Process

Now that we have the new branding in place for our core foundational elements we had a lot of new ammunition to use for our dream force event which was held at the Terra Gallery in San Francisco. Because this refresh to our branding was new there was no need to create any type of campaign brand or sub-brand for this event. All we had to do was lean into these new elements and use this event almost like a megaphone to make a splash in the market. This also enabled my team with a great situation for them to test, explore, and experiment with these new brand elements.

Let’s break it down:

• Step 1: Kick-off meeting with the head of events and all stakeholders involved

• Step 2: Build out the Asana board and bill of materials needed

• Step 3: Collaborate with other teams to make sure each group had thier marching orders and time frames

• Step 4: Execute

• Step 5: Always leave time for reviews and revisions. Personally, I hate sandbagging but in most cases, folks will ALWAYS wait till the last minute which will inevitably cause a bottleneck so the best thing for you to do is plan for that. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Lucky for us we had an incredible external events company called Prospect Events (Would highly recommend) who acted as the liaison between us and other external vendors as well as a killer internal event person and project manager, Emily Pisani and Justin Fox.

I can't stress enough how important it is for your senior leaders to clearly define each person and each team’s roles and responsibilities before you kick off a big project like this. What happens is, if anyone on the team is even a little bit unclear on what they need to do and by when it creates panic and chaos for everyone at multiple stages and on multiple levels throughout the campaign. It may seem like a very simple step or it's very easy to assume everyone knows what their role is but when the heat gets turned up and timelines get tighter you would be surprised how many people will try to skip steps or skip processes in order to "get shit done”.

My suggestion is to have a kick-off meeting with the leaders of each team to articulate what the project is and the goals of the project. Once that is established and agreed upon by the leaders of each department then you can have a meeting that outlines timelines for deliverables and accountability. That is the perfect place to record a brief or any type of document that outlines this information and acts as a contract to be referenced throughout the project if someone tries to skip the line or gets behind.

It’s also a great place to mention consequences or “what happens if” scenarios so if someone does miss their deadline or something changes, what the result of those actions will be. I find this piece to be extremely helpful as in most companies there are always repeat offenders who like to extend deadlines or create unnecessary work for others to hear and acknowledge that there are consequences for these types of actions and get everyone aligned on the plan and agree to stick to it.