Shake A Tail Feather: Book Holiday Business

An event company owner sent me the following question...

I am a catering , production and entertainment company. I need to know how to get more holiday parties for this season.. Help!!!!!! Corporate parties, invitations, entertainment, catering and more is our business help me get more business.

Sherry Schweitzer
Owner, A TOUCH OF CLASS,INC. CATERING AND EVENT PRODUCTIONS
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Sherry,

Assuming you already have an awesome website and collateral materials to sell your services, try the sales and marketing tactics the Tina Turner way and "Shake A Tail Feather" today.

1. Advertise in the local business journal newspaper starting in October. Offer an early booking special that includes added value such as invitation design, printing and mailing included for parties of a certain size (Bump up your prices a little this year to cover the added value). Or the first X number of people who contact you get a one-hour consultation for FREE.

2. Write short articles or tips. Distribute them to the local media and post them online.

3. Start a blog. Write about what you offer that makes your company different. Post your articles and party tips. Post photos of other events and parties.

4. Offer to speak for a few minutes on how to have an amazing holiday party or event at local women's clubs, civic clubs and business organizations. Sponsor a table or donate inexpensive center pieces of pine needles and magnolia with floating candles. Call them now to book for October.

5. Start sending weekly e-newsletters to your old clients and add potential new clients. (If you don't have a database, you can buy a list or create your own by researching businesses that you want as clients. Call them for the name of the contact who books their events and holiday parties. Ask them if it is ok to send them holiday event information.

6. Get booked on local TV or radio programs to talk about party and event planning. Ask them to put a link to your website on their website. You are an expert and the media wants to talk to you.

7. Send out news releases about your company, new clients, photos of creative invitations and events, unique entertainment you have available

8. Host a VIP after 5 what's coming this season open house with wine and cheese NOW! and invite area businesses. Display (video/photos) to showcase your company.

9. Get flyers or brocures made with colorful photos of your previous events, parties and invitations. Distribute them to area businesses including banks, doctor's offices, law offices, car dealerships, hair salons.

10. Pick up the phone and call people and ask for the business. Cold calling sucks, but it works! An old sales adage is that you should make 10 calls to get two appointments to make one sale. If it were only that easy today! I'm guessing that now it is more like 25 calls to get two appointments to get one sale. And ad that, you have to call them at least twice because it is hard to reach someone on the first call.

Why Tina Turner? Well this one is a look-a-like, a good one, and she made me think about using the name of one of Tina's songs to grab attention, or at least use as your motivation...



Good luck! And, if you need help with any of these, I'd love to help market your company!

Event: Creating A Mythical Opening

All hail the Olive!

It seems like a new restaurant opens every week in Central Florida. And being in the center of the entertainment and theme park world, for the opening event to stand out, it means having more than food and drinks for a memorable "ribbon cutting". Besides sending out invitations to the VIPs and key media, creating the event flow, planning the menu, and more, I wrote a "blessing" as an attention-getting way to kick off the grand opening night.

After the presentation, a friend asked which book or movie the words came from as they were so mythical and "Disney-esque," they had to come from a Greco-Roman story. He was right about the mythical part, and it was a story only the words and dramatic scene were written from the theater of my "Monte-esque" mind.

For your reading pleasure:

The olive has been held in high esteem since the beginning of time. Myth has it that the Goddess Athena introduced the precious fruit of the olive to the ancient Greeks and they named a city for her.


Homer called the oil of its fruit, “liquid gold.”


Hippocrates, considered the father of modern medicine said, “Let the food be the medicine and the medicine be the food.”


With a multitude of uses – for light, food, and healing – the olive and its oil has been revered for its magical properties, history even deeming it greater than the power and speed of Poseidon’s horse.


I present the olive.


A precious seed
Born forth from this small fruit
Placed with care by hand
Connected to Earth
Enriched by soil
Peppered by rain
This olive doth grow to be
A life-giving tree
The harvest cometh forth
Bountiful and mythical
Most blessed fuel
Oh nourishing food
Hail its healing tenents
Treasure guarded by royalty
And reveled in world religions
Now an Olive tree blossoms in Orlando
So we celebrate nature’s gift tonight
And with this act
We commence a new flame
Of a forever blessed light.


Ladies and gentlemen
Raise your glass and toast to the grand opening of The Black Olive.

Now, here is a peak at the grand opening ceremony:

Ten Tips For An Awfully Unappealing Presentation

Watch paint peel...Slow. Tedious. Messy.

Great presentations require a bit of skill, forethought, a lot of work, and practice (even when doing the same presentation over and over). Giving a poor presentation is easy. Try any or all of the following tips that are guaranteed to be as exciting as watching paint peel off bricks.

