it is not unusual for someone arriving towards the end of set up time, to be unable to fit in at all!
The next challenge is stand content.  We limit the overall number of any type of stand, but hours go into making sure readers, jewellery and crystal stands are spread around the hall and not on top of each other.  We do our best not to have readers side by side or directly opposite each other.  If possible, not back to back either – although that can be hard to achieve on smaller shows.  Likewise, jewellery will be as spaced out as it can be and any other stands that do similar things.
We then take into account personal preference – back to a wall, near the loos, not near the loos, near the café, not near the café, near the entrance, not near the entrance – in a darker part, in a lighter part – not near readers, not near therapists, not near noise, not near music – even not near a particular exhibitor or list of exhibitors!
Things are taken into account like leaving sufficient depth for back boards – they do not do well on corners of central blocks as they impinge on the stand at the end – readers will want chairs in front – does the gangway allow for that in that position?
Eventually after draft 14 or 15, we have a floor plan!
Then, someone cancels!
We usually manage to re-let the stand, but more often than not, it may not be for the same thing or it will not fit the space.  Maybe the new exhibitor has a couch but the original one didn’t, so the replacement won’t fit where the first one was.  We start to swap spaces.  This has a ‘domino’ effect.  You move one, then the one next door can’t stay there, so you move that one and again, the one opposite now has to move.  By now we can be up to draft 20 or more. We have learned over time not to print the actual floor plans for our stewards out until the day before we set off, just in case of last minute changes
We used to print the plan in the show guide with a key.  This was in the ‘good old days’ when we received very few cancellations.  As the recession hit and cancellations and changes to stand size increased, we had to stop this as it caused more havoc than help!  The guide goes to print about three or more months ahead of a show.  The amount of changes that can occur in that time meant the plan could end up having no resemblance to the eventual lay out of the event.  We still get visitors asking for that, but it is simply no longer possible.
So, we arrive at the show, we adjust the tables that the venue has set out, to take account of the latest draft of the plan.  We juggle them about to get the right amount of space between, or as best we can, we put out the table names, the information sheets, the feedback cards and any other bits and pieces and then we are ready.
Exhibitors start arriving and before long, someone either won’t fit the space as they have something we didn’t know about or have forgotten about, or simply don’t want to be where we have put them and want to move.  They feel cramped, don’t like the way the neighbouring stand is set up, don’t like the energies in that spot, want to be facing the door – all manner of things can mean an exhibitor doesn’t feel happy in the space allocated.
My instruction to the team is, that within reason, we do what we can to make everyone happy!  My theory is if an exhibitor starts the show on a bad note, they are less likely to give off a positive, upbeat energy and so perhaps won’t have a good weekend.   If we can do our best to accommodate what they are asking for, they will be much better placed to take advantage of the weekend.  So, we adjust tables, move bits and pieces, move whole stands and generally try to be accommodating.
Sometimes though, someone can just be too unreasonable in their expectations, or more likely, arrive too late and so we are limited for options as much of the space is already set up.  Then, reluctantly we have to say no.  On occasion, by the time a show is set up, the draft of the plan that we are using (which by now can be number 28 or above) may bear very little resemblance to the finished show!
I must admit, there are times when I think those promoters who have a ‘this is it, take it or leave it – if you didn’t book it and didn’t pay for it, forget it’ approach, might actually have something!  There was one famous occasion when we had moved about 12 stands and ended up with two readers too close together and no more time or space to alter anything anymore, when I threw the plan up in the air and said, “Floorplan?  What bleep floorplan!”   The team fell about laughing, particularly as most of them had never heard me swear, and it stuck!  It is now the phrase often used if we get several changes on set up day and especially if it happens on the Saturday morning set up.
After all, “………….how hard can it be?  You stick some tables in a hall…………..”

Next instalment:  Advertising

The Life and Times of an Event Promoter - More Things That Have Gone Wrong

The Life & Times of an Event Promoter – a light hearted look at a promoter’s musings:

More Things That Have Gone Wrong – a trip down the memory lane of my biggest nightmares and some of the things that have provided the steepest and sharpest learning curves!

Following on from last month’s instalment, here is a chronicle of more of the mini-disasters that have befallen us in the run up to shows over the 14 years of show promotion.

As I said last month, retrospectively, these things become funny, particularly when you remember how you were running around trying to sort it out, but at the time, the stress levels are off the scale.

