Decibel Exclusive: early bird access to Super Bowl 50 Bucket List packages
DEALS & OFFERS
You know it and we know it: Super Bowl 50 is gonna be madness. Wall-to-wall, sold-out, jam-packed, tailgate-of-a-lifetime madness. And if you want an amazing ride on the pigskin boat, you ll need to book your experience early. Way early. We got our hands on a couple of lux, customizable package deals for Super Bowl fun, so if you or your clients have insane football party vacation anywhere on your bucket list, now is the time. Here s what you can get:
The Deluxe Package
- Deluxe hotel accommodations for three or four nights in Downtown San Francisco
- An Upper Level Super Bowl game ticket
- Express security entrance into Levi s stadium for the game
- Access to NFL official pre-game hospitality tailgate on-site at stadium: Official NFL hospitality venue adjacent to Levi s Stadium at the Santa Clara Convention Center (3 hours pre-game; premium menu, open premium bar, NFL player and cheerleader appearances, entertainment)
- Deluxe luxury motor coach transportation to and from the Super Bowl
- Your own dedicated event planner to assist with all of your pre-planning needs
- The entire event management team will be on-site to oversee your group
- All taxes, gratuities, and our service fees are included with all of our package prices
The Premium Package
Includes everything in the Deluxe package, plus:
- A premium deluxe gift bag of licensed Super Bowl 50 merchandise
- Full American breakfast each day
- Deluxe luxury motor coach transportation to and from the Super Bowl
- Welcome reception and chalk talk hosted by NFL personalities
Upgrade: More Access
We can upgrade your tickets, or get you and your team on the field for the post-game ceremony!
Upgrade: Michael Mina s
Exclusive in-stadium tailgate and hospitality at Michael Mina s will be the premier hospitality venue for Super Bowl 50. Located in the stadium this event will be attended by celebrity talent. Your group will enjoy a gourmet buffet, premium open bar, live entertainment, and NFL player and cheerleader appearances for 3 hours before the game and a 90 minute post-game party.
Add-on: Access to all the best parties
While supplies last, we can get you and your group tickets to all the hot Super Bowl 50 parties, including the celeb-packed ESPN NEXT Party, the Rolling Stone Super Bowl Party, the Playboy Party, the Maxim Super Bowl Party, DirectTV s Super Saturday Night, and Taste of the NFL.
Add-on: Celebrity Chefs & Private Dinners
- Host your own private celebrity chef dinner with our top chefs in San Francisco. Our vendor will create an amazing brunch, lunch or dinner with the culinary industry s top talent.
- Let us set up your own celebrity chef tailgate anywhere in the Bay Area before heading to the game.
- We can add in some of our CAA represented NFL players and Broadcasters to mingle and sign autographs for your guests.
Add-on: NFL Talent
Current and former NFL players, TV broadcasters, and other celebrities can personally appear at private dinners, golf events, and other corporate functions during Super Bowl week, including Marcellus Wiley, Damien Woody, Michelle Beadle, Rich Eisen, Tony Gonzalez, Lindsay Czarniak, Charles Davis, Adam Schefter, Jenn Brown, Brian Dawkins, Eric Davis, London Fletcher, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, Randy Moss, Chris Mortensen, Rachel Nichols, Wendi Nix, Antonio Pierce, Brady Quinn, Tom Rinaldi, Darren Rovell, Tim Tebow and Michael Wilbon.
Sweet, yeah? Give us a ring for details and pricing.
Famous quotes about war that are totally applicable to event planning
EVERYTHING ELSE
These quotes from military geniuses both fictional and real contain disturbingly prescient event production advice.
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Whether we re talking light shows and stage design, or hordes of undisciplined German tribesman performing flanking maneuvers against 20,000 seasoned legionnaires, surprise is part of the wow-factor. Bring a little extra game that no one saw coming.
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Man, this Tzu guy is full of good ideas. I think in this case, he s talking about setting the enemy s horses loose so you can pounce while everyone s in disarray or something, but I prefer to read this as being willing to use problems (even disastrous ones) as an opening to lock down your procedures and processes. Did something go wrong? After the immediate fire has been put out, use this chance to survey the key players to hunt down the source of the problem and mercilessly implement preventative procedures. Your future projects will be happier for it.
I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven t seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they re absolutely stupid.
Orson Scott Card, Ender s Game
Surround yourself with a team dedicated to staying scrappy, staying curious, and staying hands-on.
