© JULIAN BRAY 2007/8

Show me which half of the Budget you’ve wasted!

Presented by Julian Bray at the

National Venue Show Theatre 2

National Exhibition Centre

NEC Birmingham Hall 9

 This presentation also had an interactive PowerPoint presentation attached to it. The podcast with PowerPoint is available from the exhibition website (link above)...JB

1.   In reality this should be Show me the half of MY budget YOU have recklessly wasted! It may be your line manger, client or ultimate boss. Funny how the budget suddenly becomes their property.

2.   But everyone has these little encounters and during this presentation I’ll show yow how to claw BACK THE MONEY OR preserve THE BUDGET YOU HAVE SEEMINGLY WASTED.

3.   Let us get one thing clear I’m not suggesting for a  moment that your budget has to be cut by half and this is not an excuse for those bean counters setting the budgets to lop fifty percent off.

4.   It is simply with all the other pressures of work, budgets get eaten up as deadlines loom so hopefully you’ll pick up a few hints and shortcuts to make your event budget work even harder, without compromising on quality or the overall look and feel of the event. We are seeking more for less without compromising on quality.

5.   What are my qualifications for this? Well this is how I earn some of my fees. I set out to save between 10 and 35 percent on average, although it has gone to 85%. Without too much effort, but drawing on a lifetime of contacts and tried and trusted methods, I can achieve a 20% saving on a defined budget.

6.   I say to clients that if I cannot achieve 10 per cent you don’t pay a penny, so in theory they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. My services are potentially without risk and without cost as the saving produced will more than cover my stipend.

7.   So how does this all work?

8.   We’ll take as our yardstick a specimen fictional event; a four day management rewards conference at an hotel in say Brighton for a financial Services organisation.  200 delegates and partners. At the end of day two,  a changeover ie they depart to be replaced with a hard nosed management summit for the final two days 100 no WAGS.

9.   Timetables matter.  Its always later than you think. In terms of three calendar months, think just two months of available working days ie 5 days a week, four weeks to a month gives you 20 days a month to work the miracle, or just 60 working days for what would seem to be the normal 3 Calendar months or fiscal quarter, anyone not understanding this see me afterwards! Sixty days work is available each quarter or 120 days work for each six month period….

10.                     Being later than you think in the planning and procurement department dramatically drives up costs on costs.  You’ll take whatever is offered, premium rates for late urgent rushed printing and shipping.

11.                     The same goes for all event management services even a 10 surcharge for some services can all add up. And for some reason when dealing with events; normal ideas of value go out of the window. It’s not my money, why should I care?

12.                     But it is, what you waste is ultimately reflected in the difficulty in negotiating a decent salary rise or additional pension contribution the following year, endear yourself to the finance director and watch the barriers evaporate. This loyal person believes in saving the firm money! To back this up make certain they – the directors, non-execs and senior line managers - know you are constantly saving them money!  

13.                      It has been known for an e-mail to be broadcast company wide by hitting the all boxes button, what if that e-mail shows how you department is saving or adding value to budgets across the board? Might be worth a try!

14.                     I once asked for a drop box for cards to be made up, a simple square box in the company livery with a slot in the top, back it came £600! This was over ten years ago!   A trip to John Lewis and a modular cube box complete with integral door designed to be part of a furnishing cube cupboard scheme £80, have a slot cut £20, apply graphics £100. Saving £200 and so if goes on.  A classic case of thinking outside the box!

15.                     Conference folders or binders from the usual agencies – you’ll find them all advertising at the back of Marketing or Marketing  Week. £10- £25 each with notepad and pen. Similar folder from an internet source £3, supply own notepad and pen. Even Staples, the out of town store sometimes comes up with a better deal. Remember they do not all have to be alike or of the same colour just perform the required function and look professional ie look expensive!

16.                     Business cards anything from £50 to £200 a shot, go to the Vistaprint.co.uk  website and they are free plus postage and local tax. I have them here. I use them all the time and can afford to give them all out and as fast as humanly possible! Whichever way you look at it 90% saving – I’ve allowed for the postage and tax charge.

17.                     So you see how this is going? To achieve this happy state of nirvana, the mindset has to be in place and importantly you have to either be in a position where your team trusts you completely or senior management have bought in to your unique way of thinking .

18.                     It is not that the budget has to be cut but you are seeking to get real value from all your suppliers. And effectively extending your budget net worth by the amount saved ie save 35 per cent on the over all budget is an extention of 35% in terms of value achieved.   

19.                     Do this a few times and taking care to let all and sundry know about it and you quickly gain a reputation for being a shrewd operator. Better still they, the prospective suppliers, will recognise that you won’t even look at any inflated or fully laden quotes or estimates. You want the items stripped down and you will certainly spend time going through those estimates line by line. This is executive time well spent.

Shell schemes need not be boring!

20.                     Suppliers really want your business and won’t be offended if you do look into the costings, but please have the air of someone who is professional and does know what they are looking for. 

