Event Organisers Update May 2018 ISSUE 163

TRUST YOUR PILOT Well? Of course you do – they transport millions of people every year from A to B in perfect safety, don’t they? Of course there are times it goes …

FLOORED AT GROSVENOR HOUSE The Royal Caledonian Ball, an exclusive £265 a ticket Scottish dancing event attracting 700 guests fell apart earlier this month as the …

BOAT SHOW SUNK The London Boat Show, due to be held at Excel, 9-13 January 2019 has been cancelled. Organisers British Marine say that there was little support …

MONET COLLECTION For lovers of art, especially that by a Claude Monet, 1840-1926, the National Gallery has an exhibition featuring more than 70 of the artist’s works…

MILLENNIALS An interesting discussion on managing and marketing to millennials was organised recently by speaker agency Performing Artistes. Held at the Institute of …

KRAKOW A highlight of our recent fam trip to five-star Marriott in Poland was the night and day spent in Krakow, a real jewel of a city in one of the most visited areas in the …

VODKA HEAVEN For those who like vodka a trip to Poland offers an opportunity to try some of the hundreds of types on offer and our recent fam trip to Warsaw and …

THE OLD DARK HOUSE Horror films used to frighten audiences to death, until comic send ups appeared at the cinema encouraging the frightened to not take it all too …

FLOORED AT GROSVENOR HOUSE

The Royal Caledonian Ball, an exclusive £265 a ticket Scottish dancing event attracting 700 guests fell apart earlier this month as the dance floor at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Mayfair did likewise.

Reportedly after only two of the fifteen dances had been performed gaps opened up in the dance floor panels, which had been laid over carpet. After unsuccessful efforts to close the gaps, with a “massive hammer” the floor was declared unsafe for dancing on and the event was abandoned.

It is not known how many guests will be demanding their money back from organisers the Royal Caledonian Charities Trust, nor how this will affect the charities looking forward to pocketing some financial benefit from the night.

BOAT SHOW SUNK

The London Boat Show, due to be held at Excel, 9-13 January 2019 has been cancelled.

Organisers British Marine say that there was little support for the format, venue and duration of the 2019 event. This was confirmed by research into the marine industry and the experience of British Marine sales staff trying to sell stands.

The show had recently been cut from ten to five days, and prices dropped accordingly.

MONET COLLECTION

For lovers of art, especially that by a Claude Monet, 1840-1926, the National Gallery has an exhibition featuring more than 70 of the artist’s works.

Monet and Architecture features his oil paintings of buildings, with only five owned by the National, fifteen coming from private collections and 57 from other museums and galleries around the world. In particular there are a large number painted in villages and cities in France including Rouen (some of the famous cathedral series) Le Havre, Honfleur, Trouville, Sainte-Adresse, Varengville, Dieppe, Giverny, Vetheuil, Argenteuil, Antibes and Paris (Paris streets, bridges and some of the Gare Saint-Lazare series) Also represented are works painted in Venice, Bordighera and Dolceaqua in Italy and London, where he had a room at the Savoy Hotel and captured views of Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges and, from the newly-built St Thomas’s Hospital, our Houses of Parliament, sometimes veiled in the infamous and lethal polluting fog that fascinated Monet artistically. Continue reading

MILLENNIALS

An interesting discussion on managing and marketing to millennials was organised recently by speaker agency Performing Artistes.

Held at the Institute of Directors as the first Speaker Afternoon Tea event this featured generational expert Dr Eliza Filby who pointed out that we currently, and uniquely have all four generations competing in the workforce. These are :- Continue reading

KRAKOW

A highlight of our recent fam trip to five-star Marriott in Poland was the night and day spent in Krakow, a real jewel of a city in one of the most visited areas in the country.

OK, it helped that we had lovely sunny weather, which brought out the best in the city’s beautifully preserved old-town complex, especially the Ryneck Glowny grand square and the atmospheric old Jewish district of Kazimierz. This was one of the great Jewish centres of Europe until the Nazis implemented their “Final Solution” here in 1941 and forcibly “resettled” all the Jews they could find in a new ghetto area in Podgorze, south of Kazimierz, and in the concentration camp at Plaszow. These black times of man’s inhumanity to man were thrust into public awareness by the 1994 Stephen Spielberg film Schindler’s List, much of which was shot around Krakow, and visitors wanting another sobering and affecting experience that will stay with them for life can also visit the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenhau death camp, a venue that all politicians, especially the anti-semitic ones, should be required to experience for their humanisation. Continue reading

VODKA HEAVEN

For those who like vodka a trip to Poland offers an opportunity to try some of the hundreds of types on offer and our recent fam trip to Warsaw and Krakow was no exception, thanks to the help and knowledge of bar staff working in Marriott hotels there.

For those who like their drinks fruity and sweet the distillers Soplica produce a range of ten flavoured variants (Nalewki), all at ABV 30% and comprising the very popular cherry along with raspberry, strawberry, blackcurrant, plum, mirabelle, blueberry, quince, walnut and hazelnut. These probably go down, like all alcopops, rather too easily, especially when straight out of the fridge, and it is all too easy to over-indulge. Also bitter-sweet and fruity and with an ABV of 36% is the herb and orange flavoured Wodka Zoladkowa Gorzka which has won many awards and is valued as a digestif, and, flavoured with bison grass that gives a vanilla flavour is Zubrowka (Bison Grass Vodka in the UK) at 40% ABV and often mixed with apple juice to produce a longer drink.

Of the “straight” unflavoured premium rye based vodkas we tried, all straight out of the freezer, our personal easy winner was Potocki (pron. Potoski), a lovely creamy and nutty spirit at 40% ABV that sells for around £30 a bottle in the UK and is, for our money, worth every penny. Almost as good but without the creaminess were Belvedere and Chopin, both at 40% ABV and the latter named after Poland’s best known composer.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE

Horror films used to frighten audiences to death, until comic send ups appeared at the cinema encouraging the frightened to not take it all too seriously.

Long before this, in 1932, a seriously good ghoulish classic appeared – The Old Dark House. This was directed by James Whale, who went on to direct The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, and was based on the J.B.Priestley novel Benighted, where a group of travellers are stranded in heavy rain and a mudlide in Wales and seek shelter in an old house occupied by the eccentric and potentially dangerous Femm family. Continue reading

Marketing Matters Mar/Apr 2018 ISSUE 61

ALCOHOL MAYDAY Some alcoholic drinks are set to cost more from May 1 in Scotland as the country becomes the first in the World to set a minimum price for …

FOOT IN MOUTH AT FACEBOOK A senior executive at Facebook has added to the social media firm’s current serious woes by claiming, in a memo in 2016 that was …

TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE Sexy images of nearly dressed cartoon ladies and saucy names used to market craft beers look to be on the way out. Such racy delights …

ADS IN THE DOCK Toothpaste claimed to whiten teeth, shampoo claimed to help reduce hair loss, long distance bus tickets for £1 and mineral water claimed to …

BOILER ROOM BOYS JAILED Two crooks who used hard sell “boiler room” techniques to defraud investors into paying large sums of money for worthless or …

HELP CRUSH THE CAR HIRE CONS The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating car rental firms that advertise low prices on the internet and then stiff …

BIG HIKE Cex, purveyors of second-hand computer and office equipment and CD/DVDs may need to rethink their latest marketing. Till earlier this year those …

NOW LISTEN KIDS Children eating more healthily could be a vain hope, given the number of ads for junk food they see. This amounts to up to 1,000 every year…