A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.
George S. Patton
Mostly your blood. Which you kinda need. Do your homework and groundwork.
Consider the Kiddos: Three Great Brand Activations for the Youth Market
BRAND ACTIVATIONS & MARKETING
Niche-focused marketing agency Refuel confirms what most of us already suspected: the kids of today consume differently than the kids of yesteryear.
They have money to spend and know exactly what to spend it on. In fact, with total spending at $88B, they have a lot more money than a generation before them. A Parenting Magazine poll found that 46{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of moms involve their children in brand decisions by age 9, and 78{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} do so by age 12. They are also digital natives (88{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of 12-15 year olds own a mobile device and 72{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} have made an online purchase) and consume an array of off-line media as well including TV, radio and print.
Here a few interesting activations that successfully targeted younger markets, undertaken by specialist youth marketing agencies.
Refuel: Dress up Booth
Refuel backs up all those cleverly engaged New York audiences, focusing on 6-12-year-old girls, to promote Spin Master s La Dee Da Dolls. A dress-up station provided fun costumes for girls while a photo booth allowed girls to take pictures while dressed up in their costumes. Raffles were conducted each hour and staff members dressed as La Dee Da dolls engaged with attendees. More than 3,000 people attended the launch party, and the Times Square Toys R Us sold double the amount of dolls expected that day.
Fuse for Mountain Dew
Fuse is one of youth marketing s heaviest hitters, and their team is ultra-excellent at social media integration. Our favorite example? Mountain Dew wanted to capitalize on the success of their largest event series, the Dew Tour, by creating a one-of-a-kind consumer engagement experience. For the 2014 Dew Tour Beach Championships in Ocean City, MD, the Mountain Dew Experience featured four on-site content activations: the DEW Social Store, Instaprint, Instaprint Mosaic and Selfie Selects stations. The Instaprint station aggregated photos posted with #DOTHEDEW on Instagram and printed the images as stickers for fans to take home. The Instaprint Mosaic was then populated with these photos throughout the event creating a large branded image with all user-generated content.
Archival for Redbull
In partnership with Redbull, Archival sent young travelers on a challenging journey with no currency but their own wits and cans of Redbull to trade for food and assitance. The results? The teams traded over 16 thousand cans of Red Bull, uploaded nearly 8000 photos and 2000 videos, and collectively traveled a over 220 thousand kilometers enough to travel the earth 5 times over! The whole world was watching. During the week, the website generated 1.1 million visits, 2.9 million page views, over 448 thousand likes and shares of website content on Facebook and countless media stories.
Think Like an Interior Designer: Five Tips to Make Small Event Space Look Bigger
EVENT DESIGN
Not everyone can afford the event space of their dreams, but with a few simple tricks based in the science of depth and size perception, you can make the most of an undersized room.
Hide the corners
Corners define the boundaries of our space. Place (simple) displays in the corners to trick the eye into glossing past these.
Use Colors to Push and Pull
Use color to deal with an irregularly-shaped space. You ve probably heard that lighter colors make a space look bigger, while darker colors make a space look smaller. It s also true that warmer colors look farther away, while cooler colors draw a plane close to the eye. As David Kent Ballast says in the Interior Design Reference Manual:
These principles can be used to modify the spatial quality of a room. For example, a long, narrow room can be widened by painting the end walls with a bright, warm color and by painting the side walls with a lighter, cooler color.
Less stuff, but bigger stuff
You d think small design accents would make an event space seem large in contrast, but they actually just create clutter. The best thing to do if you don t have a ton of room is to choose a few well-placed larger design elements and furniture. For example, go with six larger tables instead of ten smaller ones, minimizing centerpieces, or a single, striking accent display rather than several.
Draw the eyes upward
Heighten low-ceiling ed rooms by painting or decorating the ceiling with lighter colors or patterns (ever consider wall-papering up there?).
Spread the light around
A single light source in a room creates a single centralizing point, almost like a spotlight, which can make a small space feel even smaller as parts of the room fall into semi-shadow. Instead, use several sources of light spread around the space to pull the center of the room out to its own edges.
