11 minute read
From Best New Event to COVID Cancellation: The True Story of the 2020 DSM Book Festival
By Colleen Murphy
Last September I was feeling on top of the world when our team won IFEA’s Gold Pinnacle Award for Best New Event for the DSM Book Festival. The book festival concept had been tried before in Greater Des Moines (DSM) with varying degrees of success. We had taken two years to plan the new Festival in a way that would be different than previous attempts, both in concept and content as well as in public perception. This was a risk, and quite frankly there were some people who doubted it could be successful. Receiving the award meant that the Book Festival was no longer successful from only our perspective. IFEA’s recognition cemented our achievement.
As with many events, the planning for the DSM Book Festival’s second chapter began the moment the first was completed. Although we saw the event’s accomplishment, the lingering question in my mind circled around how could we make this the start of something great. We had to ensure people would attend the second year. If we had a lot to prove in our first year, the stakes felt higher now.
We doubled down our efforts and although we felt that we had a great lineup of authors and programming, our social media metrics weren’t yet trending as high as they did that first year. On March 6, 2020 we had three weeks until the event. I was eager to really ramp things up and do whatever I could to bring the community to our Festival on March 28. It was go time! Then I got the phone call that was the start of the end.
The DSM Book Festival featured four headlining authors who were coming to DSM from all parts of the country – California, Washington, Texas and Georgia. The phone call was from one of the headliners agents. They wanted to discuss options to create distance between the author and the audience because of the coronavirus. I was familiar with the coronavirus, or COVID-19, but at that time it was not in Iowa or the Midwest. Since it wasn’t impacting my daily life, I had only lightly paid attention to the situation until this phone call.
The agent requested that we remove all meet and greets, photos or handshakes. These were things our guests were expecting, and VIPs had paid for a premium experience. The agent suggested the author could wave at our guests from behind a barrier. My thoughts were basically - what are we going to do?
The following Monday, another phone call from another agent. The author would still attend, but there could be no handshakes or any other contact and we needed at least six feet between the author and our guests. They would not touch anything that a guest had touched. Any books that needed to be signed must be signed in advance. They would not permit pens or really anything from The Festival, they would provide their own. Next, an email from one of the authors: “Is the event still on?” Finally, another phone call from our remaining author. “What is the situation in Des Moines? Have you cancelled The Festival?”
Our team began discussing, debating, brainstorming and researching. Through social media, we witnessed the cancellation of events around the country and, in some cases, a backlash from their fans. We did not want to appear tone-deaf, but we also didn’t want to look as if we were jumping on a cancellation bandwagon. We needed to be sure we were looking at it from every angle. To give us time, we stopped our marketing. We could resume and ramp it up if needed. As our discussion continued, we learned that March Madness cancelled, and Disney World closed their doors. It became obvious that the only option was to cancel. The pain of making the decision was no longer quite so difficult.
You may be thinking, why cancel? Why not postpone? There were many reasons why we felt that cancellation was our only option.
First, my team produces four events per year and plays a support role in two others. The amount of work that is involved with each event varies, but our largest event, the World Food & Music Festival, is held annually in September. The World Food & Music Festival has far more vendors, entertainers, and partners then the DSM Book Festival. Its community impact is greater with approximately 95,000 guests in attendance, compared to the Book Festival’s 7,500. My team did not have the bandwidth to produce a high-quality experience for both Festivals back to back.
Next, we believed that much of the inaugural DSM Book Festival’s magic was the warm atmosphere that we had created. The Festival is held at the end of March and by this time of year our community is desperate for spring. The environment we created feels like a summer party in a light and airy venue with live music, street fare, cool beverages and inviting programming. You don’t have to be an avid reader to have a wonderful experience, and it was exactly what our community needed at the end of March. We would not be able to replicate the anticipation for spring and summer festivals in another time of year.
Finally, as a new festival, we felt that it was extremely important to establish a date (the last weekend in March), programming, certain themes and event tone. The fewer the variables, the easier it would be to see our successes and missteps. As I mentioned, there had been a previous book event that faced plenty of challenges during its run. Every year that event changed dates (months), duration (one day, one week, every weekend for a month, one full weekend, etc.), location and atmosphere (indoor and outdoor). I believe that its constant change in the basics was one of the top reasons it was never as successful as it could have been.
Now, back to the cancellation…
On the morning of March 13, we officially internally cancelled the 2020 Festival and made our plan to share the news. Our priority was to make sure that our sponsors and partners heard from us before they saw it on social media or heard about it from someone other than us. To start, we made a list of groups: sponsors, boards, headlining authors, venues, committees, volunteers, entertainers, production, VIP ticket holders, program partners, contest entries and merchants. Over the next week we realized there were many partners who did not fit into a category and we’d wake in the middle of the night remembering someone we needed to reach out to.