Hopefully we manage to keep a calm, unruffled surface so that neither visitors nor exhibitors have any idea of the panic going on behind the scenes.

Here are a few more of the memorable ones from the ‘casebook’ ………………………….





‘THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE MISSING MONK’ –

In 2010, we were approached by a lady who was organising the Western area of a UK tour for Lama Ahbay Tulku Jigme Thupten Rinpoche, a high ranking Tibetan monk.  He was on a fund raising tour for his monastery and she wondered if he could attend the Manchester show and give blessings for a donation.


We were most pleased and excited to have him, but as the Monastery rooms do not seat large numbers, suggested we sold tickets for consecutive sessions throughout the day for a ‘donation’ of £5.  This would prevent a scramble for places and make the whole thing run smoothly, or so we thought.  Ha!  As my old grandmother used to say, “You know what thought did!” Five sessions a day in a room holding 35 people for two days – 350 tickets available and by the last week before the show, not a one left!  We even had a reserve list of names to take any cancellations.


The Thursday afternoon and evening before the Manchester show is spent packing up the ticketing system, loading the van, packing our own personal things for staying away and generally running through everything to make sure nothing vital has been forgotten.  We normally finish all of this by 10 p.m. and then are up at the crack of dawn to travel to Manchester.


At about 4 p.m. on this particular Thursday, just as I was signing everything off and closing down computers etc ready to start this mammoth task, in drops an e-mail from our visiting monk to say there were problems with his visa and he didn’t think he would make it to the UK until the following Tuesday!  This is the sort of e-mail that you read but the brain cannot comprehend what it is saying – so you read it again and realisation begins to dawn.  You have 300 people who have paid for tickets to see a monk who is not going to arrive!  Some are travelling from as far away as Scotland, Somerset and in one case, Europe, especially to see him!  Errr…………………  brain freeze!


Instead of packing and all the other things we were supposed to be doing, Chris and I spent the whole evening phoning everyone on the list, explaining the situation and getting their details to refund their card with the £5.  One of us phoned, one processed refunds – then we would change over and the other one phone etc.  We phoned the last one at 9.30 p.m. and with the exception of about 15, had managed to contact everyone.  We e-mailed those and another half-dozen got back to us, so we had 10 who may arrive not knowing the monk was a ‘no show’.  Not good, but better than we could have hoped.


We then had to start all of the jobs we should have been doing and eventually hit bed at 3 a.m. to get up again at 6 a.m.


Imagine my shock then, when on Saturday afternoon, in walks said monk who after much cajoling of authorities had managed to sort the problems with his visa and get to Manchester.  He wanted to continue with his sessions on Sunday.


There followed one of these surreal conversations through his interpreters while I tried to explain that we couldn’t contact the people that had previously booked and now been refunded, while he wanted us to try – all in the middle of a very busy Manchester Saturday.  Oh boy!  In the end we settled for a few large posters on the two entrance desks and let fate take care of it and his helpers collect cash payments.  He was full all day so it worked – in a fashion!


I recall a lady who stood in front of me at a show and uttered the now immortal phrase:  “I am going to do one of these – well, how hard can it be?  You stick some tables in a hall, charge people to have a table and charge us to come through the door!  How hard can that be – it’s a win-win situation.”  Ha!




‘THE MYSTERY OF THE MARKET LICENCE’ –

I suppose given the size of the Manchester show, the sheer numbers of visitors and the complexities of fitting all those talks into the small rooms in the Monastery, fitting stands in and around pillars and trying to pull the whole thing together, it is bound to throw up more issues than any other show – stands to reason really.

There have been a couple however, that like the missing monk, were totally unexpected and threw us a real curve ball!

The next of began two weeks before our October show one year.  Our advertising hit the Manchester Evening News and one diligent and slightly officious member of staff in the Manchester Markets Department spotted it.  She rang up and asked a few probing questions and then announced, “So in effect, you are running a market”.  I agreed, as this is indeed what we are running –with some additions and trimmings its true, but a market nevertheless.

“You need a licence” was her next one-liner.  I was ready for this – “the Monastery informs me they have checked with the council and hold all necessary licences” I said – ha, that burst your officious bubble thinks me!  She went off to check and came back to announce that in fact, they did not hold a market licence.  Apparently Manchester is one of few cities that hold some particular ancient charter and the granting of licences is a different procedure which can take up to six weeks as a minimum.  By now the rest of what she said was lost in a blurr as the panic and brain freeze kicked in!

