Silver Anvil
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY
The Cookie CAREavan tour for DoubleTree by Hilton was awarded the Silver Anvil Award from PRSA! Congrats to the incredible team that worked on the project.
As anyone who has worked with us knows, we love producing events and mobile media tours here at Decibel, and it is great to work with such an outstanding team. Ketchum Public Relations, Digital Royalty, Gensler, OMD, and all of the partners made it a great tour. We were thrilled to be along for the ride!
The Cookie CAREavan tour won the Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), in the category of Marketing Consumer Services Travel/Tourism. The tour also won a PRSA Award of Excellence in the category of Events and Observances, 7 days or more (business services). This is the third Silver Anvil for David Sonntag as a producer and the first for Decibel Management.
Mashable s Innovative Mobile Media Marketing Campaigns
UNCATEGORIZED
As many of you know, we have been on the road and around the Nation this summer with the DoubleTree by Hilton Cookie CAREavan. While there has been amazing PR along the way, this article was a great treat! Our Mobile Media Road Tour made Mashable s top 5 Innovative Food Truck Social Media Marketing Campaigns. As a bonus we came in at the top spot. As with any tour, it takes a village. Congrats to DoubleTree by Hilton, Ketchum Public Relations and Digital Royalty for the great work! You can check out some awesome tour photos from the road in our gallery!
National Small Business Week
COMPANY NEWS
Decibel Management was selected as the event producer for the 2011 National Small Business Week meetings and events in Washington, DC.
They will be at the Mandarin Oriental from May 16 20, 2011. We will have updates as the work progresses and when we have registration up and running. This is a great conference for small businesses and I highly recommend attending.
Great Trade Show Booth Designs: Unique Visuals and Interesting Interactions
TRADE SHOW
An edgy and original trade show booth design helps to capture the eye, despite being situated among dozens of others all aiming to do the same. And of course, after you ve attracted attention, a unique interaction helps you keep it.
Here are 5 examples that stand out for their eye-catching visuals, great brand identity, and fun factor.
Malaysia
It s always a good idea to put your brand logo front and center. For Malaysia, that s the Petronas Towers. At the IMEX Frankfurt 2013 Travel Exhibition, the Malaysian tourism bureau backed up its great social media presence with a trade show booth that included hands-on arts and crafts and an opportunity to pretend to bargain with hawkers beneath a huge replica of the iconic towers.
Bitsy s Brainfood
Health food stores may be good for you but they aren t exactly kid-centric. Bitsy s Brainfood, an American chain that markets healthy snacks for kids hits its stride right away. Its color scheme, the toys, its choice of activities, the lettering will make kids pay attention while parents listen to the sales spiel.
NRG Energy
Large corporations often rest on their laurels, throw up humdrum booths with little thought of event management and rely on their brand name alone. NRG Energy s booth proves this is nonsense. This booth engages customers directly into the company s core mission, how to produce renewable energy. Plus the Human NRG wheel just looks like a ton of fun.
Inada Chairs
Inada knows how people often feel at conferences and trade shows: bored, tired, footsore or all three. By providing their chairs for the relaxation of executives, they hit their target audiences just as they re most in need of Inada s product. The booth design is nothing spectacular but it doesn t need to be, the product and goodwill interaction speaks for itself.
Newsweek
The epitome of brand recognition, this Newsweek booth is the cherry on the cake. At first glance, outside the neon 3D lettering, it may not look like much, but the casual observer will pick out some lovely touches. The red phone that harkens back to a more dangerous era, the selection of glossy magazine covers from across the decades, the so-uncool-it s-cool metallic chair all this perfectly encapsulates Newsweek s brand identity and even engenders a sense of nostalgic attachment to the brand.
National Small Business Week Conference and Meeting
BACKSTAGE, COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS
Just wrapped up the 2012 National Small Business Week Conference and Meetings in Washington, DC. This year s event featured a number of great sessions at the Mandarin Oriental, along with offsite events at the U.S. Department of State and the White House.
Along with these events, we also rolled out our touchscreen kiosks for the Microsoft Lounge. These were fully wrapped with graphics and networked for both internet as well as printing. Be on the lookout for these at future events, they were a huge hit both with the client as well as the attendees!
As with all of our events, it takes some great partners to produce an event of this caliber. Thanks to the teams at EventEQ, Legacy Scenic, Radium, the staff at the Mandarin, and countless other folks that all came together to build out the event.
Independence Day
UNCATEGORIZED
Thank you all those who have served and to their loved ones who shared them with us. We thank you for your sacrifice for our freedom. Our creative partner Blue Pony has created this video in their honor, and we are sharing it with you.
A Tribute To Our Troops By Blue Pony
Realistic CGI
EVENT INDUSTRY
We do our best to keep on top of current trends in the industry. CGI is one that is constantly making improvements, but always seems to stay a touch away from reality. Thanks to Alex Roman (of The Third and The Seventh Fame) for the video and to our friends at Gizmodo for sharing the example that breaks the barrier. The film below is completely composed using CGI. Amazing indeed.
FILM GOES HERE.