1. Misspell words. To for two. Lie for lay. Delete the “i” in Public Affairs. Don’t run spell check! Forget spell check to generate laughter that isn’t a joke.
2. Use too dark or light type on a too dark or light background. Green on blue, red on black, light blue on white or yellow on peach...all are especially difficult to see.
3. Be creative with type. Combine Old English uppercase, Comic Sans italic, Times New Roman bold, Brush Script, add shadows and several underlines for emphasis and several font colors. Make it look pretty. (fyi...the design rule of thumb is no more than two fonts including different styles i.e. bold, italic, condensed of the same font)
4. Use 6 point type. Pretend you are an optometrist! With a free vision test you can say, “This isn’t readable, but here is what it says…”
5. Stttttrrrrreeeetttttcccchhhh logos and photos. This way they fit. Who cares if the circle is now an oval? Or the square is a rectangle?
6. Insert low-resolution logos, photos and graphics. They look fuzzy and faded on your computer screen and even worse when projected or blown up. Be sure to use less than 75 dpi or and smaller than 900 pixels wide by 720 pixels high.
7. Dress down. Wear a shirt “worthy of discussion.” Wear your “holy” jeans. Flip on those flops. If dress down was good enough for the White House a few years ago, it is good enough for anyone.
8. Read every word of every slide, poster, handout. Keep your back to the audience. Then you can't tell who is sleeping.
9. Use free clip art. Why spend $5 for stock images, photos or illustrations when free means kudos for being budget conscious.
10. Don't practice. Don’t rehearse and never arrive to set up early. You don’t want to seem overly polished.

Seen it, heard it or slept through the presentation? If so, may these memorable tips be memorable enough for you to remember not to use them.

SMT: Building Buzz

Here are a few smart reasons to do a satellite media tour.

1. Incredible cost savings.

- Effective TV commercials and radio ad campaigns cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, not only in the creative process, but also for the time purchased on air.

- They produce buzz...that the news media helps create. (Yes. That is me briefing Col. Buzz Aldrin for the SMT on July 16, 2009 at 5:55 a.m. Photo by Lisa Cannon)

- Satellite media tours "start" at around $18,000 for pitching and producint. Fees may increase for remote locations and other add ons such as catering, make up artists, number of cameras, lighting crews and such.

2. No advertising.

- They are NOT a commercial and broadcast audiences know the difference.

- News typically owns a captured audience so people tune in and don't change to another station until the broadcast is over...or during commercials.

- An aired segment helps a company stand from their competition.

3. Say "credibility".

- Interviews in the news translate into credible experts for the viewing or listening audience.

- The art of producing a great tour is working with the client and person being interviewed to ensure their talking points or responses to the host, anchor or reporter don't sound like a commercial. It is news by the way!

4. Timing is everything.

- Incredible timing means SMTs offer a chance for opportune and strategic placement in the news.

- Both offer the ability to quickly respond to regional or national issues.

5. Very little effort for client.

- Media tours are written, pitched and produced by an SMT specialist.

- Production can be conducted in a studio or can originate from remote locations by hiring a satellite truck.

- It only takes set amount of time for the client (typically three to six hours during a tour) to reach an audience of millions.

6. Huge value.
- Because of the Internet, broadcast interviews live on! They are posted on a station's website and are then shared via social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

- A news story has a higher perceived value placed on it than advertising. When measuring, a news story MAY be valued up to four times the cost of the same length for a broadcast advertisement during that same time.

- And lastly, SMTs are measurable in many ways!

Check out my earlier posts of several SMT interviews with Buzz Aldrin that I helped produce on July 16, 2009 for the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 at Kennedy Space Center. I was three feet below him and one foot behind the camera working as the floor producer. There was also a camera guy, a lighting tech, a makeup artist, Buzz's assistant, and two caterers on the floor in addition to three producers in the satellite truck.

For more info about producing a tour, working with me to pitch and book your tour or to discuss your next Satellite Media Tour, give me a shout at 407-341-9866 or mmonte@hotmail.com.

Satellite (SMT) and Audio (AMT) Media Tours

Shoot from here (location) up to there (satellite) and down to there (broadcast station).

Satellite Media Tours (SMTs) are used to book a company expert, CEO, spokesperson or celebrity on television to be interviewed for the news. They are usually live, but can also be live to tape (meaning the interview seems live when it runs later.)

Organized, pitched and produced by a public relations specialist, these one-on-one interviews, are booked by news producers or talent bookers. In what are called windows, the producer works with the person pitching the tour to secure a specific time for the interview. The interviews are typically booked within five to 10-minute windows. The interview, typically from one to 10 minutes, takes place within the window and the hit time is the on-the-spot time that the interview is scheduled to start.

To organize all of the information, the specialist uses a tour production grid which is shared with the client, the talent or person being interviewed and the production staff. The grid is the Bible, plan, part and parcel for the tour production team.

A typical grid contains the following:

1. Number of windows (6:00-6:10, i.e. 6 a.m.-9 a.m. with 5 to 10-minute windows
2. Hit time (6:03)
3. Segment length (i.e. 2-2.5 minutes)
4. Station name, location and affiliation
5. Anchor, host, reporter or talent name(s)
6. IFB # (more on the technical stuff later)
7. Control room number
8. Producer's name, phone and email
9. A back up phone number
10. Key information about the station, producer, talent, etc.
11. Address to send b-roll (Beta or DVD) before the tour

Media tours get out a specific and news worthy message to millions and can target a key audience!

Check out posts on the recent SMT for the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 with Buzz Aldrin at Kennedy Space Center.

For more about producing a tour, pitching and booking your tour or to discuss your next Satellite Media Tour, contact me at 407-341-9866 or mmonte@hotmail.com.

SMT: Buzz Aldrin KARE11 Minneapolis

Aldrin reflects on 'Moon Landing' 40 years later

kare11.com Twin Cities, MN Aldrin reflects on 'Moon Landing' 40 years later

SMT: Buzz Aldrin and Boston WCVB

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin recalls historic moon landing.

Col. Aldrin paints a beautiful picture about standing alone on the platform of the Saturn V rocket as he waited to board that July 16, 1969 morning.