We weren’t licenced – the Monastery had let this slip the net – we had two weeks to the show – 8,000+ brochures were in circulation - £3,000 of newspaper advertising was paid for – people were booking hotels, travelling from Europe and the length of the Uk – and they were not going to let me run the show!  Aghhh………………..

A phone call to Elaine Griffiths MBE, the CEO of the Monastery was in order.  I explained the problem – she assured me they were licenced for absolutely everything and not to worry, but she would check it all.  Thirty minutes later she was back – apparently they were not licenced for markets.  She was mortified – completely unable to find out why not, but rather than waste her time on ‘why not’, wanted to get to grips with sorting it.  I mentioned the officious lady and passed over her name “… but she said it will take six weeks” I said “Do I worry now?”

To this day I have the greatest admiration for the determination and strength of Elaine Griffiths!  “I don’t need her name” she said, “I start at the top!”  That is exactly what she did.  I understand she rang the Chairman of the Council (or the CEO or whatever it is on a council), reminded him what a good friend the Monastery is to the Council and got him to sort it!  She made it clear that, to coin a phrase, the show must go on and that she wanted him to pull whatever strings were necessary to ensure it did.

Not sure what he did but I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the phone call between him and the officious lady took place.  The result was our licence arrived in three days and the show was saved.

I was then presented with a bill by the Monastery for the licence fee, but couldn’t really complain.  Apparently we are their only event that requires one – when they have a handful of stalls at concert or when some speaker visits, it is not enough to require licencing.  As such, as they only need it for us, we have to pay for it every year.  It costs a further £700 a year for the two shows – sigh…!

