This post was originally published by Andrew D. of 5614 Marketing in Denver, Colorado.

It was a beautiful day at a new housing community located about 25 miles east of Downtown Denver near Denver International Airport. This was home, no pun intended, to the first event that I have participated in since the COVID19 outbreak. To give a little background about my involvement, I was approached by a former colleague that I worked with at an agency in Boulder, Colorado. When he approached me, I was first hesitant mainly not knowing if the event was actually going to happen or if it was going to be another empty promise that our industry has been experiencing. When we got the final green light, my mind started racing with concepts, ideas and fears of what might happen. Will we be in the middle of the next outbreak? Will we get housed by the press for getting people to gather? I couldn’t have been more wrong, gladly.

Just to give some background about this event, the client and some of the concepts. The client, and this is pretty common in the experiential space, was another agency that represented the marketing arm of the developers of a new housing community. I hope that was easy to follow… We were tasked with pulling off, what we called, “A Social Distanced Summer Celebration.” The event was split into two activations that took place over two separate days, and I’ll explain why that’s important here in a minute. The first day was a VIP event that included city officials, home builders, realtors and current residences of the community. The second day was open to the public to come enjoy and experience this new growing community. The event was anchored with live music, catering and social distanced areas to socialize.

Starting with some of the back of house items, the Brand Ambassadors were trained both prior to the event and at the event on the importance of safety and social distancing. The team were required to wear masks, each team member was given hand sanitizer, they were offered gloves to wear as well. Not only was this for personal protection, but for the protection of the guest in attendance. This was not only a huge emphasis for our team but was an emphasis for the clients. We wanted to make sure that we crossed our i’s and dotted out t’s. To provide some insight into the management of the Brand Ambassadors, just like any other event when you are occasionally state the “put your phone away” to the team, you can go ahead and add “put you mask on” to your list of one liners. Most were very compliant, but it did take reminding for some.

To further explain the roll of the staff onsite, which was my main responsibility, the team was tasked with a few different call outs.

1. Safety first.

2. Assist with registration

3. Drive golf carts to transport guest

4. To maintain a normal flow of consumera and cleanliness of the venue

Starting with Safety. All Brand Ambassadors and staff were tasked with making sure that the guest were following the protocol that was put in place to host the event. We were granted a permit by the city, and we were certain that they were going to stop by and check in on the event. With that in mind we made sure that we did everything we could knowing that we would be a model for future events. When the guest arrived at check in they would receive a card that had a Call to Action on the back and a list of safety measure on the front, this included the following: Social Distancing, Face Covering, Hand Sanitizer, Individual Beverages, Individually Served Food Options and Open Cart Transportation. We wanted to make sure that the guest was aware of the emphasis of safety. And for the most part everyone was very accepting and willing to abide by this.

The next task was to assist with the registration of the guest as they arrived. This was probably the most important step of the whole event. The basic registration process took place and was done pretty close to the “normal” process we did before, with a few exceptions. First the lines were marked with x’s that were 6ft apart and that helped with the social distancing aspect. To that point this was something that most people were familiar with, now that most restaurants and coffee shops (which is where I’m wiring this) have made this a standard. Each guest received a gift bag that included the follow: a bandana, which was to be used as a face covering, a personal water bottle and a small pocket-sized hand sanitizer. All of the items, minus the hand sanitizer were branded with the community’s logo. The items that we gave were intended to be used immediately onsite to help with the safety. I think a common theme you will see throughout is the emphasis on safety, which is important. Not only are we verbally mentioning it, giving it in written form, but following up with the tools for the guest to utilize.

The next big task of the team was the transportation of the guest from their vehicles to registration and the transportation of the guest from the registration to the various model homes. Again, with an emphasis on safety. There were a few guidelines that we followed for this component of the activation. First, we would only have one party on the golf cart at a time. We didn’t want to intermingle different groups of people in guidance of social distancing. At the conclusion of each of the rides we would wipe down the carts throughly with a disinfectant and disposable towel. With multiple groups using these carts we wanted to make sure there was no transmission in between groups. We would also wipe down the carts a second time once returning back to the registration area as both a visual cue as well as a safety measure to ensure we did a through job. The big take away here was just that, not that many people were concerned with the cleanliness, but that we were taking the right steps to ensure safety. Most guest jumped on the cart as they normally would, excited to get driven around.

The final task for the team was a few things. It was to oversee and guide the guest from touch point to touch point in a safe and social distanced manner. To be honest, 99.9% of people were very willing and receptive to all of the requirements and measure that we put forth, which was a bit of a surprise for me. But I’ll take it! People enjoyed the music in social distanced circles that were placed around the lawn, followed the flow of traffic lines and traffic arrows and were very receptive when asked to either put a mask on or wait till the area was clear before proceeding.

