Preparing for a publicity event
This morning I’m starting to feel the pressure of prepping for the celebrity gifting suite. Oh boy. I’m excited, nervous, and stressed - and all equally. And that’s ok. Keeps me moving, right?
We’ve done the initial braindump of everything we need to have ready to go by January 11. It’s a big list. Now, the schedule, so I can break down and prioritize all those items. Most of the items fall into two categories: Product & Marketing Materials. Which will be good stuff to have developed for KIDShow - it really is all going to work together well.
But the stress comes from the insane list of stuff to be done from ordering the gift bags with our logo, to designing the coupons and catalog, getting it all printed and that’s nothing to do with getting enough sample product together. Sometimes, when I sit down and write things out, it calms me down, helps me to focus. Right now, it’s stressing me out.:-)
What I do need to calm down enough to think about is deadlines baby. I want to have it all together a week ahead of time, and have that last week to work up sample displays. So that gives me three weeks with a trip out of town for Xmas in-between.
OK. From there I know we have three weeks for product and marketing materials. Think about printing time and delivery time for the marketing materials and I should have them done in a week and a half to be safe. I need to have those ready for printing by two days after Christmas. I should have the final prototype of all products by the same time, just to be safe.
If final prototypes are finished in a week and a half, that gives a week and a half for any necessary production. The other consideration is custom items - I’m going to have only two weeks before the event to get personalized orders completed because that’s when we’ll start receiving confirmation of the attendees. Our contractors are prepared for these rush orders.
Now I’ll just take a look at all the tasks that fall under each of those deadlines and break down my priorities. Wow, I stuck with writing it out a little and I feel a lot more sane. Except that the deadlines are totally insane, but we’re not going to talk about that.
We can accomplish amazing things, we can accomplish amazing things…
What’s really laughable is that all of that is just the event prep. We still need to do all the other business running junk (like newsletters are due and we need to keep the sample process moving for the tradeshow). But, everywhere I’ve ever worked it’s been insane deadlines and too much to do and somehow we all roll on…
Add comment December 16th, 2006