When planning out a marketing campaign for our little enterprise we found ourselves falling back on the experiences we gained from managing No Limits Performance (a car enthusiasts club we previously blogged about). The leasons learnt in that role resulted in a skill set that allows us to pull together a large scale enthusiasts group with ease. So we have now planned and announced the first of those events. But how do we go about that? Read on and we shall give you some tips.
It goes without saying that you create any large scale car enthusiast event you need to create it as a charity event. The human soul is in majority of cases a good being and thus people from many different walks of life will almost always unite for a good cause.
Three weeks out from the event you announce said event. You can jump the gun too early on this. The timing of announcing the event is critical. The success of these events are based on the level of “hype” created. Hand in hand with hype is engagement. If you announce the event too late many people will have made other commitments and will not attend. If you announce too early the hype dies before the event happens. (a prime example of this is the Kony 2012 campaign, it was announced too early and by the time the day of action came around no one cared anymore).
No Limits taught us that three weeks is optimal. Next is the Hype. To keep the hype and engagement going for the next three weeks you need to keep some information about the day quiet and trickle feed it to your audience. Revealing everything on the day you announce the event, leaves you with nothing to keep people interested for the next few weeks. We found that revealing the identity of entertainment, photographers and even the celebrity type cars attending over the coming weeks ensures that the audience does not forget about the event. Even this blog is part of us trickle feeding engagement of an event.
Prepare for the day. Get all your details covered including things you think don’t matter. Bins, Police, ash trays the lot and have all of this sorted months before the event. Nothing will ever go one hundred percent to plan but if you’re prepared with the details you will have time and energy to focus on the issues that arise.
Get a team to help. Something about the human brain makes us want to belong to something.People will nearly always say yes when you ask them to help with these kind of events. Recruit reliable people to delegate the workload to.
Avoiding making it lame. This is easy but took us a while to get this right with the car club. To avoid a car event becoming lame don’t give it a fancy name. Keep it simple or don’t name it at all and people will give it an identity themselves. Make sure that before you publicly announce the event you have at least ten top notch cars who are definitely coming. High quality street cars attract others like them and your going to get both great cars and average cars. If you start with just average cars you will never get the high quality ones to participate.
Get everything in writing. We were burnt many times in the car club days a verbal agreement from the local council or a hire company for your marquee does not mean jack all. Get your confirmation for anything that comes from a third party in writing.
Clean up. If you ever plan to do a big event again those who you depend on for the real estate and hiring of equipment will not play the game if you leave the place a shambles. Car club days we took this for granted and struggled to find locations for these events because of the rubbish left behind.
How well do our tips work? In three weeks time we are hosting the first GDL Automotive car meet. We are using the very tips we just told you so in three weeks we will let you know.
Prepare for the day. Get all your details covered including things you think don’t matter. Bins, Police, ash trays the lot and have all of this sorted months before the event. Nothing will ever go one hundred percent to plan but if you’re prepared with the details you will have time and energy to focus on the issues that arise.
Get a team to help. Something about the human brain makes us want to belong to something.People will nearly always say yes when you ask them to help with these kind of events. Recruit reliable people to delegate the workload to.
Avoiding making it lame. This is easy but took us a while to get this right with the car club. To avoid a car event becoming lame don’t give it a fancy name. Keep it simple or don’t name it at all and people will give it an identity themselves. Make sure that before you publicly announce the event you have at least ten top notch cars who are definitely coming. High quality street cars attract others like them and your going to get both great cars and average cars. If you start with just average cars you will never get the high quality ones to participate.
Get everything in writing. We were burnt many times in the car club days a verbal agreement from the local council or a hire company for your marquee does not mean jack all. Get your confirmation for anything that comes from a third party in writing.
Clean up. If you ever plan to do a big event again those who you depend on for the real estate and hiring of equipment will not play the game if you leave the place a shambles. Car club days we took this for granted and struggled to find locations for these events because of the rubbish left behind.
How well do our tips work? In three weeks time we are hosting the first GDL Automotive car meet. We are using the very tips we just told you so in three weeks we will let you know.
