Wednesday, April 1, 2009

KC Event Planners Talk About the State of the Industry


Bernays Saunce mothership EventPros, Inc.'s owners are featured in an interview in Special Events Magazine, where they discuss the state of the Special Events industry and the birth of EventPros, Inc. They also touch on marketing and public relations firms doing special events:
In 2008, for instance, while other event business owners were wringing their hands about tightened budgets, canceled events and the prospect of more bad news to come, Svoboda and Short debuted a communications services department. As Short explains, the duo created the new department to compete directly with marketing and public relations firms that were cutting into EventPros' market share.

“These companies were handling events, but they didn't even like doing it — they were just doing it because their clients needed it,” Short says. “Because they weren't making any extra money on events, they weren't hiring us to do them. They were just doing the events themselves, and not doing a very good job.”

With its new division, EventPros is able not only to sell clients on the strength of its event-production capabilities but to add value by offering marketing and communication services such as Web development, scriptwriting and video production. Short adds, “It speaks to our fiscal responsibility that we were able to bring in-house a lot of services we were farming out.”

Read the rest here.