Use mystery to attract guests to an event

Here’s a story about the value of Challenge Statements from the vaults: In 1989, when I was Creative Director for a huge PR firm, I was responsible for an elaborate client appreciation event hosted by Pepsi in conjunction with the Toronto premiere of Phantom of the Opera. Pepsi was a corporate sponsor.

When the job landed on my desk, certain elements were already fixed.

• The event was black tie: a premiere at the Pantages Theatre plus a private party before/after.
• It was scheduled to start at 6pm on a Wednesday evening, at Casa Loma.
• The guest list consisted of the top brass of food retail e.g. fast food chains, grocery stores, etc. – 500 guests including their dates.
• Timely arrival was essential as guests only had 90 minutes at Casa Loma before we shuttled them to the theatre.
• The party had to have a Phantom theme.

The first thing I said to my team was: we’re expecting CEOs to go home to put on black tie, then come back downtown for 6pm? In rush hour? A meet’n’greet with nice food is not incentive enough. They’ll skip the party and just go to the play. Our focus needs to be getting people there! With all that in mind, we focused on:

The Challenge Statement: Find a way to incent guests to go to both before/after parties.

Success measure: all 500 guests not only RSVP “yes” but arrive at the required hour: 6 pm.

So how do you create that kind of anticipation? We connected our challenge to a similar paradigm: the book you keep reading to find out whodunit. Then we created a murder mystery that would be finally solved at the before party, at 6:15 pm. The story had to be relevant to guests and it had dovetail with the Phantom story. So we made it a Victorian parallel for the cola wars: In 1899, Countess Kershman (a metaphor for Coke; Kersh was the president in 1989) was found dead at Casa Loma. On trial for her murder: the two party hosts: Wayne Mailloux, the presidents of Pepsi, and Tom Baker, the president of the Ontario Pepsi bottler in 1989.

The story played out in three editions of a faux Victorian newspaper (“The Torontello Times,” right) sent to all Guests in advance, one per month. They were peppered with tongue-in-cheek cola references written in Victorian English and poetic missives from “The Phantom” who knew the identity of the murderer. The whodunit came down to a mock trial starting at 6:15 pm on the eve of the party; guests would act as jurors and cast their ballot for the guilty man. We hired actors to play the part of judge and a mystery woman who was part of the story. The accused – our party hosts – played themselves.

By 6:15 we had full attendance: 500 guests. Not one person was late. Our creative was a success – thanks to a focused Challenge Statement.

It was an elaborate event – we hired 70 limos to transport guests to the theatre and back – and very memorable. For me, the best measures of  success were all the appreciative letters from guests. My favourite: a man who brought his 13-year-old daughter wrote that it was the most fun they’d had together as father and daughter in a long, long time. Twenty years later, I still remember the sentiment in that letter.

This event was a career milestone, thanks largely to a structured approach to the creative.

Intrigued? Learn more about Challenge Statements:

• Focus before you brainstorm
• Tool: Challenge Statement Exercise