Hello All
Christmas is long past us but I just realised that I'd forgotten to put this post up, so here it is.
The lead up to Christmas saw the Miami Bakehouse along with other local businesses get together to put on series of Christmas festivities and entertainment throughout the month. The events were set to run on the nights of the 12th-14th, 17th-19th and Christmas eve from 6pm – 9pm, but before they could run there was a lot of work to do, with the work being divided amongst the businesses.
At the very beginning of the process I was required to produce a comprehensive checklist, with costings of everything that would have to be completed before the events could take place, 8 pages later and I was done and let me tell you there were some challenges and surprises along the way. Who would have thought that a Santa Claus’s asking price would be $150 per hour, a quick calculation and that’s $3150 for the 7 nights. Fair enough it was relatively short notice but that’s still steep whatever angle you look at it. And also how do you go about getting a Santa throne that actually looks like a Santa throne?... If you’re thinking EBAY I tried it and there was nothing and Google didn’t help much either.So needless to say we’d definitely have to call on some favours if the events were to get off the ground.
After some hard work the events went ahead with carollers, fire twirlers, an art exhibition and Santa Claus arriving on a big red fire engine to take his place on his throne. The Santa Claus, a local bloke doing it for a donation, the throne leant to us from the local shopping centre and the fire fighters with their fire engine paid with a couple of cartons. In all the costs were kept relatively low with the events bringing a lot of people to the area, as well as to the local businesses.
The events were publicised in the lead up with an article in the local paper, as well colouring in sheets distributed to children in the local shops with details of the events on the back. Before my time here I honestly never knew the value of a colouring in sheet, there simple to produce, relatively inexpensive and can actually promote your business. But I won’t go into that now.
With the Christmas Art exhibition, displayed at the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre, that also formed part of this event, The Miami Bakehouse also chose to have a display of there own in the exhibition. The display, which featured a Christmas tree made of French sticks, was positioned just to the left when you entered the Performing Arts Centre and was clearly marked with the Miami Bakehouse branding. Being in a prime position and with the Performing arts centre having a large number of sell out shows on during the time of the art exhibition would have ensured that the Miami Bakehouse receive a large amount of free exposure.
Wrapping up, I learnt a lot from helping with this event, for a start there’s money to me made dressing up as Santa but also when organising an event there is a lot to consider, and it’s not just the big stuff but also the little stuff like lollies for Santa to hand out and delegating who’s going to get those. Also when organising an event with a lot of people you have to be in regular contact with everyone to make sure everything is being covered. Also the display entered in the Art Exhibition really demonstrated how you can think out of the box to get free exposure for your organistaion.
Thank for reading
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