Noteworthy stats from 2015 s biggest event marketing study
EVERYTHING ELSE
We re just now getting around to giving the Event Marketing Institute s latest EventTrack study a look-see (shame on us this thing dropped in May), and
For those of you who aren t familiar with EventTrack:
The Event Marketing Institute and experiential marketing agency Mosaic released the fourth-annual EventTrack, the largest research on event marketing ever fielded. This groundbreaking annual study monitors the continual growth and expansion of the event and experiential marketing industry. Unique to EventTrack is its dual-channel format. Two research studies are created and fielded, one to brands across the Fortune 1000 and the other to thousands
of consumers. The result is an incredible pool of data that connects what experiential marketers are doing and why with how consumers react and buy.
Here s what caught our eye:
Good news: the industry is growing
A significant 79{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of the brand respondents say they will execute more event and experiential programs this year compared to last year. There s also this: Companies and brands are increasing their event and experiential marketing budgets by a healthy 6.1{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} in 2015. This is up from an increase of 5.4{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} found in the 2014 EventTrack study.
Event planners really, really need to facilitate social media
It s no surprise that 85{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of brands that they measure event success in total attendance and 58{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} said they measure that success in leads, a whopping 61{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of brands said that event success is measured in Facebook likes and social media posts. That means that regardless of whether or not more social media activity means more sales (we think it does, but hey), clients perceive it that way. The more your attendees post, the happier clients will be.
Young men are more likely to buy during an event
Sixty-five percent of consumers purchase the product or service promoted at the event or visit. This finding is up significantly from the 54{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} found in the 2014 survey. Males are more likely to buy at events and experiences than women, according to the cross-tabulated survey findings. The age range most likely to buy on-site are those between the ages of 25 and 35.
Free samples are king
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, people like free stuff; in fact, 81{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of consumers said that giveaways are the primary motivator for event participation. But 78{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of also said that trying a product increases their liklihood of buying it. Combine those two statements, and we feel this confirms that freebies are still a powerful tool for driving sales at events.
Thanks EMI and Mosaic, we look forward to next year s write-up.
Event Logistics, Freight and Shipping: Questions to Ask When Choosing a Provider
EVENT INDUSTRY, TIPS & TRICKS
Organizing a large-scale event often means ensuring that bulk amounts of oversize items arrive on location, right on time. Considering that precision is so vital to a successful event, it follows that contracting a sloppy logistics company can quickly turn into a nightmare. Here are a few vital questions you should ask before you sign that contract:
Can I speak to some of your clients?
This one s a no-brainer: reputable logistics companies should have dozens of clients with solid recommendations who are willing to vouch for the company s timeliness and follow-through. Naturally, no one s going to give you names of unhappy customers, so it also makes sense to Google around and check reviews online to make sure there haven t been any major complaints. If you do find bad reviews, don t be shy about having a what happened there? discussion with the company reps.
What technologies are you using?
Tech-forward companies are forward-thinking companies, and logistics providers that have the foresight and care to employ the latest tracking and communications tech are more likely to have a better handle on where your stuff is at any given time. It s a good idea to ask when their back-of-the-house system was built, installed or updated. If the answer is more than five years ago , that should raise some eyebrows. You might also consider asking if they have an in-house IT guy or tech team, and whether or not they have a client-facing tracking portal, as a good provider will be able to keep you informed and relaxed with a system capable of providing to-the-minute updates on the location and condition of your stuff.
Have you shipped to our destination country before?
Did you know you re not allowed to import mineral water to Nigeria? That you can t bring electric fishing equipment into Lithuania without permits? Just because a provider has handled overseas shipping doesn t mean they ve got a handle on shipping to your specific destination. Every country has its own import laws, required documentation and shipping quirks, and if you need to move supplies internationally, you don t want any surprises on the other end. Ideally, your logistics provider will have a history of moving items to the destination country, will know the ins and outs of the local customs bureau, what types of items that country is likely to flag as problematic for cultural or legal reasons, any typical wait times in terms of cargo clearances, taxes and fees, and other place-specific issues.
Where are you going to store my stuff?
At some point during a long trip, it s likely your gear is going to be placed in storage. Tent sailcloth can get awfully moldy sitting in a poorly-cared-for facility, rats can chew on electrical cables, and in some places, warehouse theft is rampant. Get storage policies in writing, and make sure your provider clarifies how much liability they hold if your items are damaged, stolen, lost, or destroyed while sitting in a temporary holding space. And speaking of which
How can I verify your insurance policy?
No one wants to imagine the worst, but it does occasionally happen. Better to ask in advance: Does insurance cover the gear during each leg of the transportation process, or only some? What will happen in case of embargo? What is the process for filing a claim, if one is required?
