Events and field marketing

A hundred events in four years. None of them on our budget.

From 2015 to 2018 I ran the events operation of Vilarejo Acabamentos, a five-store finishings retailer in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state. Around 25 events a year, plus three flagship programmes that ran on their own calendar. Every one of them was paid for by a supplier, because every one of them reached the brand as a business case before it ever reached a venue.

Marketing Manager, reporting to the CFO. Brazil title, director-level scope in the U.S. No agency: concept, production and reconciliation were all in-house.

100+Events produced, 2015 to 2018

100%Funded by supplier brands

5Stores and cities covered

20–30%Of chain revenue from the specifier channel

How it was funded

A retailer with no events budget, running a hundred events

I never took an events budget to the board. I took a deck to the suppliers. For each event it laid out the full cost and exactly what that covered, who would be in the room, what those professionals already specified in our stores, and what the sponsoring brand’s margin would look like if the same group specified twenty percent more. Framed that way, the brands funded one hundred percent of it.

My side of the deal was everything else. Save-the-dates and invitations, RSVP handling with each store manager, catering and menu selection, in-store visual identity, photography, vendor contracts, payments and invoicing. Direct cost came to roughly US$1.5K (R$8K) per event. On an event day the operation ran with ten people from my department and the stores, up to three contracted staff, and between five and fifteen vendors.

01 · Specifier programmes

The channel that carried the chain

Architects, interior designers and engineers were where the margin lived. Any professional who wrote a specification in one of the five stores was in the programme, and the events were what kept the programme alive. That channel accounted for 20 to 30 percent of a chain turning over R$12M to R$15M a year, roughly US$2.3M to US$2.9M.

Fórum Vilarejo Design & Tendências

Two editions · Two-day hosted forum · Design and architecture

The forum was itself the prize. Two days at a hotel for the sixty specifiers who mattered most to the chain, each of them free to bring a guest, at no cost to either. Talks from architects, designers and photographers whose work runs in Brazil’s design press, then dinners, a themed party and an awards ceremony to close.

Three international trips were awarded per edition, fully covered, to Milan and Paris. The oversized boarding-pass cheque was deliberate: the award had to be visible in the room and photographable afterwards, because the following year’s invitation list was built on it.

60Specifiers per edition, plus a guest each

2Editions

3International trips awarded per edition

US$0Cost to the professionals attending

Entrance arch for Fórum Vilarejo Design & Tendências, carrying the sponsoring brands — The entrance arch, carrying every sponsoring brand that funded the forum.

Full auditorium during a talk at the forum — Sixty specifiers plus guests, in session.

Award ceremony with an oversized boarding-pass cheque for an international trip — The award: an oversized boarding pass to Europe, handed over on stage.

Themed party set built for the forum evening programme — Themed party night, set built for the evening programme.

Check-in desk at the forum — Check-in, run against an RSVP list built store by store.

Live music during the forum evening programme — Live music. Two days is a long time to hold a room.

Expo Revestir, São Paulo

Two consecutive years · 30 professionals · Five cities of origin

Thirty professionals flown to Latin America’s largest surfaces trade fair, two years running. We had no stand of our own, and that was the point. The objective was not to exhibit, it was to spend three days with the people who specify, inside the brands that sponsored us.

I ran the whole operation: vans from a meeting point in each of the five cities, flights both ways, an exclusive welcome gift, a coach waiting at the airport, hotel, restaurant bookings, a timed visit schedule at each sponsor’s stand, every transfer, and showroom visits at partner brands across São Paulo.

On the show floor the professionals told us which launches they wanted to see in our stores. That feedback set the following year’s calendar of in-store launch events, and brought new suppliers and new lines into the chain.

30Professionals per caravan

5Cities of origin

2Consecutive years

~US$15KPer edition (R$80K), supplier-funded

The Vilarejo group of specifiers at the Expo Revestir entrance in São Paulo — The full caravan at the fair entrance, thirty specifiers from five cities.

The group at the Ceusa stand — Scheduled visit at Ceusa, one of the sponsoring brands.

The group at the Lorenzetti stand — Lorenzetti. Each stand visit had a time slot and a host.

02 · Brand nights in store

One format, a rotating sponsor

A repeatable in-store evening built once and run across all five stores, with the sponsoring brand changing each time. Suvinil brought its colour-trends talk, Coral brought Colour Futures, Villagres brought its own launch. The audience was homeowners mid-build or mid-renovation, alongside contractors and specifiers. The brand put up the money and the speaker. My department designed and ran everything else, from the first invitation to the last photograph.

The mechanic mattered more than any single night. Because the format was fixed, the store did not have to reinvent an event every quarter, and the next sponsor could be sold on a template with a track record rather than a proposal.

It also gave the sales floor something to invite customers back for. A colour-trends talk is a reason to walk into a finishings store that a discount is not.

5Stores running the same format

3Sponsoring brands shown here

100%Funded by the sponsoring brand

Campaign artwork for the Suvinil colour trends talk, naming the guest speaker — Campaign artwork for the Suvinil colour-trends talk, guest speaker named.

Suvinil trends presentation running on screen inside the store — The trends presentation, running inside the store itself.

