10 Major Things Your Event Manager Does
The absolute first thing that I think of when asked what an event manager does , is a meme that went viral a few years ago. The whole what everyone thinks I do, vs what I really do.
In all honesty, sometimes it can feel like we do absolutely everything! Because, sometimes we really do. I am sure you are wondering though what it really looks like behind all the smoke and mirrors of event planning, and if you were to chat to an event planner and engage one, what would they really do?
It’s easy to sit at the final event and see the final product, but just like anything, there are always so many moving parts that happen behind the scenes that you probably don’t even think about.
We’re basically like superheros, from planning, to coordinating and all the problem solving that magically happens behind the scenes to make sure that your event runs like clockwork.
What do we really do though on a day to day basis? The first thing I am going to say is that this list is not even close to exhaustive. It would take me just as long as it takes me to plan an event, as it would to list out everything that we do. But here’s a bit of a snapshot to give you an idea of what goes on behind the scenes.
- Understanding your vision and goals
The very first job we undertake when we start working on a new event, is to understand your vision and your goals. We always talk about how important it is to understand the goals of your event and what we actually want to achieve by doing this event.
We talk about this a lot in our event strategy blueprint; it’s important we set out the end goal so we can make sure that our planning process is sending us in the right direction.
2. Budget Management
Events can be expensive, and more so, the budgets can blow out really fast. Adding a little bit here, and upgrading this element here can very quickly result in being thousands of dollars of budget.
Not only do event planners make sure that we are keeping as close to this budget as well, we also help to provide advice and guidance on where to focus your budget to best achieve your goal.
For instance, a charity gala where we want to raise lots of money for a great cause, probably won’t benefit from lots of the budget being spent on floral arrangements for the tables. What it will benefit from is incredible fundraising activations and ways to get donors out of their chairs and give big.
3. Venue Sourcing
What is an event without a great venue for the event. Finding the perfect venue can be a difficult task. The venue’s suitability can determine a lot of elements of the event. Their availability can affect your event date, their capacity can affect your guest list, their style can affect your styling etc.
The venue is always the next step once a goal and budget is established. You can’t start writing guest lists and making plans to send out invitations, when you don’t know where everyone is going to.
4. Vendor Management
This includes all of the cogs in the wheel who make the event happen. Think of the event planner like the matchmaker, who matches you up with the perfect supplier for your needs, and then becomes the conductor of the orchestra to make sure all of the suppliers work together and deliver a beautiful symphony of an event.
These vendors might include your AV, florists, catering, drink service, you name it.
Whilst just picking any vendor can be easy, this can be riddled with risks. Are you paying too much? Will they do a good job? Will they even show up?
This is where your event planner really will start to shine. We have our little black book of suppliers. We’ve done the trailing for you to make sure that the suppliers we put forward are cost effective and reliable.
5. Guest Management
Having a fabulous event is one thing, but you need to make sure your guests know about the event, can get the appropriate details and are accounted for in planning.
Event planners can also help with managing your guests. This typically involves the client providing us with a detailed list of your guests, their contact details and their names.
From here, using our internal RSVP management platform, we will create your invitation, invite your guests and prompt them for their RSVP when they take a little too long.
6. Styling and theming
Not all event planners are stylists, but at FAME we do both. The styling and theming is incredibly important to help bring that vision to life. To help make sure your brand translates in an event, and to make sure your guests feel exactly as they should when they walk into the room.
Styling involves a deep dive conversation so we can understand your brand, and of course back to step 1, so we can understand your goal.
From here, we put together an in depth mood board and present this to our clients. This mood board makes sure we’re all on the same page. Sometimes clients can be saying modern, luxury, and we’re both saying the same thing, but we’re picturing something different.
This mood board gets signed off, and we get to work delivering a style guide for review. This means when this style guide hits our clients desks, we are all in alignment of the path we’re going down.
7. Runsheet production
Any event planner will tell you, their run sheet is like their bible. It’s essentially our step by step action plan to deliver an incredible event on your event day.
The run sheet includes timings of the day, who should be arriving when, supplier details, floor plans, styling mock ups, guest information and every single contact detail we may ever need.
This bible is what everyone works off on the day to make sure the orchestra plays a beautiful symphony and it doesn’t sound like nails down a chalkboard.
The run sheet will be developed in consultation with you as the client, the venue and every single supplier involved.
When we develop a run sheet we are thinking about not only how you as the client want the day to flow, but we also need to factor in; when we can get access to the venue to set up, how long suppliers need to set up, ensuring suppliers aren’t setting up on top of each other; the venues other events affecting food service time, and myriad of other factors to ensure the day runs as smoothly as possible.
Of course, during this whole process, we are always considering the worst-case scenario and the what-ifs.
8. Risk Management
The bigger the events get, the more moving parts involved and the more public the event location, the more risk that is involved with the execution of this event.
Think about a little birthday party you may host at home, versus a fun run with 1000 people walking through the busy streets of Brisbane. Of course, the fun run is going to have more risk involved.
Higher risk doesn’t mean we don’t do the event, it just means as your event planning team, we need to take a few more steps to ensure the safety and success of your event.
Risk management is the processing of identifying the risks involved with the potential event and putting safe guards in place to either eliminate the risk, or at least reduce it to an acceptable level where elimination is not possible.
9. Permits and compliance
Just like everything safety above, it’s important to ensure that we have all the necessary permits and permissions to do what we want to do.
This step isn’t as important for your smaller events in a venue, but for the bigger outside events in public, this step starts to become more and more important.
The last thing you want is to have an event shut down by the council or police because the correct permits were not in place.
10. Coordinating the Event Day
This is an important element for your event planner, but realistically if everything is planned to perfection in the weeks and months leading up to the event, this just becomes a day of orchestrating these plans coming together.
Whilst most of the time, an event planner’s job can be fairly straightforward on an event day, don’t forget when things go wrong, they are the first person you will call.
An event planner’s event day can either be incredibly cruisey, or outright chaos. If the rain starts pouring on an outdoor event, or the main panel speaker can’t get in because their flight got delayed, or maybe there’s a massive pile up on the main bridge your guests have to travel on to attend the event.
All of these little or big things that crop up become your event planner’s responsibility to pivot around and problem-solve to ensure your event still runs as smoothly as possible.
All up, this really is only a fraction of the items that make up the job description as an event planner. The most important thing you need to consider is if you have time or the skill sets to do these all yourself, or if you should look to consider outsourcing it.If you think outsourcing might be the way to go, we would love to chat more about how we can help!
