Celea McInerny's e-Portfolio
Event Planning
Project Description:
Before this internship, I planned an event for Bellingham's entrepreneur community. By having that experience, I was more that excited to assist with Keller Williams's upcoming events. For the Historic Fairhaven Festival and Ski to Sea, I created booth activties for the volunteers to interact with the patrons. For these festival events, I was tasked to design games that are both appealing and fun. I needed to choose appropriate actvities for both kids and adults and that also related to the real estate industry. I also was tasked with creating an email campaign through Bullsai to promote our owner's event, Re8Expo. I created a list of 19 emails, one for each day, to explain the event.
Project Objectives:
-Create family friendly fair games
-Incorporate real estate themes
-Create a comprehensive packet for fair activities
-Create an enticing email campaign
-Purchase festival material (i.e. tent)
Project Process:
The process to organize events is quite enjoyable because I got to focus on the user experience. In order to complete this project, I collected data for hours before making any decisions. For festival preperation, I researched tips online and then applied a real estate theme to the activities. I came up with a lengthly list of ideas for which my manager can choose from. I put myself in the patron's shoes and came up with ideas that are easy but fun do to. For the Re8Expo, I studied the workbook beforehand to understand the event. I then created a 19 email campaign that explains the tools in the book. The email campaign forced me to vary my emails so that the audience is enticed to sign up for the event.
The Historic Fairhaven Festival was a trial run setup for our Ski to Sea event. As the presenting sponsor for Ski to Sea, the management team really wanted to gain a lot of benefits from the exposure. I was tasked with creating an entire activity system for the Historic Fairhaven Festival. I used the Northwest MLS system to gather data on home prices in Fairhaven. I then assembled a Microsoft Publisher flier to use at the event. I chose three homes that were around the same price. The patrons were then asked to guess which home cost the most. Out of all the entries for the winning home, only one person would walk away with a prize package worth $400. I then organized a kid's game. The kids were asked to guess how many marbles were in a jar; and if they guessed correctly they would win a gift card to our local indoor trampoline playground. For these two actvities, I created entry cards to collect information such as name, number, and email address. The actvities were a hit and the event went smoothly.
Ski to Sea was a huge success for us because of the exposure we recieved. Over 20,000 people were at the event and we displayed our business prominetly. I had more responsibility for this event compared to the Historic Fairhaven Festival. I designed, quoted, and ordered a 10x10 custom popup tent for Keller Williams. This was a fun project because I had freedom to implement the logo and recieve quotes from many maufacturers. We chose a real estate trivia game for this event. For this game, I used TrendGraphix and Northwest MLS to retrieve data on the local market. I then put this data in question format (see appendix 3.1). Whoever answered a question correctly recieved a $20 gift certificate to the Barkley movie theater. For this event, I also coordinated the volunteers. This included recruiting and sending out informational emails to the volunteers. As the presenting sponsor of the event, there was a lot of responsibility on my shoulders for everything to go correctly.
Re8Expo is our region owner's event. Ben Kinney is known nationwide for his lively real estate seminar. After reading the handbook, I was able to understand the event and construct informational emails to send to our 400 agents between Burlington and Bellingham. These emails were sent through our Bullsai system daily (appendix 3.2) I recieved positive feedback from my supervisor that my writing was brilliant. I was also able to attend this seminar in Seattle. It was so great to see a banquet room of driven KW agents. I also really enjoyed watching our owner encourage the audience and drive them to be more succesful.
Project Outcomes:
The Historic Fairhaven Festival, Ski to Sea, and Re8Expo all concluded successfully. I was capable of being creative and developing festival actvties to engage our patrons. I was really excited to see my work in action at these festivals. With thousands of people interacting with Keller Williams, we made a positive precence on the community. I was also able to organize the event operations in a time sensitive situation. Following up with the tent manufacturer was a grand responsibility-especially when it was actually delayed. Writing a 19 email campaign can be challenging because keeping constant energy is important. After recieving positive feedback on the email campaign, I am glad I was able to contribute.