Activity review | What I learned from an offline activity that was not very smooth

In order for an activity to be successful, adequate preparation must be made in the early stages. Due to time constraints and insufficient advance preparation, the author's team had many regrets on site. Let's take a look at their summary of the event.

Due to objective reasons, we only had two weeks to prepare for this event, and the entire process was spent in an atmosphere that seemed as steady as an old dog, but was actually extremely panicked. Looking back, although it was not a particularly smooth activity, the experience gained from it was truly invaluable.

Today we will take a look at the pitfalls of this not-so-smooth event and how we can avoid them.

1. Activity project establishment

It was early March 2018, and the new book had just been released. So Anzi contacted the two teachers and wanted to organize a signing event together.

After several rounds of communication with the teacher, we finally finalized the form of the event on March 27 - signing and sharing, and the event was scheduled for April 15, 2018.

Because the teacher had certain considerations for the format of the activity and the limited schedule, the original preparation period of the activity, which was to be one month, was shortened to two and a half weeks. These two and a half weeks also include a one-week recruitment period, which means we need to sort out channels , publishing houses, teacher schedules, event materials, etc. within a week and a half.

This is a huge challenge for all team members and requires a very high degree of cooperation from team members.

2. Activity Preparation

This was my first time taking on an event, and I didn’t know much about the process of the event. In the beginning, I still referred to the project establishment forms of previous events, checked the review reports, and combined my own experience and reasoning to do things. Although this seemed to be accomplished in a proper manner, there were still many problems in practice.

Fortunately, with the help of Xiao Fangfang and Xinghe, they always gave us pointers at critical moments and pulled us out of the pit, which made it possible for this activity to finally be carried out.

We also understood the pressure that the main person in charge and the entire team need to face when planning such a large event as a group whose purpose is not to make a profit but to grow.

On March 27, Xiao Fangfang, Xinghe's father and Xiao Yugan discussed and divided the important preparatory tasks. Xiao Fangfang took the lead in communicating with the promotion channels and editors, and Xiao Yugan was responsible for the recruitment of project members, channel replacement resource arrangements, responsibility division table and activity budget.

Unfortunately, PM Xiao Yu Gan had booked a trip to Japan from April 12th to 17th in December 2017, so he missed the event. So when arranging the project team members, Xiao Le was asked to take charge of the work after Xiao Yu Gan left.

So on March 28, we finally brought all the project team members into a discussion group and assigned each of them their division of labor. Preparations officially begin.

3. Difficulties encountered in the activity

When the event was launched, we roughly estimated several difficulties that we needed to overcome for this event:

1. The event preparation time is very short. Whether the materials can be successfully delivered to the channel or publisher?
2. The promotion schedule of the cooperative channel may be full, and it is difficult to get better resources;
3. The short recruitment period may have a greater impact on the number of recruits;
4. The cost of activities has increased.

But in actual implementation, more problems arise one after another:

1. The cooperation methods of some cooperation channels have changed, and the most core resources have not been obtained;
2. Sponsorship from publishing houses has decreased, the cost of signing books has increased, and the price of event venues has increased by 50%, which has invisibly increased the event budget.

Our proposed solution:

• For the guests: get inoculated with the teacher in advance, gain the teacher's understanding, and give us the sharing outline and PPT content as soon as possible;
• For channels: determine the resources that each partner can provide within three days of the start of preparations, and step up the production of event materials and deliver them to partners and publishers in a timely manner to ensure that the recruitment time is more than 7 days;
• Regarding costs: We persuaded the venue to give us a preferential price, and purchased books through e-commerce websites, obtaining a lower discount.
• About recruitment: the partner responsible for copywriting should prepare for the second post, and everyone should sort out the promotional resources at hand as a supplement for recruitment.

4. Blood and Tears Experience

The most powerless thing about this event is the recruitment. In the first three days of the event, the number of participants was only one-third of the previous times, which was too bleak to watch. Fortunately, all the friends finally made an effort and asked friends and big Vs to help forward the message, so that the event could proceed as scheduled.

To address this issue, we conducted a series of review work within the project discussion group after the event. The following are the very important but overlooked points we summarized from two aspects: external resources and internal factors:

1. Gain external insights in advance and do a good job of resource collection and allocation

1) Neglected competitive mediation

April 15th is a good day, but we are not the only ones who want to hold an event. This time, we are very honored to have a perfect collision with a certain operating group's annual super-large event, and the other party has conducted multiple rounds of warm-up and started registration at the end of March.

This may indirectly lead to the fact that friends who were originally willing to participate in our activities have given priority to signing up for other activities.

When it comes to choosing the date for the activity, competitive coordination is particularly important, although the date for the activity is chosen because the teacher only has time on the weekend of the second week in April. However, as an event planner , giving necessary advice is also one of our responsibilities.

2) Differentiation of promotion channels

In the past, when doing channel promotion , basically one article was applicable to multiple channels. Therefore, when we arranged the writing of channel articles this time, we only required the preparation of one article, which saves time and effort but is not necessarily correct.

