Event Planning 101
October 21, 09
This post is brought to you by Sharon, our Director of Communications. She’ll be “blabbing” about Purple Lab culture, PR, and what goes on behind the scenes for her office (a.k.a. mother-in-law’s card table in the middle of Karen’s living room).
Here it is!
As Purple Lab’s Communications Director, my responsibility is to make sure our products and brand are introduced to the media in an interactive and memorable way. One way to do this is by hosting an event.
Last Friday, we held a product launch event for our lip gloss SWAC (Sealed With A Cure). If you are unfamiliar with SWAC, it is a yummy pink lip gloss that we created in conjunction with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation. The color of the gloss is named Nancy, honoring a brave, courageous woman who passed away a few years ago from the fatal disease.
Purple Lab events always evoke the spirit of our brand – female confidence and empowerment; the only thing that that may be modified is the theme or activity. But the bottom line is, they’re always intimate, meaningful, and – I know I’m biased – amazing!
The step-by-step guide to planning an event!
Event Theme:
When choosing an event theme, think about the message you want to portray about your product. In this case, we wanted to raise awareness of the disease, SWAC and Nancy. We decided that an afternoon tea would be perfect.
A tea party, though, was not enough to make a lasting impression. We needed some uplifting energy in the room. We invited the founders of TNBCF to speak – and Nancy’s mother, daughter, and sister-in-law. It was a beautiful, personal touch that meant a lot to all of us.
Jolie, Nancy’s 7 year-old, wearing a sophisticated little houndstooth suit, trimmed in pink, is on the left and stole the showi
But we wanted more!
Meet Geralyn Lucas, author of “Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy.”
She’s gorgeous and has more light and energy than anyone we’ve ever met!
Geralyn was diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age (she was just 28 and a successful story-editor at 20/20) and inspired women everywhere by wearing red lip stick to her mastectomy (she was always scared of wearing it and finally had the guts when she went under the knife). Like us, she believes that if you’re fighting breast cancer, it’s okay to think about makeup because it makes you feel feminine and beautiful, especially when the disease is something that, at its core, attacks our femininity. Geralyn beat cancer and today travels all over the country telling her story.
Now that we chose a theme, the next thing we needed was a venue. Lucky for us, not too soon after meeting Geralyn, we stumbled upon our venue.
Venue:
Geralyn is a member of the fabulous, member’s only club, Norwood.
It is the most charming townhouse nestled on a chic block in the West Village. When you walk in, there is a buzzing and spacious Grand Hotel-like bar on the parlor floor, a private dining area and reception space on the garden floor, dining rooms on the second floor, a less formal salon with lounging areas of decadent grandeur on the third floor, and up on the fourth floor a “penthouse” space for meetings, screenings, and special events. Fabulous! Chic! We were ready to move in!
Decor:
The event space didn’t need much because it had pink lighting, perfect cocktail tables, beautiful white linens, 40s deco sofas, fabulous art, and a large screen for showing part of Geralyn’s movie, which was made for Lifetime and starred Sarah Chalk.
To add a little bit of flavor, we sprinked purple-wrapped Hershey Kisses on all the tables and made SWAC and Huge Lips Skinny Hips in Red Sole the centerpieces. It looked better in person because the flash kind of whitened out the image.
Usually the next step would be catering but since we decided on an afternoon tea, assorted teas, scones and pastries were a simple choice! So, we had our theme, venue and catering.
Next, guests!
Guest List:
At Purple Lab, we choose to keep our events small and intimate so each guest can get to know the brand and each other. We also think about how the crowd will mix with each other. Not only do we want to meet new people, but we want the guests to meet new people! The right cocktail of girls always makes the event complete! We invite 10-15 F.O.P.L.s (friends of Purple Lab) each time so everyone will have the chance to experience the “Purple Love” at one point or another.
About a month before the event, we send out a “Save the Date” to our guests to mark their calendars. Two weeks later, actual e-vite is sent (um, we can’t afford to do printed invitations yet!). Besides, e-vites are better for the environment we live in now. It’s a dotcom world, people!
Our invite – so cute!
Our lucky guests are always sent home with a Take Away or Memento (think of it as the grown up version of a goodie bag).
Take Away:
At the end of each event, it is customary to send your guests away with a few memorable tokens. The product (SWAC) and press materials are, of course, a must. But we’re Purple Lab! We needed to spice things up! To go along with the theme of Geralyn’s book, we challenged our guests to wear red lipstick to a place they would normally, i.e. to a mammogram, during labor, running a marathon, meeting his parents.
The SWAC challenge served two purposes. It reaffirmed Garalyn’s message that wearing red lipstick exudes confidence and positive energy and gave our guests an action to perform that made our event message live on long past the event was over. Lastly, our friend Crystal, the geinus baker behind Tasty Morsels Bakery, the yummiest, cutest cookie company, designed branded cookies for us! Juicy pink lips that said “SWAC” on them in our font! So good, they almost didn’t make the gift bags!
I mean… YUM!
There you have it!
Those are the basics to planning a product launch.
In case you were wondering, the event was fabulous (can’t you tell by the photos)! And we’ll post a video to give you more color soon!
If you are interested in coming to an upcoming Purple Lab event, email me at Sharon@PurpleLabNYC.com.
Mwah!
Sharon
Purple Lab Communications Queen
Tags: Karen Robinovitz, Lip gloss, Purple Lab, sealed with a cure