Check all those boxes, and that ll be one more load off your mind.
Private Beta Alert: Blokks Plans to Make Festival Timetables Pretty & Embeddable
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
A quick Thursday morning heads-up for event tech nerds: keep your eye on new micro-feature startup Blokks, which aims to tackle the event timetable.
As the event-tech market attacks ever more specialized problems, it was only a matter of time before someone turned their attention this famously pain-in-the-butt aspect of event website creation. Currently in private beta and featured on Betalist, Blokks aims to provide event planners with a drag-and-drop interface for creating multi-day, multi-feature time tables that can be embedded and shared anywhere. Here s the sneak-peek that got us excited:
Though the timetable is a necessary feature on event websites, organizers are still forced to rely on (best case scenario) specialized WordPress event themes and custom content management system plugins, or (worst case scenario) downloadable PDFs, to keep their online schedules tidy. In other words, the only real existing options are expensive or stone-age, so we can t wait to see the product that Blokks turns out.
Wanna be on the over to Blokks and sign up for their private beta to get exclusive early access (we did).
Event Tech Heads Up: New Eventbrite Features for WordPress
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
Ooh, new event tech. We recently got wind that Eventbrite has increased its compatibility and integration with both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites using WordPress.org, which is super exciting considering the number of event professionals that use Eventbrite as a ticket sales platform and need to deploy sites quickly.
A quick reminder for those of you who aren t super plugged in to the world of WordPressery: WordPress.com is the fully hosted version of WordPress, while WordPress.org is the self-hosted, get-your-hands-dirty, DIY version. Still don t get it? This chart illustrates the difference.
About the Eventbrite upgrades for WordPress.com:
Previously there were only a couple of themes that could be connected with Eventbrite, limiting what you were capable of doing with events on your site. That has all changed now! WordPress.com has just launched a new feature that lets you connect to Eventbrite using any theme you want. It s just as easy to connect your site to Eventbrite as it is to Facebook or Twitter by using Publicize.
This is huge news: it means WordPress.com users are not limited by themes that are created with events in mind. Now, event data can be placed inside of any WordPress.com theme. Three cheers there.
And for self-hosted sites using WordPress.org:
You can now choose from two WordPress.org themes specifically created for Eventbrite: the Eventbrite Venue theme to promote multiple events in a calendar view or the Eventbrite Event theme to promote a single event. There are two new plugins now available for Eventbrite too. Find out more information in their Plugin Directory here and here.
WordPress.org users are still a little bit restricted here in the sense that they must be sure to choose a theme that is known to be compatible with the Eventbrite API plugin if they want to be able to use all of the new features and functions. Here s the list of WordPress themes that are officially compatible:
- Twenty Fifteen
- Twenty Fourteen
- Twenty Thirteen
- Twenty Twelve
- Twenty Eleven
- Twenty Ten
- Bosco
- Chunk
- Coraline
- Edin
- Fictive
- Goran
- Ryu
- Sketch
- Sidekick
- Singl
- Superhero
- Sorbet
- Tonal
- Writr
Happy event tech-ing!
Six Killer Margarita Recipes for Cinco de Mayo Events
FOOD & CATERING
Man, come on science: get it together. You guys can t agree on anything. You don t know if red wine s good for me, you don t know where life comes from, and you ve got no idea who invented the margarita. Not that someone hasn t taken stabs at solving that mystery, though: the big brains over at the Smithsonian have narrowed it down to a few likely candidates:
One of the most prevalent stories is that Carlos Danny Herrera developed the drink at his Tijuana-area restaurant, Rancho La Gloria, around 1938. As the legend goes, Herrera dreamed up the cocktail for one of his customers, an aspiring actress named Marjorie King who was allergic to all hard alcohol other than tequila. To make the liquor more palatable to his fussy client, he combined the elements of a traditional tequila shot a lick of salt and a wedge of lime and turned them into a refreshing drink.
Another top contender for the inventor title is Margarita Sames, a wealthy Dallas socialite who claimed she whipped up the drink for friends at her Acapulco vacation home in 1948. Among her well-connected guests was Tommy Hilton, who eventually added the drink to the bar menu at his hotel chain.
Not that anyone at the party will care where they came from after knocking back a couple of these babies:
The Cuervo Margarita
No, it s not hand-squeezed and yes, it s branded as all get-out, but this is the alcoholic equivalent of the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, and it is sacrosanct.