All of this taking place, and most exhibitors and public blissfully unaware.  Easy this job – stick some tables in a hall…………………………………  ha!

~~~~~~~~~~~~



‘THE CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUSLY SHRINKING HALL’-

We had one attempt at a show in Stoke on Trent, using a sports hall, but one that seemed familiar with running non-sporting events.  Sports halls are notoriously difficult to run shows in – unless you are wearing shorts or lycra and carrying a bat or racquet of some description, they don’t seem to want to know.

When you come to book the show, you speak to a ‘marketing’ or ‘sales’ person, who is eager to get the booking.  He/she promises all sorts of things, yes we can do that, no problem, of course you can have this …………..  and so on.

This is all well and good, until one gets to the weekend of the show and finds oneself dealing, not with this amazingly obliging person, but with the ‘duty manager’ for the weekend.  In many cases this poor soul is well hacked off at having a non-sporting event in his wonderful sports hall to start with.  To add to that, not only does he/she have an event to contend with, but one full of strange things and equally strange people!

Words like energy, atmosphere and ambience clearly have no place in his vocabulary and with a deep sigh, one just knows this is going to be somewhat challenging!

All our sports halls have had similar problems over the years, one reason we have given up on them, but the best of the lot had to be this one we tried at Stoke on Trent.

We had previously viewed a few times of course, and submitted a wonderful floorplan for setting up on the Friday ready for our arrival. We arrive at 10 a.m. on a Friday, make the necessary tweaks to the lay up, put out table names and other newsletters, envelopes etc, and then exhibitors are allowed in from 2 p.m. to start setting up. No one had made any mention of problems, so it was quite a surprise on arrival at 10 a.m. to find a big green curtain drawn, effectively cutting the hall in half.  Not only that, but they had meticulously laid up half the floorplan, even to the point of a double stand having one table in place actually butting up to the curtain, without the other on the opposite side!  It actually looked quite comical, but also rang LOUD alarm bells.

Having tracked down the duty manager and politely enquired about the reason for this, I was informed they had badminton till 9 p.m. and weren’t prepared to cancel it.  The conversation that ensued became a little less polite as it progressed, but the end result was that they simply were not going to budge.  Brain Freeze!

Not for long this time though as it was clearly pointless wasting any more time, so the energies had to be transferred from arguing our corner into resolving the problem.

I decided to separate the exhibitor list into ‘those we knew would definitely arrive that day’, ‘those we knew would definitely not arrive that day’ and ‘those who might arrive’.  A quick look at the floorplan confirmed that ‘sod’s law’ was definitely alive and well and in full swing – the majority of the stands that we knew would definitely arrive and those that might arrive, were in the half we couldn’t use till after 9 p.m.  Wonderful!

I spent the next half hour re-jigging a floorplan that had been carefully pored over for hours previously and managed to fit everyone into the operational half without leaving all the readers who normally are the ones to arrive on Saturday, next door to each other in the other half!

We then had to stay onsite until after 9 p.m. to set up the other half ourselves, ready for the Saturday morning.  No dinner again that night.



 ‘THE ADVENTURE OF THE KITCHEN THAT NEVER WAS’

There are too many of these incidents to relate without getting boring, but a fitting one to end on, was perhaps the one that gave me the biggest episode of brain freeze of any I have encountered.

The Monastery is our biggest show and the most difficult in terms of planning and organisation.  Anything up to 70 workshops and talks spread over two days and 7 rooms, with up to 75 tickets available per session, takes quite a lot of preparation and organisation.

A careful site visit per show takes place, just to make sure there are no changes before we start planning the schedule.  Well, it certainly does now!

There was a show a couple of years ago, where I made the mistake of assuming that as everything had run well for a few times and as the earlier one in the year went well, it would be enough for the October show to exchange a few e-mails with my event contact and go ahead as before.

Imagine the scene when during set up on the Friday of the show, one of my stewards came to find me with ‘a bit of a problem’ in one of the rooms.  “A bit of a problem”?  That had to be the understatement of the year!!!  The room had been booked out for 7 sessions per day for two days, with 65 seats per session, most of which were fully booked.  It now held a bright, shiny new kitchen!  Cupboards, appliances, the full works.

We were at the Monastery, we had no way of contacting all of the visitors even if we had the time.  Too lose 910 seats during a weekend would cause chaos and one of the speakers in that room was flying in especially!  Brain Freeze!  This time, the thaw took some time to set in and I must admit, it was one of the stewards who actually said, ‘isn’t there anywhere else to use’?  That started the cogs whirring, every space that could be used was in use, but after some thought, I hit on the room used by the NFSH at this show (National Federation of Spiritual Healers, now called The Healing Trust).  I hated to do it, but needs must.  I liberated the room from the NFSH and used it for the workshops, installing the poor, long suffering NFSH onto the first floor landing, near to the lift!

This is where they spent the next few shows until fortunately some more changes enabled us to give them a room again this year.  We do thank them for being so obliging in our hour of crisis.  It certainly saved the day on that occasion!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there we are folks, just some of the things that can go wrong when you think every ‘I’ is dotted and every ‘T‘ crossed.  Life has a way of keeping us on our toes and preventing us from becoming complacent it seems.

When I recall these incidents, which with the distance of time have now become amusing, I still think of that lady uttered the immortal phrase:  “I am going to do one of these – well, how hard can it be?  You stick some tables in a hall, charge people to have a table and charge us to come through the door!  How hard can that be – it’s a win-win situation.”

I often wonder if she tried, and if so, what she thinks now!





In the next instalment –   The origins of the phrase ‘Floor plan?  What Floor Plan!’ (Occasionally and only in times of greatest stress ‘Floor plan?  What ‘bleep’ Floor Plan!’)

The Life and Times of an Event Promoter - Things That Have Gone Wrong!

Things That Have Gone Wrong – a trip down the memory lane of my biggest nightmares and some of the things that have provided the steepest and sharpest learning curves!

I think one of the primary necessities for being an event promoter is a sense of humour.  You simply have to be able to see the funny side of things, even if this is retrospectively.  Over the 14 years of show promotion, we have had many crisis points and unexpected happenings to deal with.

We usually manage to keep a calm, unruffled surface so that neither visitors nor exhibitors have any idea of the panic going on behind the scenes.  However, there has been more than one occasion where I have been searching for the nearest rafter to hang myself from!

Here are just some of the more memorable ones from the ‘casebook’ ………………………….

‘THE CASE OF THE SHRINKING TABLE STOCK’ –

On my very first show I learned a very important lesson – be specific or check for yourself!  My first attempt as a promoter, was a one day show in a hotel in the market town of Sleaford, Lincolnshire.  An acquaintance of my then partner wanted to help and be involved and as I was living on-board a boat in Scotland at the time and as she lived in Sleaford, she acted as go-between with the hotel.  One of the things I asked her to check out, was the number of tables the hotel had to offer as I needed thirty-eight and wanted to be sure they had enough.  Sure enough, she popped down and counted them for me, later announcing that there was no problem, they had forty.

We had been granted access at 8 p.m. on the evening before the show, following a conference during the day, so we eagerly arrived to lay up the room.  It was at this point we discovered the forty tables were actually forty 3’ square tables, not forty 6’ trestles as I required. My forty tables had in a matter of seconds become twenty as two would be required for each stand!

That was my first experience of what I now call ‘brain-freeze’.  You know you need to do something to prevent impending disaster, you need to start planning, you need action, but the brain simply freezes up and can’t see beyond the problem staring you in the face!  It was my son Phill bless him, who melted the freeze this time – ‘Dad stores the rabbit club tables at his place – should I see if we can borrow them?’  That was all it took – just something to tip the brain out of freeze and into action.

We duly borrowed the rabbit club tables which were 8’ trestles, my son’s dining table, various coffee tables and occasional tables and anything else we could lay hands on.  That was the first outing of the now established phrase ‘Floor plan, what floor plan?’ as my carefully, hand-drawn as it was back then, plan disintegrated.  8’ tables took up the carefully measured 2’ 6” gaps between the tables, the odd shapes jutted out in all the wrong places – oh boy!

Exhibitors arrived on the morrow after a very sleepless night and ‘What a shambles!’, ‘This will never work!’ and other such comments were rife as you might imagine.  We fielded the moans and complaints to the best of our ability, making changes as we went and eventually fitted everyone in, in a fashion anyway, and opened the doors.

In the public flooded!  On that first day we had just short of 700 people through this small hotel with odd shaped tables!  It was wall to wall people – all the readers were doing back to back readings, the talks rooms were full with people standing and sitting on the floors to get in and traders couldn’t wrap goods fast enough!

From ‘This will never work!’ in the morning, we graduated to ‘When’s the next one’ by the end of the day, and learned my first two important lessons in the process -

Lesson one – be specific – don’t say tables, say 6’ trestle tables!

Lesson two – double check arrangements, dot I’s and cross t’s.



‘THE MYSTERY OF THE FLOATING CARPET’ -

In the early days of the Lincoln show, we used what will always be to us, ‘the cow shed’, now more grandly called ‘the exhibition hall’.  Actually, I think that is what it was called back then – just not by us J

We arrived at the point after a few shows, where we thought it would be good to incorporate music.  For this, we hired our first marquee to be erected on the hard standing at the front of the building, using one of the fire exits for entry from the show.  I discussed the drilling of the hard standing with the venue, they advised what they required as repair following removal………….  all was going swimmingly!  Swimming was nearly what we were doing!  We had discussed carpeting the marquee to give a better ambience.  We even got to choose the colour – a nice, deep blue I remember.  I assumed that as we were having carpet, the marquee company would automatically realise we wanted a false floor laying…………….  Not so!  We didn’t even notice on set up day that the carpet had actually been laid direct onto the concrete hard standing area, rather than onto a built in raised floor.  They had laid the ramp between the marquee and the hall, carpeted it and – it all looked wonderful.

Overnight we had torrential rain, so when we arrived on the Saturday and were going about the early morning jobs,   I asked one of our helpers to go and open up the marquee and check the roof hadn’t leaked.  She came back ashen faced – the roof was not the problem, the rain had washed down a nearby slope and flooded in under the marquee.  This was when we discovered the missing floor, quite simply because the carpet was actually floating on a large puddle – well, more like a mini-lake!

Brain freeze! Fortunately not for long this time.  Living on a boat meant pumping and sucking up water was something with which I was not unfamiliar!  We need a commercial strength wet vac I announced!  They all looked at me with blank expressions – 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning in Lincoln showground – where were we to get such an item?

These were the days of what was termed ‘bare bones hire’.  They gave you a key to the facility and left you to it!  No event’s manager, no site staff – we were on our own.  We located an out of date yellow pages in the office of the ‘cow shed’, sorry, exhibition hall, and set to work phoning around the tool hire companies.  Most didn’t open till 8 a.m., which did nothing for the nerves.  My butterflies had somehow acquired hobnail boots and were dancing a jig somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

We eventually located one and someone was dispatched to fetch it.  Forty-five minutes later we were taking turns to vac as much water and squelch out of the carpet as we could before opening at 10 a.m.  We got rid of most of it, but the music had the additional accompaniment of ‘squelch’ to go with it for the rest of that day.

Lesson three – never assume anyone from whom you are acquiring equipment or services knows what you want or what you mean, or will even use common sense.



‘THE ROADSIDE SIGN ADVENTURE’ –

In the early days of building shows, one of the most effective forms of getting people through the door, was our signs campaign.  We used to have anywhere up to fifty boards made, depending on show, and place them on grass verges, telegraph poles, lamp posts, fences and anywhere where traffic might slow down long enough to read them.  In some cases we even had larger banners made that could be staked into the verge if there was space.

Without a doubt, this is what built up the attendance in the early days as visitor after visitor would tick ‘Roadside Sign’ as the reason that brought them to the show on our marketing survey.

It was a real blow therefore, when in around 2005/6 local authorities started enforcing Fly Posting law and issuing fines to those who flouted it!  More on this in a later blog!

My first experience of this new drive to reduce fly-posting when it first became law was at Grimsby.  At that point I knew nothing about it.  I quickly learned after that day however!



At about noon on the Saturday, an officious little man appeared at reception asking for me.  He was a council official and his new job was to enforce the fly posting laws that had suddenly become fashionable.  He announced that he had counted twenty signs and could fine us up to £350 per sign.  My mouth dropped open so much, it is a wonder my chin didn’t hit the desk!  He was going to give us an hour to get them removed …………  in the middle of a busy Saturday show!



Brain-freeze!  Not for long though, this was seriously going to hit my pocket – one of the quickest and surest reasons to melt brain-freeze!  He was clearly the sort of chap that loved his work and would pursue it to the fullest extent, but aAfter some reasoning and sweet talk, I managed to melt him sufficiently to give us till 7 p.m. that evening – two hours to do it in after the show closed.  The butterflies were past jigging, they were now into a full samba!



I was in no doubt that Saturday night or not at 7pm he would be inspecting to see if we had complied!  Needless to say, the minute the venue was secured, we were all off in different directions to retrieve the signs!  We actually had forty-five out, something I saw no reason to inform him of – he had only spotted twenty, but which twenty?  We had no way of knowing, so down the lot had to come.  I have known more entertaining ways of spending a Saturday evening than stumbling through wet grass verges, in the dark and cold, trying to cut down signs with one hand and hold a torch with the other!  By the time we had finished, we were too late to get dinner anywhere, so it was a quick MacDonalds – ughh!  Maybe not entertaining, but certainly memorable!



In the next instalment – More Things That Have Gone Wrong!  Including, ‘The Strange Affair of the Delayed Monk’, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Market Licence’, ‘The case of the Mysteriously Shrinking Hall’ and ‘The Adventure of the Appearing Kitchen’!

The Life and Times of an Event Promoter - On Finding a Venue

Morning :)

Today we have the first of a series called The Life and Times of an Event Promoter.  A fantastic inside look into the world that Angie inhabits!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

People often ask me just what it is a promoter does.  I think they see me twiddling my thumbs in a show and think it is a push over of a job.  By the time I get to the middle of a show, my work is more or less done, apart from trouble shooting during the weekend and the pack down at the end. The hard work goes in before we ever get to the weekend of the show. 

Over the years, people have often said I should do articles about what goes into a show, so I have decided to do a series for our blog of ‘The Life & Times of an Event Promoter – a Promoter’s Musings’, giving some insight into how those wonderful stands miraculously appear in a hall and visitors miraculously walk through the doors :)

The best place to start is always at the very beginning, and the first task before any show can begin is to find a place to hold it, so here is my first article in the ‘Event Promoter’s Musings’, on finding a venue!

I always say that one of the hardest parts of my job is finding an actual venue that works for a show.  People often say to me, ‘why don’t you do a show in X or Y?’ The simple answer is, I can’t find anywhere suitable and affordable to hold one!

When we go on a venue hunt, I go armed with a list of twenty-two requirements.  Some of them are essential, others are preferred, but can sometimes be worked around. They include things you might not even consider on first thought.