Colour sample fans displayed at the event — Colour sampling on the floor, tied to the talk.

Coral Colour Futures 2018 presentation at Vilarejo — Same format, different sponsor: Coral Colour Futures 2018.

Guests at the Villagres in-store evening — Villagres night, held among the product it was selling.

A seated room inside a retail floor, week after week.

03 · Trade training

Mega Oficina Suvinil

A hundred professional painters in one room, drawn from the five cities where we had stores. Suvinil covered one hundred percent of the cost. Everything before, during and after was designed by me with my team and the store staff: invitation, RSVP, catering and menu, visual identity, check-in, photography and awards.

The painters were not an audience. They were a distribution channel. A painter standing in a customer’s living room decides which brand of paint gets bought and which shop it gets bought from, and that recommendation is worth more than any window display.

So the training came with a rewards programme attached. Painters accumulated for motorcycles, televisions, bicycles and trips, which kept them registered with the store rather than loyal to whichever supplier ran the last workshop.

100Painters trained in one edition

5Cities represented in the room

100+Registered in the rewards programme

100%Funded by Suvinil

Full room of uniformed professional painters at the Mega Oficina Suvinil training — A hundred painters, seated, in branded kit. Attendance was by invitation.

Painters queueing at the Suvinil product stand during the event — The product stand, staffed for the day by the sponsoring brand.

Speaker presenting in front of a co-branded Vilarejo and Suvinil backdrop — Co-branded from the backdrop out. The retailer hosted, the supplier paid.

04 · Cause programmes

Viver Melhor Vilarejo

One edition per city, held in the month of that city’s anniversary. A share of every store’s revenue for that month went to a local institution, named upfront on the artwork rather than announced afterwards: Asilo do Carmo in Campos dos Goytacazes, Associação Pestalozzi in Rio das Ostras, and so on across the five cities. I was in the group that named the programme and I led all of its visual communication.

Naming the beneficiary in advance was the whole design of it. It turned a vague promise of goodwill into a commitment the customer could check, and it gave the local institution a reason to bring its own community into the store.

Local press covered every edition, and around R$100K went out in donations across the five cities over the life of the programme.

5Cities, one edition each

~US$19KDonated in total (R$100K)

1Named institution per city

Campaign artwork naming Asilo do Carmo as the beneficiary institution of the month — Campos dos Goytacazes: the beneficiary named on the artwork, before the month began.

Campaign artwork naming Associação Pestalozzi as the beneficiary institution — Rio das Ostras: same programme, different city, different institution.

Beneficiary institution group visiting the store during the programme — The institution inside the store, not just on the poster.

Launch announcement artwork for the Viver Melhor Vilarejo programme — Programme launch. The name came out of a brainstorm I was part of.

Local press cameras and tripods set up to cover the event — Local press at every edition, earned rather than bought.

Customers filling the store during a Viver Melhor Vilarejo edition — Retail floor on the night. The cause programme was also a traffic programme.

Corrida da Paz and Outubro Rosa

Three cities · Running circuit · Breast cancer awareness

A road-running circuit across three cities, over a hundred entrants per stage, paid entry with a kit of shirt and bottle. Each stage carried a cause rather than a sponsor message: peace, breast cancer awareness, women’s health.

In October the same programme moved indoors. Every store ran an educational session for its sales team with the Amigos da Mama association, on why preventive screening matters, which is an odd thing for a finishings retailer to do and exactly why it was remembered. The Macaé stage, Corrida Azul e Rosa, drew around two hundred runners.

3Cities in the circuit

100+Entrants per stage

~200Runners at Corrida Azul e Rosa

Runners at the start line of the Corrida da Paz — Start line. A retailer’s name on a street closure, not on a discount.

Podium ceremony at a stage of the running circuit — Podium. The circuit ran with real timing and real categories.

Finisher medals laid out before the race — Finisher medals, produced in-house along with the rest of the kit.

Campaign artwork for the Corrida da Paz, Circuito Vilarejo — Circuit artwork, Rio das Ostras stage.

Outubro Rosa campaign artwork for the breast cancer awareness programme — October campaign, run across all five stores.

Educational session run with the Amigos da Mama association inside a store — Session with the Amigos da Mama association, for the sales teams.

05 · Store openings

Opening nights, and the press that covered them

Three openings under my direction: Araruama, Rio das Ostras, and Vilarejo Conceito, the chain’s upmarket concept store. Around a hundred guests inside the store on opening night, local public figures among them, and press in the room. I ran the press relations myself, and Record TV covered the Araruama opening on air.

An opening is the one night a retailer gets free coverage without buying it, so the work is front-loaded: the pitch to the newsroom, the guest list, the people who will be quotable on camera, and a store that photographs well after dark.

I do not have the first-week revenue figures from those openings, so I am not going to publish one.

3Store openings directed

~100Guests inside on opening night

TVCoverage earned, not bought

The new Vilarejo store lit up on the night of its opening — Araruama, opening night. Lighting the building was part of the plan.

Television interview being recorded inside the store during the opening — Record TV interviewing inside the store. Press relations run in-house.

Launch announcement artwork for the Araruama store opening — Launch announcement for the Araruama store.