I'm so nervous!

Well this is it, it’s the morning of Thursday 22nd December and the first day of our promotional work outside the CBeebies concerts in Manchester. This is an ideal target market for us, because these are parents/carers who:

- have pre-school children (and therefore several more years before their kids are 11, our cut off age); and

- have bothered to find out about the concerts (therefore are likely to be internet users or research activities for kids); and

- are willing to pay for their kids’ entertainment

A couple of months ago we were discussing this event at length, weighing up all the pros and cons of doing it, compared to the cost, and eventually, after much deliberating and soul searching, we decided to go ahead with the promotion.

Our aims of today and tomorrow are:

- to make our market aware of our brand and the website’s launch date
- to drive people to the holding page (www.entertainthekids.com) to register their email address, so we can email them when we launch. We are trying to build up our database.

So we had to think of something that would get attention, would be favourably received, and would meet our aims. At first we were just going to hand out crayons (kids need occupying before the concert starts and in the interval, and will probably have a programme with some colouring pages in it), but after discussing this we realised that just presenting them with our brand, wasn’t sufficient to get them to go to the website. So then we decided that we would also hand out a card (business card size, so they can put it in their purse, pocket etc, and hopefully not just throw it away) giving details of a competition.

Even this took ages to decide upon. We wanted to make the prize something that people would value, and would be bothered to enter, because there was a really good chance of them winning – that’s why we’ve offered 50 free memberships as prizes. And we put a deadline on it of 1 January 2006, because it’s a memorable date, people will hopefully get chance to do it over the Christmas period sometime, and yet it instills some urgency in them to get on with it!

So you can see an awful lot of thought has gone into this promotion.
We’ve had 10,000 packs of crayons delivered (see last week’s diary), and 7,500 cards (which look great by the way – thank you Andy at Fluid Creativity!).

We originally looked to family and friends to help us find some volunteers to distribute the crayons, but in the end decided to do it professionally. So we’ve booked 6 promotional staff from Oz Promotions in Manchester, who so far have proved to be very professional. I’ve got the names and phone numbers of the team, just in case we can’t find them at our meeting point. We have allocated 2 staff to each of the 3 possible entrances to the venue, and as some are outside, I’m praying it doesn’t rain today or tomorrow!

I’ve packed 8 bags with crayons and cards, and have bought Santa hats for everyone. We had a nightmare with branding the bags (again, see earlier diary), so decided in the end not to bother, and we are just giving them plain black bags with long shoulder straps so they can put them over their shoulder and across their chest. So the Santa hats are being used instead to get some attention. The car is packed with spare crayons and cards, in case we run out and I envisage Ross and I will be circling around the team filling their bags up during the day.

I’ve printed off our home page for each of the team, so I can brief them a bit about who we are and what the website will do, and I also think I’ll offer them a bonus if we hit a target of emails registered by 1 January 2006 – just need to confirm this with Ross later this morning.

So here we are. The first big promotional event we’ve done, which we’ve spent a fair bit of our budget on, and I’m very very nervous! It's the first time that our assumptions about our market will be tested. Are we thinking the same way they are? Have we made the correct decisions? Will it pay off financially (which we won't know until after launch) or will it be a complete waste of money, time and energy?

I will update you again in the New Year, when we’ll know how successful the promotion was, and then we’ll be right on top of our Preview Evenings to potential referrers and our presentations to the media.

By the way it’s my father in law’s birthday today, and Luke’s 2nd birthday tomorrow – not a busy time at all really!! Stop the world, I want to get off! Wish us luck! And Happy Christmas!

Kirsty