June 4th Event Popping Up Online

We submitted our event to local news stations and it looks like it's starting to pop up on their community calendars. First one I've seen is on our local CBS station, WFRV. Click here to check it out.

Update: Searching again I found the event is also up on the Post Crescent, Fox11, and WBAY (local ABC affiliate) websites! We're also looking forward to an article in the Post Crescent this coming Thursday.

Check Out This Week's Lawrentian!

Page 3 of The Lawrentian this week features a large ad for our event!

We have been steadily moving towards finalizing our event, but unfortunately we have ran into a wall. There are some people on campus that are unhappy with the fact that our posters are promoting drinking as a Lawrence University event. This is perfectly reasonable and probably something one of us should have thought about before creating the posters. Now we have to redesign and reprint our posters ASAP and hopefully get some distributed by the end of this week. Nothing ever goes completely smoothly, and last minute obstacles always seem to sneak up when planning large scale events like this. Hopefully we will still be able to get the word out and make this the event that we wanted it to be. Our lesson learned: get people in charge of the organization you are representing in your advertisements to proof read them before printing. We did have Anduzzi's look at them, but forgot about the Lawrence part.

More minor updates

A few small things have gone down over the last couple of days:

- First of all we have officially submitted a press release with the post crescent and will hopefully remain in contact with their entertainment and nightlife sections over the next two weeks.

-We have also listed our event on Fox 11 community online.

- Cheryl Snodgrass finally got back to us, however she seems to busy at the moment to respond to all our questions by email. I will hopefully be talking to her over the phone sometime before the term ends if we can coordinate our schedules.

- It seems that we could not get our poster into circulation on the campus center screens due to the fact that our event takes place off campus. However, we have distributed a large number of teaser posters around campus and if everything remains on schedule the official posters should be distributed tomorrow.

Another advertising update.

I sent an email to Liz Boutelle in communication today to get a .pdf copy of our final poster design. (Two typos were fixed between the version that is posted on our blog and the version that was sent to the printers.) Ideally, we will be able to get this .pdf file and will submit it to be circulated as one of the posters on the screens in the campus center.

Also, I have contacted Kara Patterson at the Appleton Post Crescent about securing an article in their paper. As soon as she replies back, I will post more details about that advertising campaign.

Beyond that, we are in continual discussion about "hype" and "intrigue" campaigns. I talk more about those at this time, but that would ruin the hype and intrigue.

On a final note: Budgets! Our current spending to date is 29 dollars. (Not including Yui's DJ equipment, which we will try to receive some reimbursement for if no further costs are incurred.) I will try to post an updated spread sheet including both our "Pie in the Sky" and "Actual Cost" budgets before the end of the week.

Who we are and what we do

The following is our official, streamlined elevator pitch:

""We are Night of Mayhem, a small business that focuses on event planning and club promotion. Our goal is to widen and improve community social scenes by reaching untapped markets, creating hype, and playing a mix of popular and new, exciting music. In order to do this we approach small businesses, such as clubs and bars, and for a small commission organize and plan events, establish drink deals, and bring in live music and Djs. We are trained and experienced in the use of a wide variety of light and sound equipment, and are comfortable using whatever equipment any specific establishment may possess. We also have many connections in the Appleton area and may be able to rent and/or borrow equipment to bring into an establishment that lacks those resources."

By Andi Rudd

This past week was definitely a productive week as far as the posters go. I have been in contact with the Anduzzi's manager and we have coordinated to make two separate posters: one marketed toward Lawrence students and one towards downtown customers. By separating these two customer bases, we can advertise a little differently for the exact same event, hopefully making it attractive for everyone. Andduzi's has ordered the ones for downtown and they will show us an electronic copy before they print and distribute them. We have designed the ones for Lawrence as shown on Nico's post, and these should be up sometime this week.

We have also found out that there are a couple other events going on that same night, so it may be a little more difficult to get the large crowd we wanted, but if we get these posters up soon and continue to promote for the next couple weeks, it will most likely give us an advantage.

It's Official

It's been an exciting day for Night of Mayhem. We met with the Communications Department and finalized our poster design. We plan to start distributing the limited text version of the poster (shown above on the right) very soon and the Communications Department will be printing the full version next week (click here to download a PDF of the full poster to share with your friends--spread the word!). Here are some more details of the event as presented on the full poster:

-We will have Beerpong, Flip-Cup, and Quarters tables set up all night

-Drink specials until 10pm: $2 Coors Light and Domestic Bottles and $3 Double Rail Mixers

-Live Hip-Hop by Riddim Koalition 8:30-10pm; The Sambistas 10-10:30pm; DJ UE & DJ Staple 10:30-close

We're very happy with the poster design, which we actually purchased as a template from Fotolia for around $12 and then Liz Boutelle, the Communications Department Art Director, was able to add the text we wanted. We feel it invokes the theme of celebration that we want our party to embody. These posters will hopefully be complemented by the posters Anduzzi's produces and spreads downtown.

[Updated 5/19 with corrected poster images]

Recently I talked to a friend who has been doing some club promoting jobs in New York. It was good to get some advise from somebody that is actually experienced with the sort of thing we are trying to do. There were some things he mentioned that seem helpful for our project:

1. Advertise. Advertise. Advertise. This may be fairly obvious, but he told me the sooner I have the information out there and people talking about it the more likely people will know about it.
2. Use texting. Apparently people respond more to text messaging than e-mails or facebook. Sending out mass texts days before the event or on the day of are apparently good methods of reminding people to come.
3. Drink deals. He said the best way to get people was to charge a certain amount to have an open bar. That way everybody who shows up will stay. Unfortunately, Anduzzi's could not go along with this deal although they did agree to some drink deals.
4. Theme parties. He said for smaller venues theme parties tend to be more successful, but he said we should be fine without a specific theme for a place like Anduzzi's. If we think of something appropriate we will include it in our party, but so far we don't really have a "theme."

Posters and Budgets

In order to keep up with communication and archiving our event planning process accurately, please note the following:

I contacted the communications department about making posters to distribute around campus. When they get back to me with a price estimate, we should meet and discuss whether or not we would like to use their services.

Also, in order to make the left column of our budget proposal more accurate, I am planning to look up the costs of all of our in kind donations tomorrow. Nico and Yui, if you have any info that might help with that, I would really appreciate it. (i.e. how many lights we plan on using and of what varieties.)

Thanks. Let's keep up the good work.

Just found this article about opening new bars/clubs. It is very informative and directly relates to our broader project idea.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/startupkits/article41460.html

So this past week we were able to speak with managers of both Luna and Anduzzi's. Overall I think it went pretty well; we were able to secure a venue at Anduzzi's and we are still waiting to hear back from Luna. Both businesses seemed interested in our event seeing as it would bring in a large crowd and hopefully expand their customer base.

One of the biggest disappointments was the fact that we cannot do an 18+ event. Apparently, they have tried things like that in the past and it just ends up with underagers drinking in the bathroom and things of that nature. If police were to see something like that the business could get shut down, so the liability risks are too high.

If Luna also agrees to do the event, our next step is to decide which venue is best for our event and then start working out the specifics.