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When Only Perfect Will Do

By David McCann

Some events, it goes without saying, are more challenging than others. But what is it that makes for a difficult event? A gaggle of vendors or participants? Pyrotechnics and acrobatics? A barely-there budget? The panic when a workable venue fails to reveal itself?

It could be all that and more. At other times, it's merely the event initiator's utterance of a dreaded seven-letter word: "perfect." As in, "This event has got to be perfect." (Which usually carries an unspoken but understood "or else.")
Liz Sanzo would not have been human if she hadn't felt a bit of angst when a vice president at her company knocked on her door early last year with an assignment to produce a new special event that had to be perfect. Her three-person department was already handling 70 events per year in the high-pressure financial services field. But the event was to be among the most important in the company's history, and there was no time for worry.

"They approached me about 10 months in advance and said right off that there was no room for error," said Sanzo, director of special and corporate events for iStar Financial, a New York-based real estate finance firm.

The event at hand was iStar's inaugural Investor Day. The company, which started small in the 1990s, has registered phenomenal growth in the past few years and become a major force in the commercial real estate industry. Two years ago a vice president of investor relations position was created, signaling a new focus in that area, and a key initiative for 2006 was Investor Day. The goal of the event was simple: Tell investors what the company was all about and motivate them to keep their money with iStar.

The setting in which that goal ultimately was achieved was likewise fairly simple: a big empty room stocked with rented chairs set up classroom-style, with drapery hung around the room's all-glass walls to keep out the low, late-autumn sun; a large video screen in a partitioned-off space for overflow participants; four hours of rapid-fire presentations; and a one-hour cocktail reception with hors d'oeuvres.

And even though the attendance count ultimately grew from an expected 70 to 160, creating some logistical challenges, the size of the event was not in the end overwhelming, either.

What was not simple was pulling off the event with the mandated level of precision. Any planner knows it's impossible to achieve perfection. There are just too many variables. But the vice president of investor relations couldn't have been more clear: If the attendees perceived any sloppiness, they might apply that perception to the company in general.

"I was told it had to be perfect, flawless," said Sanzo, who is president-elect of the New York Metro chapter of the International Special Events Society (ISES). "It was, 'This is our first Investor Day, this is our brand, this is our money — do not mess it up.' "

And because of Sarbanes-Oxley requirements that investors not be "bribed" with lavishness or gifts, it had to be done on a budget that, while not skimpy, was far from enormous.

Historic Site Selection

For the perfect event, you need the perfect venue. Sanzo sought something unique that would stand out from the crowd of investor gatherings typically held in hotels.

After reviewing several options, Sanzo settled on The Powerhouse, a stand-alone, 5,000-square-foot event space that is part of the American Museum of Natural History.

It seemed like a somewhat unusual choice, but the museum came with a long list of other beneficial elements. Chief among these was its allure. "No matter who you are, you either went to the Museum as a kid or always wanted to go there," said Sanzo.

Also, the cocktail reception could be held with a spectacular view of the museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space, which lights up at night. (The reception, unlike the presentations, was to be after sunset.) And there was the site's accessible location on Central Park West, as well the museum's in-house caterer, Restaurant Associates, of which Sanzo had a very high opinion.

All of that, however, did not quell the investor relations team's shaky nerves. Every time an aspect of the program was presented to them, they insisted on a trip to the museum so they could visualize how it would work. The event's vendors, too, came along on site inspections that were applicable to them.

"We went on an abnormal number of site visits," said Sanzo. "It was crazy — at least 10 or 12 of them." One that stands out was about the sixth visit, after the audio/visual company hired for the event had proposed several floor-plan layouts. "We had this huge contingent — our planners, our investor relations team, the AV team, our designer—eight people in all. And when you go on a site visit at the museum, three or four of their people host. So there were 12 of us, going up and down on this little elevator. It was certainly unusual."

Sanzo said there were times she felt like saying "enough already," and eventually she did begin begging off from some site visits that didn't require her participation. All the same, though, the many inspections ended up greatly facilitating the quest for perfection.

"There were no questions the day of the event," she said. "The event staff and every single vendor knew that room inside and out. It was a big help."

Path to Perfection

A regimented planning process also helped keep the potential for flaws to a minimum.

For one thing, Sanzo insisted on a strict schedule of biweekly meetings with the VP of investor relations and daily communications between the investor relations group and her staff so that everyone was up to date on changing needs and plans.

In addition, the event staff created a system of checks and balances to smooth out each program element before it was presented. Any new design, floor plan or proof would trigger an internal meeting, a thorough discussion of pros and cons, and as many revisions as necessary.