Smoky Watermelon Jalapeno Margarita
Who doesn t like a margarita with a little nuance? A little kick? Here s a fantastic drink from the Bolder Locavore blog. The recipe calls for hickory smoked salt for rimming the glass and in the end I used alderwood smoked salt for the finer grind.
The Mojitarita
Besides being delicious, drink is way up there on the fun-to-say scale, right alongside words like ballyhoo and brouhaha .
Beer Margaritas
Oh, I m sorry did you need me to say something about this? Because I m not sure what there is to say. It s a margarita, but it also has beer in it. It is a heavenly gift, and you should have one. And then you should serve them to your guests.
Grilled Grapefruit Margarita
This recipe s been floating around the net for a while, but if you re a fan of hard citrus, this thing takes the gold. A word of warning: this drink has a strong personality and will not please everyone, so you re gonna serve this sucker, you should probably have at least a few alternatives on the menu.
Pomegranate Frozen Margarita
Serving to a crowd of well-heeled upper crust, are we? This is a classy twist on a typically rowdy cocktail. Frozen margaritas can be problematic to make on a larger scale, so do ensure you ll have the freezer space available, or better yet, a margarita machine on hand.
Crowd Dynamics: How to Prevent (and Survive) a Human Stampede or Crowd Crush
TIPS & TRICKS
Human stampedes are tragically common in certain parts of the world, namely India, where heavy population density and a high tolerance for crowded spaces create gnarly conditions that can easily turn deadly. But stampedes and crowd crushes are by no means limited to the Third World, as shown by last year s New Year s Eve stampede in Shanghai, and the Germany Love Parade disaster of 2010.
Crowd safety expert Paul Wertheimer takes care to differentiate between a stampede and a crowd crush , pointing out that stampedes are usually created when a crowd is started or fleeing a danger or perceived danger, while a crowd crush is created by the press of human bodies on a central point or points.
How do these things happen?
It seems difficult to imagine how exactly these things occur, but make no mistake: crowds are dangerous. If the crowd is big enough, it can exert enough pressure to bend steel. While every situation is different, this documentary outlines the official findings from the Love Parade crush, during which left 21 people dead and scores more injured.
Scary. So how do you, the event manager, make sure these situations don t happen? And what do you, the living, breathing human that wants to stay that way, get out alive if they do?
How to prevent a stampedes and crowd crushes at your events
When it comes to crowd control, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Crowd panic often rises slowly, and there are plenty of break points in which you can ensure that things don t get out of hand. Ensuring that exits are clearly marked, that attendees are aware of safety procedures, and that maximum space capacities are adhered to can help ensure a safe event.
Researcher Jens Kraus, crowd evacuation and control method researcher, has been developing some new science that suggests that placement and manner of security personnel is critical:
Krause s team analyzed the behavior of 200 volunteers in an arena with a diameter of 50 meters. The arena could only be evacuated safely and quickly if the security personnel were posted in the corners of the arena or in the middle of the crowd. Only the personnel, and not the members of the crowd, knew that the aim was to evacuate those in the venue to a safe place on the edge of the arena. Krause illustrated his findings through computer animations.
He also found that there is no need for security personnel to be dressed in an identifiable uniform. As long as those in the crowd are aware that there is someone who will lead them to safety, the theory works.
The experiment worked quickly from the very start: the security personnel moved very determinedly and firmly to the edge of the arena. Although there was no verbal communication, the other members of the crowd recognized the resolute behavioral characteristics of the personnel and followed them intuitively. Behavior alone is enough for the crowd to recognize if somebody has certain information, Krause concludes in the study, which he will publish shortly.
If you re caught in a human stampede
In a recent interview on Safebee, Mr. Wertheimer urges those caught in a crush to be sure to stay on their feet, adopting a boxer s stance to maintain balance and keeping hands up by your chest to protect your breathing space. He goes on to say:
Use the accordion technique to weave your way to safety. When a crush surge passes, a lull will likely follow, says Wertheimer. Crowd surges are like waves along the shore. They move back and forth. In between the tide, there is a moment of calm. That is when you make your moves. So, it won t be a straight line to safety and comfort. Your exit route will use the weave technique as you move in and around people in zig-zap style, likely in a diagonal direction to the periphery and freedom.
Further Reading
Check out these related articles for more interesting forays into crowd control: