Confessions of an Event Planner: Case Studies From the Real World of Events--How to Handle the Unexpected and How to Be a Master of Discretion

by Judy Allen

  Assignment

  Discuss other key emergency situation areas that should be covered and clear directions that should be given to event planning staff.

  Guests Gone Missing

  Q: How could the fishing boat incident have been handled so that the guest was not able to take control of the boat?

  A: Well, by having ground rules in place and reviewed with the captain of each boat as to whose requests they are to respond to. Having a staff member—local DMC staff or event planning staff—physically onboard each boat would have ensured the boat’s whereabouts were known.

  Assignment

  Name other types of events where guests go off in teams or individuals where you would need to put safety measures in place. One example is in an earlier chapter. (Answer: building in checkpoint stops on a car rally to keep close tabs on the cars. Another one is having a chase car to follow the hot air balloons.)

  CHAPTER 10

  TAKING AN ETHICAL STAND

  Em has to make the decision whether to keep or “fire” a client. She has her personal and company’s reputation at stake and knows that it is best to walk away from business that is not aligned with your company standards and ethical beliefs.

  NOVEMBER 4

  We’ve had the privilege of working with some wonderful clients. And, we’ve had our share of clients that just make you shake your head, knowing that they’re setting themselves up for getting caught one day with their hand in their company’s financial cookie jar.

  For one particular company, we did a six-week back-to-back program in a luxury resort. Each week the program repeated. Their incentive program was so successful that they outgrew the space they had on hold and the only recourse was to run back-to-back groups or move the dates to another time, which the client—the company president—did not want to do as what was originally a company event turned into a summer holiday for his four children and their nanny. The kids and nanny had their own suites and full run of the hotel and the company’s master expense account. Their nanny exercised very little control over the kids, as she was far too busy looking for a possible future husband to take her away from her babysitting fate.

  When the company pres received the total bill for his children’s six-plus-weeks-long free-for-all added to the cost to have his family housed in the resort’s top suites, he was stunned to see an amount close to six figures. He had been warned by Dee Dee that it was climbing excessively high but dismissed it with a wave of his hand every time she tried to make him aware of what was taking place. He simply signed off on all the bills presented to him, telling Dee Dee that he did not have time to deal with that and everything his children and their nanny wanted had his approval. Then it was our turn to be stunned when the resort’s sales rep came to us telling us that our client wanted those charges to disappear from the resort’s books and be distributed as fictitious ballroom rental charges so that they could be put through the company’s books and paid without becoming a red flag. The resort was happy to comply with the client’s request—they received many such creative costing demands—but wanted us to be aware of what was taking place so that we did not question the charges as the resort was presenting them. Reviewing and doing the final reconciliations falls under what we normally do, but it is one service that this particular client did not want us to provide. He wanted his personal executive assistant to handle the reconciliation, which is why he wanted to sign the hotel contract directly—which is not the norm—and which is why he had no problem going directly to the resort to make his request. Now we understood the reason why. We would have questioned the charges and his personal executive assistant, who had brought her spouse along on the trip for the six weeks.

  We found ourselves in one of those put-your-cards-on-the-table-and-be-prepared-to-walk-away moments and that’s exactly what we did. Our services officially ended once everyone was on their way home and we had fulfilled all of our contractual duties. The final reconciliation and how the client chose to handle his personal accounting was now between him and the resort. It was not surprising soon after to read in the newspapers that their company went out of business. Apparently, there were a lot of hands in that company cookie jar. There is a big difference between being a master of discretion and being a master of deception. Oh, and the nanny? It turned out to be a very financially advantageous six-week vacation for her, as she became wife number five—or was it six—of one of the top producers on the trip (we’d seen so many come and go it was easy to lose track).

  It is important to lead by example and I was proud of how my taking a stand with a client was embraced and supported by my staff. It’s hard walking away from half-a-million-dollar accounts, but it’s also hard living with yourself if you compromise your ethics. In life you have to choose carefully whom you want to partner with and get into bed with. When you are in a committed relationship, be it personal or business, giving your all to make your partnership a success, you have to think about how your actions will be perceived and how they will affect others. There are two entities involved. Ideally you want to align yourself with someone whose core personal values and work ethics are the same as yours.

  And my actions led Jake to take action with one of his clients. Jake had been working hard to land an account that was worth a lot of money to both him and our company—this one was well over $750,000—and was very close to sealing the deal, but when the time came, he couldn’t. In his meetings with his client, many after hours in his office over a drink, he had the chance to observe his client’s business practices and what he saw and heard left an impression.

  While talking to Jake the client would make the office rounds and go through employees’ personal effects and letters. Nothing was sacred. Although one employee must have noticed something different with her desk when she came in in the morning, as she had made a note in her daybook to talk to her manager about someone going through her things.

  The client apparently had an ear for music and had memorized his staff’s personal telephone passwords, which he was able to decipher from the notes played when they punched in their codes, and took great glee in playing one of his married sales staff’s messages from his mistress.

  The client often put people calling in on speakerphone when Jake was in the room, motioning him to be quiet and listen in without letting the other party know that someone else was in the room listening to what they thought was a private conversation.

  What none of his staff members, clients and suppliers knew was that in the client’s briefcase resting open on his filing cabinet was a hidden microphone he used to tape conversations. One day he had proudly showed it to Jake, leading Jake to wonder how many of his conversations had been taped and shared with others without his knowledge.

  Jake also knew that when his executives were in closed-door meetings with their employees the client listened in to their private talks by using his telephone’s intercom system. Unless the exec noticed the red light on, they had no idea that their meeting was being monitored. Jake did because, for whatever reason—maybe his client thought he had a partner in crime with Jake—he openly did that in front of him. Jake was appalled. And Jake was not pulled into his client’s teary sob stories about how much he missed his children (he was recently divorced and remarried). Pulling out their pictures to show others what a caring and feeling dad he was, was just an act. Jake had witnessed huge battles where neither parent wanted their kids for the weekend. Their kids were totally messed up and it was easy to see why.

  Appearances were everything to the client and it was more important to the client to drive a brand new expensive car every year, have golf and country club memberships that ran in the six figures and to give his new wife carte blanche to renovate their home as many times as her heart desired than to make sure that his office staff, whom Jake had seen struggling to get their jobs done, had the right equipment.

  Jake also saw the client take great pleasure in ripping his own customers off and taking profits that did not
belong to him and also knew from careful observance that the client thought that his employees’ work was beneath him. In crunch situations he would rather hire someone to stuff an envelope than roll up his sleeves and jump in to do what needed to be done. Or he’d slip out the back door to his office to escape while they worked late into the night without compensation.

  The client also boasted of how he was deliberately working his sales reps’ customers behind their backs, setting up meetings with them when his sales reps were out of town or on vacation and sometimes even in front of them. He would invite their clients to spend the weekend with him and his wife and cut the sales rep out of taking part to ensure personal loyalty to him, not the sales rep, should the rep ever decide to leave.

  The client also revealed to Jake how he worked the sales reps’ figures in his favor so that they did not receive all the monies due to them, and said if they were unhappy they could leave—which was better for him because if they left their clients stayed and they would receive no further revenue.

  This client took family members and friends along on his trips and billed the expenses back to the company, listing them as customers.

  This client was on the take whenever and however he could and he made it clear to Jake that in return for business he expected free vacations, and had already provided Jake with a list of his favorite brands of liquor and wine.

  Jake thought long and hard about what the client had shared with him and wondered what else he was capable of doing. In the end, Jake said—and directly to him—that the client’s standards were not his and he could not do business with him. I was very proud of him. We all were.

  And Jake? He found a replacement client that was the perfect match for both him and us. He experienced a yin yang moment when he met a client in the same industry as the other but with an entirely different set of principles and who radiated personal and professional integrity. Jake said the experience left him feeling like he had an “Alice in Wonderland” moment. This new client, recently divorced as well, put the well-being of his children and his employees first.

  This client rented a house in the same area as his ex-wife so that his kids always had close access to their mother and would not have to be separated from their after-school friends, and felt that having them for the weekend was a privilege and a pleasure.

  This client lived in a fairly empty house and drove an old car until he could afford to do otherwise, because any funds that came in during the early years were invested into the company and his employees, making sure that they had all that they needed to get through what they were hired to do. He worked side by side with his employees when a job had to get done. He stayed till the end. If he couldn’t help, he could at least make coffee and ensure they took time out to eat.

  This client’s business grew in leaps and bounds and attracted their industry’s top talent because of the respect he showed those with whom he worked and did business and everyone, including us, pulled together to give their personal and professional best back to this client and add to his company’s tremendous success.

  And the other client? His business limped along and never achieved anything near what his competition did, as stories of his deceptions and underhandedness came to light and swirled about in their industry. Jake heard horror stories from his peers and was grateful it wasn’t him or us going through what they went through. Jake learned that becoming a master of discernment is as important as mastering the art of discretion.

  TAKING AN ETHICAL STAND: Q&A

  Responsibility to the Company

  Q: When should employees go to their employers with clients’ questionable acts?

  A: As soon as possible. That will allow the event planning company to decide on an appropriate course of action that will protect their company, their employees and in many cases their client’s company if the questionable actions are from a company employee as opposed to the company owner. And it’s the same in reverse. One business reported a sales rep’s questionable behavior to an event planning owner when in order to secure their business, the sales rep was making promises of sending the client on free fam trips that would be to destinations of his choosing for a personal vacation. In another case, a hotel reported an event planning staff member to the event planning company owner when they discovered that the employee, in charge of staying on after the group to handle the reconciliation, had invited friends down to stay with them and were charging all their expenses back to the client’s master account. One freelance trip director felt that she needed to tell the event planning company owners she was working for that their sales rep had joined in an impromptu “naked pool party” at one client event they were in charge of, joining some of their client’s guests. The sales rep’s unprofessional antics cost the event planning company their client, as the client felt it was the responsibility of the event planning company to keep his guests under control and not join in or encourage their unprofessional shenanigans.

  Assignment

  Review the client behavior in the chapter and list those that would warrant action being taken and company heads being brought in to develop a course of appropriate action. What lines would have to be crossed for you to consider “firing” your client?

  Ethical Behavior

  Q: How can guidelines best be presented as to expected ethical behavior on the part of event planning companies, their employees, freelance staff, their suppliers and their clients?

  A: Establishing a formal company policy, procedures and protocol manual that is reviewed and signed off by staff members will start the progress. And pre event meetings and post event reviews are other opportunities to open discussion on company codes of conduct.

  Assignment

  Make a list of areas that should be covered in a company policy, procedures and protocol manual and then create a detailed list of what needs to be addressed under each heading. For example, one area could be company dress and then under that heading would be in office, client meetings, supplier presentations, fam trips and site inspections—during business and during off time, and while on-site, during business and during off time, etc. And then do the same regarding expected codes of conducts from suppliers and clients and recommend a course of appropriate action. For example, during the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Sarah Palin reportedly came out to greet those who were conducting a business meeting with her at her hotel during the campaign dressed in a towel, with a wet towel wrapped around her head. Many event planning, client and supplier meetings take place outside the boardroom and sometimes do take place in their hotel guestrooms. If you are an event planning staff member who needed to speak with your client while on program during a stay at a resort, what would be the appropriate course of action to take if your client answered the door wrapped in a towel?

  CHAPTER 11

  SOCIAL AGENDA

  Em and her team take on their first nonprofit event as their way to give back. After attending several charity events and seeing major missteps costing the nonprofit company tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fund-raising—and after receiving numerous calls to step in at the very last minute—Em concedes to take one on from the very beginning. She experiences firsthand the challenges nonprofits face when creating events with limited funds; trying to raise sponsorship dollars and awareness; and depending on their appointed chairs—patrons of their cause—to help them bring in much needed dollars, attendees, silent auction articles, publicity and volunteers to do the work and help them to run the event.

  NOVEMBER 16

  Dee Dee, Daniela and I felt we had been transported to an alternate event planning universe when we received a frantic phone call from a stranger who turned out to be a full-fledged, lifelong, card-carrying member of a very exclusive club, the Ladies Who Lunch a.k.a. The High Society Lunch Bunch. It was surprising for us to discover that a very select few of its members were on a mission not to better the world through their acts of good deeds but to better their social ranking by using events
with a cause as a means to help them gain social status and garner good personal PR.

  Some of the actions we witnessed gave us pause but also gave us some very valuable lessons in return, including a new appreciation for what nonprofit organizations face when putting together an event without dollars allocated to fund it. They have the added pressure of not only raising dollars and awareness for their cause but the dollars to run it as well. They do an amazing job, but there is a cost they can end up paying, depending on who they partnered with as their event’s chairperson, as we discovered. We soon learned that there are two very different types of charity chairs. With more and more corporations partnering with nonprofits, what we took away gave us valuable insight as to what we would be facing now that many of our corporate clients wanted us to start exploring cause marketing event options that would tie their name to a charity that was a fit for them.

  The events these Ladies Who Lunch—PamperedPartyPrincesses was our original pet name for them—got involved with came with a definite social agenda. When we answered their panic-stricken call to help (which we did for altruistic reasons; we viewed it as a means to give back by contributing our talents for free to what we believed was a very worthy cause) we were taken behind the scenes into a world of socialite chairs and committee members who were using chairing and heading committees for gala fund-raisers as a means to climb the social ladder and to achieve international visibility. Their personal agendas of social power, press, fashion, increasing their standing or controlling their social circles, even finding their first or next husband came first. For those using charity events and fund-raising for social climbing purposes, the events they lent their names to came second, and so did making sure that funds were actually raised. These Ladies Who Lunch were in a league of their own—in league together and in love with their own press.