Learn from the Olympics How to Organize your Events: Part 2 of 3
- Planning a Profitable Event
In the first part of this series, we looked at the logistics of
an event, both the logistics of fans getting to the event, and
the internal logistics allowing fans to move from one item of
interest to another. This time we will look at how to ensure
that our event is profitable.
The Olympics are a fun example of trying to put on the best show
that the world has ever seen and still turning a profit. Every
two years, usually about a month before the games, there will be
newspaper articles about how far over budget and behind schedule
the ticket sales the Olympic Games are. Fortunately, most of our
events are not judged by the same standards that the Olympics
are held to, but they do have evaluation criteria. One common
feature of all events is that they have both a budget and an
objective. The size of the budget and the scope of the
objectives differ drastically, but that does not make them any
more or less important to the person planning the event.
The 2002 Winter Olympics were a good example of working hard to
stay on budget. At the time of the Olympic Bid Scandal, the
Winter Games looked like they were destined to be far over the
prescribed budget. As they turned the corner, under the
leadership of Mitt Romney, one of the things that helped them
was to bring large silent sponsors in to the events. Most of the
large profile sponsorships for the Olympics are predetermined
(Delta, Visa, Coca-Cola, etc) leaving little room to go out and
recruit additional sponsors with the lure of advertising space
and publicity. They were still able to find organizations to
help foot the bill and keep the games within their budget.
Organizations like Marker, NuSkin, and the Eccles Foundation
donated money, products, and services to help the games. These
companies did not end up with Television commercial spots, but
Marker had a label on the uniform of every volunteer and NuSkin
distributed sunscreen and other toiletries to thousands of
people who attended the events. This created a tremendous amount
of goodwill for these organizations.
Staying within a budget is a problem that most people have.
There always seems to be more to do than resources with which to
do it. Like the Olympics, most of our events would benefit from
contributions from sponsors. This can be as simple as having a
local business pay to print your tickets in exchange for an
advertisement on the back of each ticket, or having local
restaurants donate pies for a pie eating contest. The more
creative you get, the more possibilities you will be able
identify to add an additional boost to your budget.
The Olympic Games have more objectives than most of us would be
able to keep straight. From fostering world peace to bolstering
the local economy, to creating an atmosphere conducive to the
athletes breaking as many world records as possible, everyone
has their own metric by which they judge the Olympics. In
general, the Olympics do a good job planning the locations of
the venues to benefit the athletes and the logos and displays to
benefit the visitors from the different nations in attendance.
They also are pretty consistent with helping the economy of the
local community.
Most of us are lucky in that we do not have as many objectives
behind our events. The majority of event planners, however,
never stop to consider all of the different objectives that
their event may have. It is usually a good idea to take some
time and think of all of the stake holders in the event. This
includes the organizations that are hosting the event, the
participants and performers, and attendees of the event. Once
you have listed everyone who is involved, try and think of why
they are involved. What is their motivation? As you start to
answer these questions you will develop a fairly complete list
of the objectives of your event. It is then a good idea to
prioritize them in such a way that you spend most of your time
meeting the objectives that will make the most difference to the
outcome of your event.
Taking the extra time to find sponsors to help you with your
budget and to identify the objectives of your event will help
make your event a success. You will be surprised at how easy it
can be to identify the little things that will make a difference
as you begin to plan your event.
Next: Managing your Event