The VIP Event

In trying to make this as educational as possible, I’ll walk though some of the activations and than go into detail about how we adjusted to make it “COVID” compliant.

The VIP afternoon was highlighted with live music, catering and beautiful views of Downtown Denver and the front range mountains. As previously mentioned, this was for city officials, home builders, realtors and current residents to come out and enjoy the beautiful parks and festival like event.

Equipped with a team of 15 Brand Ambassadors and venue staff we produced a very successful evening. Starting with registration, we used the above procedures making sure that everyone was aware of the guidelines. Guest would receive their gift bags and be on their way to enjoy a beautiful evening.

The catering was done by a local farm to table caterer, and they couldn’t have been more professional and creative with their presentation. The best way to describe the delivery of the food would be to call it a “bento box,” made up of four finger foods and individual packaged for the ease and confidence. Beverages as well as the food boxes were cleaned and handled with gloves by the catering team, similar to the food, the beverages were passed out in closed single use cans. The first thing you’re probably thinking, especially if you live in Colorado, yes we did recycle as much of this as possible including the cans from the beverages as well as the food boxes.

Once they received their food they proceeded to tables and chairs that were in a field located around a stage where we had local live musicians come out and play. Each table was six feet apart and was marked with a circle on the ground to show a “safe space.” Once inside, guest were aloud to take their masks off and enjoy their food and drink while listening to music. Again, this has been very consistent protocol in Colorado for some time now. Guest weren’t really going out of their normal routine like when visiting a restaurant, and I think that’s very important to note.

There were some key learnings from this evening that I think can apply to any event taking place during this time. The first would be to “stick to normal.” Like I previously mentioned the majority of the protocols that we put into place are nothing new, they are things that you would normally do when you go out to dinner at a restaurant. The x’s or marks on the floor for places the stand, the wearing of your masks when you’re not at the table and social distancing. We just applied them to this new environment and educating the guest when they arrived. I think because of this it was an easy transition for the guest to make. Everyone felt comfortable and willing to comply because of this familiarity.

The Public Event

The following day we hosted an event for the open public to attend. This was very similar to the VIP day, but different at the same time. To help mitigate the traffic that we were expecting, we utilized Eventbrite.com reservation platform to make sure that not all guest showed up at once, clogging our social distancing and flow of traffic requirements. Just like any free event that you put on Eventbrite, everyone signs up and no one shows up. I’m kidding of course. I’ll go into this a little more at the end. This also gave us an idea of peak times and helped our staffing plan. Just like the VIP event we had catering via food trucks, live music and entertainment, and transportation from venue to all over the property. I wont replicate any of the above, but the learnings we took from the VIP day we double down on for the public. Again, this was a very successful day. The food trucks sold out of food, with an hour to go. Not ideal but ideal at the same time. The local musical acts had fans watching and dancing to their music. And the homes had lines out the door to view them. All in all, we couldn’t have asked for a better day! Similar key learnings to the VIP days, it wasn’t about recreating the wheel it was about using the current things that guest are comfortable with and doing them at this outdoor event.

Guest and workers alike were excited to get back outside and be at a live event again. In talking with some of the partners like the food trucks, they had to rethink their strategy during this time. Many of them, if not all, were small business/ single owner operator type operations. I had a great conversation with the ice cream provider about what he has done to change his business model moving forward. They are used to spending their time at large scale festivals and events, they have totally changed their model moving forward. They have changed their scooped ice cream to single packaged ice cream pops and have moved to a mobile, drive about the neighborhood ice cream truck. He mentioned that their new business model isn’t sustainable but is paying the bills during this uncertain time.

The bands had similar things to say. Most haven’t played to a live audience in 6 months. A few have been performing to cameras on livestreams during the time of quarantine and mentioned that it was nice to get out of their recording room and play to a live audience. We had one musician enjoy it so much, that after his set he took his personal speaker and mic and went to one of the satellite locations and just play for the attendees.

To wrap it all up, events are back! If you want them to be. Will we ever get back to the Coachella style events? Not for the immediate future. I think this is a great time to create small, under 1,000, personal events. Guest, musicians and vendors are all excited and anxious to get back to events. When you follow the protocol that’s in place by your local city it creates a safe and fun experience. I think the ROI model for experiential is out the window for an event like this, but the residual that you will get via social can fill in for some of that. When you create protocol that’s familiar to the guest, it makes for an easy transaction. The demographics of this group did skew into the 30s — 50s, just to provide some additional context.

5614 Marketing is a full-service agency with an emphasis in experiential. We have worked with clients like Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Gnarbox and Illegal Pete’s creating various consumer experiences from sampling to trade show displays.

If you are looking to host an event during this pandemic, please reach out directly to us at info@fiftysix14.com.

Website: www.fiftysix14.com