21.                     Listen to your team, someone knows someone and they have a contact, the proviso is that you are looking for a keen price not simply doing a mate of a mate a favour.

22.                     You asked for entertainment or a stage set for the gala dinner floor show, a production company that has the shows already set up might be the answer. However a theatrical artistic director say from the local rep or receiving house theatre might have props and costumes and able to put together a professional package for your event at a fraction of the price normally charged by dedicated corporate event production companies. The theatre managers  would also welcome the extra revenue and possibly go the extra mile. Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith has a full costume department and usually very open to corporate approaches. 

23.                     Where do you get appropriate speciality acts these days because unless the act consists of  a bevy of chefs cooking  they won’t be on TV these days. I’ll tell you where they are - all at sea! Cruising. Where live variety is still flourishing. Get a copy of Showcall 2008 published by The Stage and you’ll find them all hiding in that book. Oh yes I remember him or her. That goes for bands, singers and string quartets as well. Haggle over the fees, as work is somewhat thin on the ground within the UK for variety and speciality acts.

24.                     If you are inside the hotel, the catering is part of the delegate deal but there are substantial savings to be had here, without the overall presentation and quality of the food being diminished. Instead of champagne serve high quality Spanish Cava.

25.                     Instead of a standard starter, main and pudding go for starter or soup, insert a salad course, then a main course, sorbet or dessert, experiment with the menu.

26.                     A longer menu gives you more time for the interaction and networking at the dinner table, perceived better value for money, but in costs terms very similar and naturally leads up to the presentations or speeches, you don’t want to rush through dinner. Have coffee though served before the speeches begin, not during. And if possible have your speaker wear a microphone headset, and for heavens sake don’t let them tap the mic and “say can you hear me…..”

27.                     And for sheer value for money, a professional toastmaster either in the distinctive red jacket or dinner jacket is a must as he will independently ensure the dinner or event flows along to the timetable or programme you have provided and diplomatically deal with your Directors or top table guests and announce them as required.  NO Toastmaster or designated Host and you’ll be doing the running around after the chairman or the non-execs AND THEIR WIVES all evening trust me on this!

28.                     One major banking group, won’t mention names but Rowen Atkinson was seen burning his Arabic Twirling carpet on their behalf and in an earlier presentation world traveller Alan Whicker had a tale to tell. Simply they thought it would be a nice gesture to pop a bottle of champagne into some of the bedrooms of those delegates who had achieved a certain status. This was so, so wrong on several accounts. One of those being a waste of money – your budget.

29.                     The distribution of say 300+ bottles of champagne cannot be done discretely. So you had hotel corridors looking like a wine merchants with opened and discarded champagne boxes everywhere. It looked terrible.

30.                     Wives and Girlfriends of those who did not qualify, for the freebie, immediately got the hump with their partner, effectively ruining the remainder of the event for anyone who came in contact with them, to cap it all, the bottles were not chilled, no flute glasses, or even put in ice buckets,

31.                     The gesture also encouraged some delegates and other half to stay in the bedroom longer and in some cases this led to more amorous intent and they completely missed out on the early part of dinner, for some, the lucky ones, they missed out on the whole of the evening. 

32.                     Finally several bedrooms were held back as changing rooms for the show artistes and crew and they somehow got champagne bottles as well! Immediate saving here perhaps. A true tale.  

33.                     Simply a bit of thought needs to go into the whole planning process. Your planning, your process.

34.                     But which half of the budget have you wasted?  If any form of sponsorship is involved  then the sponsorship fee is taken as the first half and totally wasted; you need an equal amount in order to recover any marketing value, in publicity reputation building or other terms.

35.                     Put say £50,000 in as sponsorship and you need another £50,000 to get the value out so we put to one side the £50,000 and see how the remaining £50,000 can be best used.

36.                     If it is a sports sponsorship it will come with the sponsorship agency total package. Look at this very carefully. DO NOT sign the first version of the contract they present, delete all riders to contract and old theatrical agency trick to effectively double the value to them! See me afterwards if you want to know more about this. Read all the small print and ensure the outflow of your funds is capped, they will often lump in for example:  a statistical service which shows mythical opportunities to view your sign boards and charge say £5,000 for the statistical analysis and good looking charts of meaningless figures which you can never check.

37.                     Ask for a copy of the ROT television tapes, that is Record of transmission and do the opportunity to view statistic yourself or in your office. You hire a temp or get someone in your team to simply watch the video tapes or DVD’s in sequence, at double speed and put a stopwatch on every time you actually see your track or stadium billboards or banners then double the eventual reading on your stopwatch.

38.                     That is all they do. You save say £ 3,500. Your regular press cutting agency or broadcast monitoring agency will in any case pick up the rest so why pay twice for the same information? So we’ve cut that in half as well.  Saving 70 per cent.

 39.                     Printing. I love all this, loads of money to be saved here, for very little effort. Early agreement, minimal proof stages, try and do it all online, If you are using a print broker, print farmer, he might provide your with additional savings.

40.                     Remember what is the purpose of the print? Will it be retained long after or is it window dressing to be discarded during the conference? Do you need to varnish the print or can you get away with a regular colour print on astrolux or coated stock – looks like a varnish finish but half the cost.

41.                     Can cardboard engineering take the place of a leatherette conference folder or would a 4 d ring indexed presentation ring binder with the spine and front printed cover inserts do just as well? This is indexed and as the conference or event progresses or unfolds the predrilled printed conference papers, section by section, are added to the binder.

42.                     You might also consider a preloaded flashcard or part DVD/ CD-rom of all the print work and images so it can easily be transferred to the delegates own laptop. You can also add in extras items which will have your delegate physically referring to the folder long after the conference is a distant memory

43.                     Photography. How do you cut costs here, without any loss in quality? Digital has made it all possible. Delegates and partners would love a formal picture and that will be long cherished – unless they are on the verge of divorcing or didn’t get the champagne.

44.                     The pictures are taken possibly in a formal studio backdrop set with some discreet corporate signage and proper wireless linked flash and fill lighting, also at the table or even with the chairman.   

45.                     The pictures are almost instantly shown on a large TV viewing screen as j-pegs and if they like the pictures they are digitally printed in front of them and put into presentation folders instantly or they can purchase them for £10 each, you may wish to subsidise the first print ordered.

46.                     At the end of the day no attendance fees and no waiting for the pictures, Simply instant gratification. You get the cd-rom of the whole shoot at the end of the evening, in a format ready for your house journal… How good is that. 75 per cent saving on normal photography. NO fee for attendance.  It just gets better. And how will the delegate know which is their picture………..oh yes I have been asked this one, sadly many times!

47.                     Audio Visual set up If the hotel does not have the digital projectors already installed well shame on them, consider specialist hire agencies, put in a bulk order hire booking for several events, during the year. Offer payment on the whole contract, demand 10 per cent discount on the bulk serial booking and a further 10 discount for immediate credit card settlement.

48.                     Always settle by way of a personal credit card, tell the agency it would take weeks to get it through the normal channels,  immediately reclaim the amount from your company. The advantage here is that should the video hire company fail to deliver for any reason IE GOES BUST the credit card company will pay up.

 49.                     The same goes for all aspects of travel use the credit card companies, never cheque or cash.

50.                     IF you use a simplified form of PowerPoint ie no build-ups or difficult transitions, get hold of the SD picture show device about £40 from ASDA has a remote control and plug the leads into the AV sockets of any large format TV or video projector. Load the presentation onto a standard SD memory or other flash card rather like this, one seen on the podcast version.

51.                     No laptops to worry about and no AV hire fees…it fits into your inside pocket too! 

52.                     If providing a shuttle service from the rail station, hire car, taxi or minibus transfers from a to b, consider this as part of your overall presentational package, it might be a welcome gift in the car or minibus or a welcome pack, refreshing wipes, chocolates, travel mints and so on.

53.                     Buy wholesale, save 30 per cent immediately, consumables during your event Costco or Bookers cash and carry. Amazing cheap but high quality consumer goods can be had from the Aldi German low cost supermarket firm but the quantities held at each store are small, so bulk buy online from the website in small quantities throughout the year as they rotate the non-food consumer goods offers. A freeview TV box decoder for £10, SD memory cards 1 gigabyte £6. Think before you lug the scanner printer copier from the office, when you can pick up an HP all in one for £75 or less at the local to the venue computer shop. Give it a present or as a raffle prize to someone on your team to save lugging it back again.

54.                      So this gives you a good idea of how to not waste that part of your budget and the good thing is its not rocket science, it comes down to meticulous planning and thinking outside of the box. 

55.                     The golden rules are the earlier you can commit to an action the cheaper it will be and the greater the perceived value at the point of delivery. Get your detailed specification for any particular action correct in all its forms. Conduct detailed and searching site investigations. Set early deadlines, give yourself room to manoeuvre. Use the lunar four weeks to a month calendar and work down to d day in terms of working days not calendar days. Or sixty working days less bank holidays equals three months.  

56.                     Put the hotel or venue through its paces. Who has used them before, will they let you see the client list, telephone those clients and ask them informally was the venue up to speed? This all equally applies if you are using a DMC ((Destination Management Company)

57.                     Smell a big rat if the venue does not willingly offer you the client list; don’t rule it out completely but dig deeper in the questioning and pre contract evaluation phase.

58.                     Meet the executive chef, Quiz event producers. Use http://www.eventandroadshowplanners.com/ website where an event organisers check list is to be found and lots of useful information. The script of this presentation will be up on it, as will as the podcast with PowerPoint on the exhibition website. http://www.nationalvenueshow.co.uk/

59.                     Well now its over to you, for questions and ladies and gentlemen as always its been my pleasure Thank you.    

Julianbray@aol.com
07944 217476 

Enquiries and comments always welcome