Meeting At The Hoxton – An Event Planners Dream

The Hoxton is the latest venture by business partners Jesse Girard and Richard Lambert, – and comedian Kenny Hotz – the guys behind Parts & Labour and The Social.  The venue is named after London’s Hoxton neighbourhood and is located in Toronto’s hip King West area steps from the Thompson Hotel.

The Hoxton highlights include a great stage area, state of the art sound system making the acoustics phenomenal, and a 8,000 sq. ft. space that can hold up to 600 people.  The main idea was to keep the space versatile, with lack of excessive décor and the large number of installed flat screens it is an event planners dream. The Hoxton allows customized decor and can accommodate the bells and whistles for whatever event the venue is hosting, whether it is corporate or private bookings.

In just over a month the Hoxton has played host for events celebrating TIFF, Fashion Week, store launches, and this week is their first large scale fundraiser “Fireball” (www.sheenasplace.com/fireball)

Expect The Hoxton to be a crowd and corporate pleaser. http://www.thehoxton.ca and @the_Hoxton

Guest Post by Jay Reyes and Deb Lewis, (www.deblewis.ca) CMP, Chief Experience Officer of CityEvents, (www.torontocityevents.ca) You can connect with Deb at CityEvents (info@torontocityevents.ca) or on Twitter. @cityevents

 

Bcctc Reception 2011

The British Canadian Chamber of Trade and Commerce held their 60th Anniversary Reception on October 28th 2011. It was one of the must attend events of the year. The highly respected U.K High Commissioner to Canada Dr. Andrew Pocock attended the event. He was escorted in the room by a British bagpipe player, making the event more unique than ever.

The entertainment of the night was a special cultural fashion show and a jazz band. The hors d’oeuvres, music, people and ambiance made it a night to remember. The event was held in the luxurious Novotel Hotel in downtown Toronto.

For more information about the British Canadian Chamber of Trade and Commerce go to: www.bcctc.ca

For more pictures go to:

http://www.ntdtv.ca/cultureevent/bcctc/index.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityeventstoronto

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Small Business Forum 2011

On Tuesday, October 18th, entrepreneurs and small business owner’s gathered to seek insights from veteran entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and social media experts at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This opportunity gave young entrepreneurs an insight about business and uncovered new opportunities with the help of knowledgeable speakers.

Attending Enterprise Toronto seminar helped young business men and women try out new technology; share thoughts in a social media feed, and watch software-as-a-service and mobile application demonstrations.

We have participated in the social media stream, ScribbleLive, of the Small Business Forum 2011, by tweeting and using Facebook. The social media stream of the people present were shown on a big screen in the digital zone.

Some interesting seminars were about ‘How Youtube & Other Social Media Grew My Business’, ‘Intellectual Property’ and ‘Cloud Computing’. In my opinion, the most interesting was about ‘Engagement Marketing’. This seminar was presented by Lisa Kember of Constant Contact.

These were the main interesting points she had to share;

The Days of Mad Men are over. A company cannot invent its own brand anymore. The brand of a company is not defined by the company itself, but by the consumer. Every day an average Canadian will be faced with 30.000 ads every day.

These are three important ways of branding, sorted by impact.

1) Word of mouth is still the best tool of communication
2) Search engine processing
3) Advertising

An important fact is that ‘people trust people they don’t know talking about a company more than advertisement of the particular company.’ An example of this is sites such as Tripadvisor.com or other websites of reviews.

Great relationships grows business.

Three facts about conversational marketing (engagement marketing)

1) You have limited control over your brand.
2) You must provide a great customer experience for survival.

”He profits most, who serves best”

3)  Relationship matter. You must first earn permission to engage. When permission earned, the likelihood to buy or recommend increases greatly.

In order for engagement to succeed you will need to use both mail and social media to succeed.

In short: engagement is key.

For more information about the event go to: www.enterprisetoronto.com

www.twitter.com/enterpriseto

 

Dusseldorf Altbierfest

The Candian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce organized an amazing event on October 11th. The worldwide famous Altbierfest.

The setting couldn’t have been better. The Altbierfest was held at Toronto’s Bier Markt on the Esplanade and showcased an authentic German Bierfest. It was a casual, comfortable and perfect moment for networking.

Event Fundraising Strategy & Planning

When it comes to your fundraising events, if you were starting over, how different would they look?

1. Become more data driven.
It is impossible to run a successful event fundraising program without understanding the characteristics of your participants and the linkages between those characteristics and giving.

2. Understand the difference between metrics and analytics.
Event fundraisers are talking about not just measuring more and better, but also predicting donor and participant behaviours. You can use your analysis as a blueprint to think strategically about how to improve your event’s future fundraising results.

3. Think in segments.
It’s essential to target your segments differently. Within each event there are definitely groups of participants that we should focus on more than most. It is essential that you identify up front how many segments you can actually administer.

4. Predict future activities.
This is basic segmentation developed from descriptive analysis. But while this helps to focus efforts, it is essentially reactive 3and does little to develop new gifts.

5. Think relationships.
All aspects of the event marketing relationship are changing. Social media is perhaps the most obvious change, but there are other choices you can use. Rather than treating social media as a standalone channel or replacement for traditional tactics, event marketers should be looking for ways to use social media to support and enhance the successful programs they already have in place.

6. Drive fundraising productivity.
In some organizations fundraisers spend too much of their time doing tasks that the marketing should be doing for you. We’re seeing some organizations use their CRM and personal fundraising systems to take advantage of automation, email and social media to make personal fundraisers more credible with their donors and shorten the cultivation cycle.

7. Use social media to connect and facilitate dialogue.
You’re are accountable for your events’ participation in social media—even if your aren’t engaging in those conversations yourself. You must train, educate and support your event participants who fundraises on behalf of the organization.

8. Remember the 80/20 rule.
Do you treat all event participants equally? You shouldn’t! The most effective events focus the majority of their efforts on the participants with the highest potential return, which typically constitutes only about 15% of the participant base.

9. Give your donor database the respect it deserves.
We recommend that you not overlook an analysis of the structure of your data gathering itself. This is an area all-too-often ignored. This includes administration of hundreds of thousands of participants and donor records and millions of transactions.

10. Be different.
The audit and evaluation of your events should include comprehensive participant, donor, market and competitive analysis. Understanding how you will compete and differentiate your events is critical to success.

« Previous Page — Next Page »