Holding Press Conferences: 5 Ways to Impress the Press
EVENT INDUSTRY, TIPS & TRICKS
Press conferences are a dime a dozen these days, and any client can put a banner up, call a couple of local rags and plug an event. But this is a critical moment of the event management process, when the people with the power to come into contact with your big plans, and yet even long-time pros overlook or fumble the details. Check out these tips from Decibel to create a press conference that helps the press help you:
Lose the attitude You ve been working hard and for the last few months, this event has become your whole world. But just because you care doesn t mean the press will you ll still have to sell your idea. Be humble, and let your genuine excitement about your upcoming event shine through.
Background matters Great. Another photo of five suits sitting at an IKEA table in front of a white wall, or worse yet, a wrinkled vinyl backdrop. You don t have to go all glitzy, but eye-catching visuals are more interesting to look at (and subsequently, to photograph), so they can do half your legwork for you before the press asks the first question.
Yawn! The Beijing 2008 Olympics Wushu (Martial Arts) announcement
Nice stage set-up by the Daily Mirror
Pick your pinch hitter The person behind your new product launch or initiative may not be the best person to present it. Better to brief an engaging speaker, expert, or insider (ideally someone with a touch of charisma and a sense of humor) on something they may not be familiar with than watch an executive send journalists to the land of nod.
Patience, patience The media doesn t owe you any favors, they will probe, they will pry, they will find the angle you don t want. Meet negativity with positivity and keep control of the discussion. This is especially true in political event management where controlling the story is paramount.
Make it easy early Sending out a press release too late, like a day before the event, is a nail in your coffin as it catches journalists off-guard. Get the key info out there several days in advance, follow up with phone calls to the main outlets and dangle the opportunity of exclusive access to get them on board. The press are busy people, so make sure the materials you provide include quotes, a high-res photo or two, and a bullet-pointed list of the key points for a quick and easy read.
Decibel Mobile Hotspot for Events, Trade Shows and Conferences
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
We just finished the build on a great new project for an upcoming tour. This is a mobile hotspot that is purpose built for events, trade shows, and conferences.
While we have historically and typically used in-house or dedicated wired connections for our events, this just was not an effective solution for the current deployment. Our current tour schedule is amazingly aggressive- we do not have time to advance the sites or drop a staffer early to work with wired connections and have them set and ready when we arrive. We needed a solution that can be set up within 5 minutes of arriving onsite, it needed to travel well, and the back end software needed to be solid.
In looking at all these parameters and what was on the market currently, we decided it was best to develop our own solution. It was shipped to meet the tour build today and we plan to do a thorough shakedown before launch and more testing during the first four preview events. Look for more updates to come!
National Mall Restoration Update
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY
I wanted to share a great piece on the restoration of the National Mall that appeared in todays USA Today. Click Here for the full article. This will absolutely impact events and work moving forward.
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol,
Murray Cook kicks the concrete-hard dirt
on the National Mall and shakes his head.
who has traveled the world building baseball
fields. If you can t grow grass here, it s sad.
He looks at the hundreds of chairs set up for
a college graduation and predicts that when
it rains, as forecast, the area would become
be a muddy mess. We can make this better,
and we will.
The upcoming makeover, including new
grass and monument repairs, is no minor
feat. The National Mall the site of
presidential inaugurations, Martin Luther
King Jr. s I Have a Dream speech and political
rallies is the country s most visited park.
Each year, it receives 30 million visitors,
more than Yellowstone, Yosemite and the
Grand Canyon combined, and holds at least
3,000 permitted events.
says Caroline Cunningham, president of the
Trust for the National Mall, a non-profit
group raising money for its restoration. She
says the soil is now so compacted, after
thousands of events and pickup softball
National Park Service can t just lay down sod
and hope it lasts.
Also, because the park service has lacked
funds, she says the front of the Jefferson
Memorial plaza built on pylons has
sunk 8 inches in the past two years, the Tidal
Basin s sidewalks are cracking, and the
Lincoln Memorial s Reflecting Pool leaks 50
million gallons of water annually. She says
the foul, non-circulating waterways caused
the deaths of about a dozen ducks last
summer at the foot of the U.S. Capitol.
The 684-acre National Mall, largely designed
by Pierre L Enfant in 1791, has begun a
multiyear restoration that includes new
walkways, trees and visitors centers. The
trust aims to raise half of the estimated $700
million cost, of which $400 million is
considered deferred maintenance.
Starting anew
Cook is the project s grass guy. Since working
as a teenage groundskeeper in
1974, he has had a passion for ballfields and
has spent decades developing them,
including for the 2000, 2004 and 2008
Olympics.
Still, the National Mall is a challenge. There s
nothing like this in the world, says Cook,
president of Maryland-based Brickman
Sports Turf, citing the Mall s phenomenal
use. He says the foot traffic far exceeds that
of Disney World, where he has also worked.
It s one of the hardest areas in the country
to grow grass, he says, noting Washington
is too hot in the summer and too cold in the
winter for many grasses.
It s a lot more complex than it appears on
the surface There s a science behind
growing grass, adds Suzette Goldstein,
project manager for HOK, an architectural
firm that has designed the new lawn.
Cook and Goldstein consulted scientists
before deciding on a deep underground
layer of soil and sand, as well as a mixture of
tall fescue (Wolfpack, Firenze and Turbo) and
Kentucky bluegrass seed. For irrigation, the
site will have pop-up sprinklers fed by four
massive underground cisterns that will hold
a total of 1 million gallons of water.
So far, the project only has money to do
three of the National Mall s eight center
grass panels and two of its cisterns. This
first phase is set to start late summer.