First and foremost of course is space.  In the good old days before the recession hit, we always needed a minimum of 750 square metres, otherwise we would be turning away too many of our ‘regulars’!  Now however, anything over 600 square meters is worth a look, as we are considering slightly smaller shows due to falling exhibitor numbers.  Just as High Street shops have closed, so exhibitors have gone out of business too.

Next, having found the room, we need to look at practicalities such as:

• Is it lockable, alarmed, is there a security guard? 
• Does it have enough electrical outlets to supply every stand? 
• Is there somewhere to site the entry desk that controls the flow of visitors and can we easily restrict it to one entrance only?
• Is there a separate room in which to hold the talks that seats around 70 plus people?  If not, can a marquee be used effectively for this purpose? 
• Do we have exclusive use of the rooms during show?  I have memories of a University where although the management said we did, the students who used the atrium as access to other parts of the University, saw no reason why they couldn’t walk straight through the show!  Quite a difficult weekend ensued and of course, we did not return!
• Timings are important – council and university buildings cannot always accommodate our access timetable.  We need access from 10am to 7pm on the Friday preceding a show, from 7am to 6pm on the Saturday and from 8am to 8pm on the Sunday to allow for breakdown of the show.  So many times, we get this far and the excess hours on Friday and Sunday nights, or the early start on Saturday cannot be accommodated.
• Parking and food come next.  Is there onsite parking?  If not, is there good on-road and car park facilities nearby?  Can exhibitors park near enough for unloading and is the unloading point suitable for trollies? We prefer one large room on the ground floor of a building, but if it is split level, then is there a good, modern lift – is there a service lift or secondary means of access if the lift should break down? 
• Does the venue have facilities to run a café?  Do they have in-house catering which we are obliged to use or can we get our own?  These days, there are hardly any venues that allow us to bring in our own catering, as they want to make the extra revenue from this too.  Getting them to cater for a larger than usual number of vegetarians, special diets and stock copious amounts of bottled water can be a challenge in itself!
• After all of that, we get down to the bits and pieces, such as can we put up a large banner outside and for how long?  Some venues won’t allow it, some restrict the length of time it can be there and others charge for it!  At Chester for example, it has cost over £800 to have a banner up for one week! 

• Will they allow posters and flyers in their reception and a pull up banner?  You would be amazed at the amount who won’t. 
• Do they supply first aid provision or do we need St Johns? 
• Do they have trestle tables and chairs or do we need to hire them?  Both of these add to the quoted cost of course.
• Do they hold the necessary Markets Licence and entertainments licences?

Having managed to tick all these boxes, the crunch comes – can they do the dates we want and how much will it cost?    You would think this would be the first question, but most venues won’t quote or look at dates until they have gone through all your requirements.

Dates are a problem with hotels, as most don’t want to book shows in the summer because of weddings.  Some won’t take three-day bookings at any time of the year, preferring to get a wedding, party or formal dinner on the Friday and Saturday nights.  We need three days of course – one to set up the show and two for the show itself.

If we do get over all of this, it is then ‘cross-fingers’ time, as we wait for the quote.  Quotations of up to £12,000 per day are not usual with city centre venues that tick most of the boxes, and quotes of around £3,000 a day are common with the larger types of facilities.  Some can be negotiated to a reasonable figure, others will not budge and so fall at the final hurdle.  These days I try and push for a ‘ball park’ figure before going through everything, but venues are very reluctant to commit themselves until they have all your requirements.

When we really want to do a show in a particular area and cannot find something ideal, we do look at a compromise, as happened with our recent Nottingham show.  Most of the city centre venues were in the £7,000 to £12,000 a day bracket, hotels were not interested and so we found ourselves at Nottingham Forest FC.  It was an upstairs room, not our favourite, had two lifts one of which broke down and was a very difficult shape to work with, complete with fixed seating along one side and a ‘balcony’ type area which was overlooked by many visitors. Signage was restricted by the football club and catering was not what we usually look for, all of this came at a price of over £3,500 for the weekend but it did enable us to try out Nottingham.  As it turned out, with the show falling far short of expectations despite heavy investment in advertising, I was pleased I had not paid more!

So here we have it – the life and times of an event promoter, or at least, a very small part of it.  You can perhaps see why, when after all of this, exhibitors walk in and say ‘this is hard to find’, I don’t like the atmosphere, the lighting, the parking, the unloading, the position I am in or any one of a hundred other things, we sometimes sigh deeply to ourselves before summoning up the cheery smile and trying our best to make them feel comfortable and happy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next instalment – Things That Have Gone Wrong – a trip down the memory lane of my biggest nightmares and some of the things that have provided the steepest and sharpest learning curves!  Fortunately my sense of humour and sense of the ridiculous usually enables me to look back at them with a grin, even though at the time I was probably on a search for the nearest rafter to hang myself from! :)