Close your eyes for a moment and pretend it's four years ago. You get a call to produce a big shindig—say, a party to celebrate a firm's launch as a public company. The boss wants to make a splash: rent out the town square, invite everyone from the president to the lowliest assistant, hang big banners of the corporate logo everywhere, hire top-name entertainment . . . the whole megillah. You get six months to plan and a six- figure budget.
Sound like a dream? It sure seems like one, compared to today. In the post-Osama, post-Enron world, partying like it's 1999—or even 2000—is out of the question. Companies are leery of anything too public, both for security reasons and appearance's sake. Budgets have been slashed in half and planners are lucky if they get four weeks' lead time. How do they manage to still pull that rabbit out of the hat? To find out, we spoke to savvy special-event professionals across the country. Read on for their tales of woes . . . and wows.
On Guard
Marie Schlump may live 90 miles from where the September 11 attacks occurred, but the Prospect, CT-based special-event planner nonetheless feels the sting of terrorism fears. Security "is a discussion for everything we do now, even weddings and bar mitzvahs," notes Schlump, president of Parties With Pizzazz. "Before, we didn't talk about it except for large-scale [corporate] events or ones involving celebrities."
Three thousand miles away, Los Angeles-based special-event producer Andrea Michaels seconds Schlump's emotion. "Security has become the single most important element of any event," declares the president of Extraordinary Events. Aspects of planning in this not-so-brave new world, she notes, include less use of parks and other public facilities, greater reliance on uniformed security guards (often hired from third-party suppliers) "so that outsiders know your group is protected," and extensive crisis-management planning: "You look at everything through new eyes."
In fact, it was to improve fellow planners' crisis-management skills that Schlump, as a member of the programs committee for her local chapter of the International Special Events Society (ISES), recently arranged for a detective from New York City's Terrorism Task Force to lead a seminar on event security. The class' setup was demanding, Schlump says; attendees had to sit still and listen to the speaker lecture for long periods of time. Even so, "It was very well attended," she adds.
But while keeping the possibility of a terrorist attack in the backs of their minds, special-event planners can still turn this doom-and-gloom mentality to their advantage. How do we know? We got some perspective from Patti Coons, president-elect of the national office of ISES (based in Chicago) and a special-event producer with 40 years' experience. The new emphasis on security, Coons believes, can become the planner's opportunity to prove her importance to the event's overall success. "I'm now asked to walk different areas of the venue with security and even to make suggestions about where to place guards," Coons notes. "As planners, we're being pulled into the fold more. We're working more as a team, and being part of that team is very helpful and exciting."
Knocking their Sox Off
Howard Givner, president of Paint the Town Red, a New York City event-planning firm, was recently recommended by his wife, a corporate attorney, for a special-event assignment at her company. "I had a really good meeting with the people at the firm, and I started working on the event," he recalls.
Until he suddenly got a call from the firm's legal department. "They said, 'We can't use you because your wife works here, and there's a whole protocol for contracting people.' " Now, Givner says, he must submit a request for proposal as well as prove that his pricing reflects fair market rates. "I'm fully confident we'll eventually get the assignment, but before Enron and WorldCom we would not have had to go through all this," he sighs.
Thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley legislation—introduced in the wake of the corporate scandals Givner alluded to—corporate firms feel added pressure to ensure an appearance of propriety, says Emee Pumarega, owner of EJP Events in Portland, OR. This affects the protocol of procurement; indeed, some special-event planners have been forced to turn down assignments because the lengthy vendor-approval process would have left too little time to effectively produce the events. But it also impacts the psychology of those who make it past the approval process, Pumarega says. "I find I almost have to hold back my enthusiasm," she observes. "Many companies don't want to be seen as throwing too lavish an event, so when you present your best ideas [to clients] you have to watch their reaction to see if you're going too far."
By asking a few key questions, Pumarega notes, planners can quickly assess just how "special" their client or boss wants the event to be. First of all, determine who the final decision-maker is so you don't waste time presenting ideas to someone who can't approve them. Secondly, find out the event's purpose and who will be attending. "Is the company making a big splash that they want the public or the media to know about?" asks Pumarega. "Or is the event intended as a private reward for certain key people?"
And with a little creativity—which is, after all, something special-event producers have in spades—planners can build a theme around the overall message the company wants to drive home. For instance, ISES' Coons recently threw a party in Orlando for 3,000 employees of two pharmaceutical companies that had merged. "The idea was 'taking charge of change,' " she recalls. "We had games set up, and when we blew a whistle, the rules of the games would change." For instance, attendees playing the card game Twenty-One would suddenly find themselves playing Thirty-One. Offers Coons, "This helped them understand that dealing with change is fine—that the merger wasn't going to harm them."
The End of Fun?
Security fears, bare-bones budgets, limited lead times—how do event planners get the job done? Simple, says David Adler, founder and CEO of event resource BiZBash, "They outsource to trusted vendors—people they know they can reach on weekends—or turnkey the event by using, say, a restaurant with décor and everything already in place." And if you think two weeks' lead time is tough, Adler's colleague, BiZBash president Richard Aaron, laughs: "Funeral directors"—who are increasingly called on to do elaborate, themed events as complicated as any corporate shebang—"only get two days."
Certainly, the pressure to produce ROI, even for special events, is keener, but that doesn't mean partying has gone out of style. Notes one special-event producer, "Companies are still celebrating good work, good employees, good quarterly results. They have to do that to keep people." Janet Elkins, president of EventWorks in Los Angeles and an event planner for 25 years, agrees. "One has to do whatever one does to enjoy life. Right or wrong, people are living their lives and finding happiness wherever they can."