Once we had our groups established, we started with a general message and customized it for each group. Through this customization, we determined what the next steps should be. For example, we needed to speak individually with our sponsors, but individuals who had entered our contest didn’t require additional follow-up.
Once we established our groups and messages, we put them into an order for deployment. The order was important. Using the example groups from before, what if a sponsor or friend of a sponsor had entered our book club contest? We didn’t want our contestants to find out before our sponsors. Furthermore, we had a robust committee that represented many segments of the community. Some of these were members of the media or social media influencers. We respected that they needed to do their job and that they could share our news. We felt that it was in our best interest to communicate with them when we were ready to share it with everyone.
Simultaneously, we read through the fine print of all our contracts. What were we liable for and if we weren’t liable, how could we extend an olive branch to those who had lost work? We have the luxury of planning multiple events and we decided that if we could move an entertainer to another event, we would do that. If we could postpone a special program to 2021, we would do that too. Given the newness of The Festival, we wanted to stay on good terms. If it was possible, we wanted every cancellation message to be received by the sender with empathy, compassion, and most importantly, we wanted the recipient to want to partner with us again.
As our team worked on our messages and order, I made phone calls to our headlining authors. Our priority was to postpone their appearance until the next year’s Festival for two reasons. First, we felt that they were a good fit for our event and second, this helped avoid losing money as the contracts were more favorable to moving their appearance rather than a full-on cancellation. Next, I reached out to the venue with a goal to forward our deposit to 2021 and confirm the date. All of these discussions went smoothly and as a result… well, you’ll have to wait until fall when we make our first announcement. Stay tuned!
The first email we sent was to our sponsors. And although we wanted to give them each a phone call, we knew that it was going to be tough to get them each on the phone. It was, after all, the Friday before spring break. As I mentioned, COVID-19 wasn’t as prevalent yet in the Midwest. Most of the people I knew who were traveling were not cancelling their plans. Second, the time it was going to take to personally call all of them was more time then we had if we wanted to get all the cancellation messages out in that day. So, we closed the email saying:
Most importantly, in our emails, all the recipients were blind carbon copied so no one could see who else was on the email. It kept the message clean and private.
Following the email to sponsors, we did not email any other group for a couple of hours. Instead, we had all our emails placed in drafts and we were ready to hit send. By delaying our next set of emails, we were able to provide our sponsors time to receive the email. In the meantime, we integrated our message with information that our parent organization was set to share.
Our parent organization, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, is our community’s economic driver. The Partnership’s various departments organize a variety of meetings, learning opportunities and networking events in addition to a lot of wonderful work throughout our community. As our communications team worked to gather information to share with our Board for all of the events, cancellations, postponing and the transition to virtual events, we patiently waited for that message to be final. Once the message was sent to The Partnership’s Board, we began deploying all of the other messages. Once all messages had been sent, we cancelled the event on social media.
Our cancellation was met with the compassion and warmth that we had hoped for. The response was supportive, kind and appreciative. Colleagues, friends and strangers offered their condolences. Everyone understood the work that had gone into this event and the feeling of disappointment that it could not happen for reasons beyond our control.
Over the next few weeks our team issued refunds and worked with our partners to close-out The Festival. We worked with sponsors offering various opportunities to retain their commitment to The Festival or to our event organization. Each sponsorship had been customized to the meet our sponsors’ needs and we viewed this transition with the same consideration.
In terms of budget reconciliation, I’m thankful that I had the foresight to save all of our budget numbers as they were on March 13. The Book Festival is free, but we sell premium experiences in advance. By having these numbers documented, I have been able to easily work with our accounting department to reconcile the budget and I will have numbers to measure against next year.
Before this experience, I had postponed events at the last minute from weather or far in advance because of sponsorship losses or a low ROI. Cancelling the 2020 DSM Book Festival was different and more difficult than those other events because it was a decision that was forced upon us. Sure, every event planner has dealt with the weather, but dealing with the weather is ingrained in all of us. It’s part of the deal. Global pandemics are not.
I once read that every story begins and ends the same. Once upon a time, they lived happily ever after. Every person’s story begins and ends the same, we are born, we die. What happens in the middle of the story is what makes it more interesting. It gives us joy, fear, sadness, love….
A COVID cancellation is now part of the DSM Book Festival’s history. So, keep reading! This story is not over. It just became more interesting.
About the Author:
Colleen Murphy is the Downtown Events Director for the Greater Des Moines Partnership in Des Moines, Iowa. In addition to leading a team that produces four events for The Partnership, Murphy is the Sponsorship Manager for the Des Moines Arts Festival and plays a support role on Des Moines’ Downtown Farmers’ Market. She has over 15 years’ experience in the event industry.
www.kaliff.com
