Making Your Community Festivals Better

1. Making Your Community Festivals Better Vern Biaett, PhD, CFEE Faculty Associate School of Community Resources & Development

2. Who Are You … and what do you do?

3. What Do You Want … to make better at your community events?

4. Organize Your Thought Process

5. The 1st step in making things better … knowing what you already have.

6. The 2nd step in making things better is … knowing what you are really trying to accomplish.

7. OK, now that you have … some basic structure to what you’re doing let’s talk about your stakeholders. Who are they?

8. Make things better by … making things better for every one of your stakeholders.

9. Make things better by being … a better communicator. What is Marketing & Promotion? What is your plan … do you even have a plan?

10. Promotion There are 5 basic forms of promotion • Advertising • Publicity • Sales Promotions • Selling/Personal Contact • Non-Media

11. How to create a better Poster … in only 10 minutes.

12. One last thought on Promotion 7 images Less is better and more powerful

13. To make things better … you have to be better at financial things. Revenue Generation Sponsorship Financial Controls “With money in your pocket, you are wise, you are handsome, and you sing well too.” Old Jewish Proverb

14. What is the number one source … of revenue for festivals and events?

15. There is more than one … type of admission fee.

16. There are 1,000’s of other ways … to generate revenue for a community event. On-site Off-site Day of Year round

17. Sponsorship The old way of thinking Gold Silver Bronze Basically just begging

18. Sponsorship New way of thinking … Asset Benefit Exchange

19. Sponsorship What can a sponsor give you? What do you have that a sponsor wants? Tangibles and Intangibles

20. Sponsorship And there is so much more Categories Leverage Values - IEG Sales People and on and on and on

21. Bottom line – to make sponsorship better … Have a plan Know what you want / need Know what you have to exchange Sponsor > Partner > Friend

22. What is the #1 reason events …

23. To make your events better … understand what your financial goals are. Make a Profit Break Even Lost Leader

24. To make your events better … Use a Cost – Revenue financial system Revenues are highly unpredictable Expenses must be controlled to maximize success Budgets cannot be made in stone

25. To make your event better … make your staff and volunteers better. Leadership

26. What motivates staff & volunteers?

27. Marketing, check – Sponsorship, check Festivity … what was that again? What is the most important thing you do for an event?

28. I would suggest that … the most important thing you should be doing is creating the BEST possible experience for each and everyone of your stakeholders

29. Let’s redirect our focus to … creating great experiences for those stakeholders we call attendees, guests, participants, visitors

30. But you ask … what is the BEST possible experience? How do I go about making that happen?

31. To begin to understand … let’s first use the word festivity to describe experiences that might take place at festivals and events and take a quick journey through history

32. The Evolution of Festivity From Paleolithic (20,000-8,000 BCE) hunter-gathers, through the Neolithic (8,000-4,000 BCE) first farmers, and into the first civilizations (4,000-800 BCE) festivity was ORGANIC • Communal • Spontaneous • Amalgamated with Mythos in celebrating celestial seasons and regeneration of life • A state of being meaningful only unto itself

33. Sidebar GoebekliTepe • Oldest religious structure in Turkey – predates Stonehenge • Roaming clans of hunter-gathers came together for festivity and cooperatively evolved into the first agricultural societies

34. The Evolution of Festivity As civilization progressed through the Axial (800-200 BCE) and Post-Axial (200 BCE – 1500 CE) • Mythos and its deep emotional participation was surpassed by Logos • Festivity evolved into an activity with a sense of purpose and reason • and then …

35. The Evolution of Festivity With the Enlightenment (1500 CE) festivity became • very spatially • very temporal • and culminated during the industrial revolution as a method to manage and control urban masses Festivity became ORGANIZED

36. The Evolution of Festivity Following World War II and for the past 6 decades with a general emphasis on public relations, materialism, and technology festivity morphed into mercantile activity with focus on • Financial gain • Efforts to gain public attention Festivity became a COMMERCIAL ORGANISM

37. The Evolution of Festivity Has the time come to return to a more organic form of festivity? Is a more organic form of festivity the key to producing truly great experiences at today’s festivals and events? Can festivals and events once again be about having fun for the sake of fun … like play?

38. So, how do we now … go back to the ancient roots of festivity and create those BEST experiences for those who attend our festivals and events?

39. A Key to Ancient Festivity Collaboratively Creative Social Activity Loud music with deep bass and heavy drum beats Performing arts … dance, drama Visual arts … masks, costumes Wild abandonment … joyfulness

40. A Key to Ancient Festivity NO Spectators

41. man’s use of leisure time

42. Second - Flip the pyramid

43. So, why do we want to do this? Substantive Theory from research Social capital bonding is strongly evident and easily recognizable within friend and family groups at community festivals. This heuristic phenomenological type of bonding spreads to peers with shared similarities outside the friend and family group as levels of festivity increase. Social capital bridging exists between attendees at community festivals, but primarily as a sense of generic communitas at a subconscious hermeneutic phenomenological level which intensifies as levels of festivity increase. Event manages possessing both the aspiration and knowledge to program quality festive experience have the ability to accentuate the development of both bonding and bridging social capital at community festivals.

44. Or, in simpler terms Increased levels of festivity at events raises the sense of community among attendees

45. Now … get ready to experience what a high level of festivity is really all about Being a Spectator http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfdjoovzn2w Being Physical http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zfCkR5Fp-A Being Collaboratively Creative http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_q8L8Tksd8

46. Want to have the best festivals? NO Spectators Oh, the places you go

47. Let’s recap what we talked about today • You have got to know who you are and what you’re about • Create a basic plan to organize every event • Know your stakeholders and create a great experience for each and every one of them • Marketing & promotion requires a plan • 7 images is powerful • #1 reason events fail is financial reasons • Sponsorship is about Benefit-Asset exchange S-P-F • Use a Cost – Revenue financial system • Leadership requires visionaries and task masters • Understand what motivates staff and volunteers

48. And of course … To build community you need to program activity with higher levels of Festivity JUST SAY NO TO SPECTATORS

49. Thank You Vern Biaett, PhD, CFEE vbiaett@asu.edu 623-251-1867