Phew, that was hard work!

Phew – that was hard work!

Just thought I’d write up the events of the last couple of days, before I forget!
I’m really pleased with how much we achieved, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.

The biggest issue was about permission from all the various authorities, which we thought we’d sorted weeks ago, but we were nowhere near sorted. There were so many organisations we didn’t even know were involved or that we had to contact!

Here are all the parties that have some authority in the area we were working (MEN Arena/Victoria station and surrounding areas):

MEN Arena incl their security/safety staff
Victoria Station management and Network Rail
Landlord of the building the Arena is in (SMG Europe) and their agent (DTZ)
Manchester City Council & Greater Manchester Police
NCP Car Parks (with direct access to the Arena)
CBeebies show promoter
BBC Children’s TV

I ask you! We had cleared things with some of them, but others just kept coming out of the woodwork! On the first day, (Thursday) we were refused permission from the landlord to stand in an area that was considered a fire exit, but were given permission on Friday morning to go inside the Arena foyer area itself (which is still their land), only after they’d cleared it with the Arena safety staff (who keep track of numbers of personnel in the building) for fire safety purposes.

Great news, eh! Well so it started, but then we were stopped from handing out crayons to the children going into the concert, because the Arena staff were worried that they would crayon all over the walls and furniture. I was completely dumbfounded but had to obey them and we were told to come back after the concert, and we could hand out to children/parents leaving the concert. This also applied to those other entrances from outside where we were handing out crayons. So we went back at the end, and carried on, taking care just to hand out to those leaving the first concert, and not those arriving for the next concert!

All going well, then we were told that our permission had been revoked. By this time I’d had enough, and wasn’t just going to obey them, I needed to know their reasons, and had to speak to the decision maker. After speaking to the Safety Manager at the Arena, I was told it was actually the promoter who was upset because he said we were taking business away from their merchandising stands. I countered by stating that as we were handing out to those exiting the Arena, they had already passed all the merchandising opportunities, so it wasn’t a valid argument. And then I got told that it was actually the BBC and the Head of Children’s Entertainment that wasn’t allowing us to do it, because the parents may think we have something to do with the BBC or have been recommended by them. What?!! Would parents think the same of all the traders selling cowboy hats and sparkly shiny things too? Because believe me, I’ve bought some of these things (at CBeebies Tweenies concert last year) and the quality is extremely suspect. Which certainly isn’t something you could say about our business. The crayons all have the necessary safety mark and the website certainly won’t cause anyone any harm.

Well at that point, I just gave up. I’d had enough of fighting, and to be honest we’d probably already managed to distribute 6,000 of the 7,500 cards we’d brought over the two days. Plus the fact it was absolutely torrential rain outside, and the girls were soaked.

I reckon we covered over 50% of those attending the 4 concerts in total. So that’s not bad. And it also proved to me that the figures of attendees that we were told by our PR company (before we parted company) weren’t correct.

When I’m reflecting on this, the thing that astonishes me about it all, is that no-one seems to know who you have to get permission from. I suppose if you are a large company and do this type of promotion all the time, then you know automatically what you need and from whom. But it was our first time, and as a small company, I had to do the legwork myself. Our PR company had no idea, it was obviously not something they’d done before for any of their clients – another reason why I’m glad they’re no longer acting for us, they just don’t have the specific experience we can benefit from. The promotions agency we hired the staff from, told us it was our responsibility to obtain all the necessary permissions. And I just got passed from pillar to post when trying to speak to these organisations. I think we were a bit of an anomaly for them. We weren’t trading/selling, or collecting donations. And we didn’t have a large fixed stand or were interviewing people. We must have had a bit of a novel idea!

However, on the positive side, we got a great response from parents and kids. They were delighted to be receiving packs of crayons and were quite happy to take the cards to see the details of the competition. One telltale sign is that over the 2 days, when I was circulating around the whole of the station, outside on the streets, the car park and in the Arena itself, I only picked up one card off the floor. All the rest had been taken home.

So hopefully the parents really appreciated the crayons, the kids made good use of them, thus allowing the parents to relax (“…..& now you can relax” is our strapline, and we included it on the crayon packs) and over the festive period they’ll remember/be bothered/have access to enter our competition.

Well, more news of that in the New Year when our web programmer can tell us how many people have registered their email address on our holding page. I'll also tell you then exactly how much it cost us to do this promotion, just so you know!

Next week is mega busy again. Got to get more content entered, as the final deadline is now mid Jan for media & editors. And we’ve got to prepare our promotional mailing to referrers. Lots more address/contacts research to do, sticky labels to print and envelopes to stuff! And this is twice over! Once for the jigsaw and once for the invitation that is being sent a couple of days later. The first mailing has to be ready to be posted on Tue 3 January, and second one on Thursday 5 January.

We also have to prepare the media packs and I want to do a newsletter for our team and other stakeholders, to update them on all recent events – which have been numerous! Not a very restful time planned then, but very very exciting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Now I'm off to peel vegetables, wrap presents and write cards in time for 11 people descending on us tomorrow for Christmas dinner. By the way, Luke had a lovely birthday party yesterday - amazing how you can knock up a buffet for 20 people an hour after you've finished upsetting the BBC!

And I didn't mention how much Ross & I are both aching! Poor Ross, he had to go to work last night aswell! Our feet, legs, arms, shoulders and back are all sore. We can't say we haven't struggled for our cause! And if that's anything to go by, we deserve to be successful eventually.

Kirsty