The Internet is changing rapidly, and the tastes of each channel and fans are constantly changing. The universal routines that were used before may become ineffective at any time... This is also what Zhang Zhongrong, a teacher at Jinpu, said in the introduction to "The Origin of Operations":

"The current operating routines can no longer solve the problem technically. The operating rules will ultimately be no match for the company's rules, and the company's rules will be no match for the business rules. Business rules, especially the rules under the new Internet business model , are the original logic that determines the direction of operations."

Therefore, even if we are very familiar with a channel, we still need to investigate the channel’s recent tweets, fan stickiness, and activity level before each event to determine what decision is the most correct at a certain time and under certain conditions, what articles fans really want to read, and what dry goods fans really want to get.

3) Offline activities must have venue reserves

A suitable venue is one of the key factors for the success of an offline event. Offline activities place great emphasis on participation and experience, and this experience is immediate. Therefore, for those of us who often hold events, it is particularly important to reserve some venues in advance that are suitable in terms of environment, transportation, price, size, or have their own advantages.

In this way, our efficiency in early site selection will be greatly improved. After the event, the team members did the same thing. If there were any good venues, they would post them on the community and ask for everyone’s opinions. If they were suitable, they would discuss cooperation matters. Therefore, it is necessary to plan ahead.

2. Always have internal insights, and submit coordination and response capabilities

1) In the case of a short preparation period, priority can be given to recruitment work

We encountered a big problem: the preparation period was too short. When everything was finally ready, there was only one week left to recruit for the event, while the ideal recruitment period should be between 10-15 days.

Here we have thought of a solution: if the fundraising time is too short, we can prepare the registration methods at the beginning of the project, and estimate the ticket price of the event in the form of pre-sale and early bird tickets, so that people who are interested in participating can get the event information first, which is what we call "reserving a spot". Try to avoid the regret of fans being unable to attend the event because they have other plans first.

2) Balancing income and expenditure is important, but don’t stick to the budget

The cost factor of this event caused the event budget to rise again and again. We finally determined that we needed to recruit the same number of participants as the previous events under the condition of ticket price of 129 yuan in order to successfully cover the cost.

When making the budget, I consulted several operational friends and they all said that the ticket price was too high and recruitment would be difficult. They advised me to reduce the ticket price appropriately and lower the threshold.

But in order to balance income and expenditure, we finally insisted on keeping the original price. This is not to say that it is wrong to maintain a balance between income and expenditure, but that under the current conditions, we should be flexible and adapt to achieve the most important goals of the project. The most important thing about this project is to recruit more fans to participate.

3) The form of activities should be innovative

Because this event coincided with the launch of the two teachers' new books, and we had experience with reader meetings several times before, we chose this format for this meeting.

The copywriting and posters are also the main selling points for face-to-face communication with teachers, but we have overlooked that the audience is changing. A meet-and-greet that was popular a year ago may not be successful now. People currently participate in activities with the mentality of solving a certain problem, and it would be best if they can use it after listening.

If it is just about sharing some kind of knowledge and meeting with big names to improve your status, but there is no specific solution, they may lose interest.

So this is also the shortcoming of the format of our event this time. The new books of the two teachers are more suitable for experienced operators to study. Perhaps we can try a format similar to a small seminar. There does not need to be too many participants, but they can have in-depth exchanges with each other. The teachers will also have a deep understanding of everyone, and the suggestions given will be more targeted.

4) On-site control capabilities still need to be strengthened

Although there were no major mistakes on site as a whole, and the project team members were actively involved in the arrangements and cooperated with each other, many details were not taken into consideration in advance during the overall control of the site, which resulted in a decline in the on-site experience.

For example: the chairs in the venue looked very neatly arranged, so I didn't pay much attention to them, but in fact there were many more people than participated in the event. When most people arrived, there were still many empty chairs, so the venue looked very empty and there was no lively atmosphere.

Then, in the telepathic game session, the only consideration was whether the participants could see the props clearly, and the audience was ignored, resulting in the students who were guessing the words having their backs to the audience the entire time, and only the back of their heads could be seen by the audience.

An offline event is finally implemented on the day of the event. Participants are the ones who can most directly feel whether the organizer is attentive, so even the details need to be considered comprehensively.

5. Our advantages

Although we encountered many problems in this event and ultimately did not reach our initial recruitment goal, the entire team collaborated well and responded quickly, and every member of the project team performed their duties conscientiously:

• Dasu was still editing the copy at 1am, and was also the photography director for the entire event.
• In order to build momentum on the eve of the event, Bu Er searched Baidu for a long time and finally successfully pushed a single event poster to the fans of the official account at around 11pm;
• Fantuan was busy at the scene, debugging the equipment, guiding the check-in with Xiaofangfang, and coordinating the work of the host;
• Ruirui has been asking everyone not to worry about the income and expenditure and to do their best to make this event a success. He not only carefully prepared the script, but also went to the scene to make arrangements early in the morning.
• Xiao Fangfang and Xinghe have been keeping an eye on the entire process, reminding everyone of the project progress, and when the project encountered difficulties, they pulled us out of the pit and took over the task themselves.

Thanks to them, this event could be held smoothly as scheduled.

Special thanks to the project team members for their wholehearted dedication and strong support. Even though this event was not so successful, with such a team, after continuous summary and improvement, we will definitely do better next time!