Another key to success was assembling what Sanzo called the perfect event team. The event budget did not allow her to hire a big on-site staff. Instead, she enlisted the aid of three iStar executive assistants who dealt with investors in the course of supporting company executives. To that she added three top-echelon independent event professionals that she knew from ISES and could count on for strong on-site support. The entire nine-person team received multiple training sessions and attended a luncheon where investor relations personnel spoke about the purpose of the event.

Sanzo said she took great care in assigning roles to the on-site team, in some cases practicing some human psychology. For example, she left one of her staffers, Heather Van Dusen, who had served as the point person for day-to-day planning on the event, at the registration desk for almost the entire duration. The reason? Van Dusen had been in charge of monitoring advance registrations that came in through Cvent, the electronic RSVP system iStar employed for the event. She was the one who replied to prospective attendees' questions and emails.

"I always say the first and last experiences are very important for participants," Sanzo said. "With Heather at registration they saw the person they'd been talking to and corresponding with, so there was familiarity and a comfort level."

A Little Help From Friends

It was also to ISES members that Sanzo turned for help in overcoming one of the biggest crises that arose during the planning for Investor Day.

About three months before the event, the VP of investor relations, thinking that some additional design creativity might be needed, requested input from the company that designed iStar's annual reports.

The woman from the design firm who provided the consultation did not have a background in events, though Sanzo acknowledged that her ideas were impressive — "beautiful conceptually, and stimulating," she said.

The problem was that these ideas, as laid out, would have blown the event budget to smithereens. "She had great ideas for anything except the budget we had," Sanzo said. "It was a big professional challenge for me. I couldn't say, 'Hey, why are you bringing in this woman.' You have to be respectful."

So Sanzo sat down with her team and went over the new design ideas exhaustively, and they finally decided they could implement reasonable facsimiles of many of them at a fraction of the cost.

That could not have been achieved without support from her fellow ISES members, according to Sanzo. "I got on the phone with a sign vendor, and a drape vendor, and others that I had relationships with from ISES," she said. "They crunched the numbers, and because we're a family, they supported me and we put something together at one-fourth of the original cost. Heather and I were able to go back to the vice president and say, 'We love what the designer is doing, but we cannot advise you to go forward with her designs because it would leave you way over budget. Here is our recommendation.

"It was a testament to our ability to not react rashly, to think about what was being presented, to assess the situation: What was the real need here and how could we still make it work?"

Double the Fun

Company executives had estimated that about 70 investors would attend, but it became increasingly obvious from monitoring the Cvent e-RSVP reports that there would be significantly more than that.

As the event drew near, the iStar event team had to have several conversations with vendors that went something like this: "I know you've already gone to press, but we need to increase our order anyway."

As the attendee count swelled toward 160, most vexing was the catering, which represented approximately 25 percent of the budget. "We went to our Restaurant Associates rep and said, 'Please help us make this work. We cannot go up with our budget.' And she did," Sanzo said. "Again, it was an ISES connection. I had a relationship with her, so she did not take us to the cleaners. And we had the best food."

But while the food was elegant — sushi, baby lamb chops, gourmet pizza, tea sandwiches, smoked salmon, and exotic juices and cheeses — the overall feel of the event was purposely not lavish, so as to avoid the appearance of buying off the participants. For example, giveaway amenities had to cost less than $20 each.

"When it comes to investors, a financial firm needs to be very careful about how it spends money," Sanzo said.

Basking in The Glow

In the end, everyone from participants to the vendor of a webcast for investors who could not attend and, most importantly, the vice president of investor relations were thrilled with the execution of the event. It was as close to perfection as humanly possible.

A measure of the success: 95 percent of participants stayed until the end of the presentations, and 75 percent stayed for the cocktail reception, according to Sanzo.

"This event lasted for five hours, but it took many months and hundreds of hours to make it perfect," she said. "With the amount of work we put into it, you would expect that there were dancing bears and fireworks. But this particular event wasn't a spectacle. It was just a perfectly run event."

A couple of interesting twists that further ratcheted up the difficulty factor: iStar's 250-person holiday bash, orchestrated by the event team, was held four days earlier; and Sanzo, to boot, at the same time was planning her February wedding.

Meanwhile, plans already are under way for a second Investor Day late this year. Can perfection be expected a second time? Although Sanzo manages 70 events a year with her iStar staff and does several more on her own as an independent planner, she was optimistic nonetheless.

"I'll tell you that I did the perfect event," she said, "but if you really drag it out of me, I'll tell you that I will do better next year. I always need to step it up."