Leadership Insights with Kennedy Events Co-owner and Chief Strategy Officer Paige Buck

Plan Better EventsSmart Event TipsLeadership InsightsPodcast

Jul 21

With Guest host John Corcoran, Co-Founder of Rise25

The Cruise Ship Event: A Case Study

Paige Buck is Co-owner and Chief Strategy Officer at Kennedy Events, which produces high-level corporate events for leading tech and media companies. She started at Kennedy Events as an event planner, working to build a strategic and talented team before taking on a leadership role. Paige began her career in the nonprofit and tech space, leading fundraisers for companies such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, SF Works, and Craigslist Foundation.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Paige Buck talks about an event they planned for a client, Scout, and that client’s vision for their user conference
How Kennedy Events overcame the challenges of Scout’s chosen venue space
Paige reveals how Kennedy Events executed Scout’s event theme
How Scout’s acquisition impacted their conference
What was the final result of the event?

In this episode…

Do you want to plan a corporate event but lack the resources to manage one? Event planning takes careful consideration for details like venue space and budget, and without collaboration, it can be a logistical nightmare.

Paige Buck understands that not every marketing team is equipped to handle the strategic elements of event planning, so she does the heavy lifting. As a partner at Kennedy Events, Paige plans and executes even the most extravagant functions. Case in point: the user conference set on a cruise ship terminal for Scout, a software procurement company. With Paige’s expertise and guidance, Scout was able to overcome the obstacles the venue space presented. When you come to Kennedy Events with a concept in mind, they’ll help you implement it.

In this episode, John Corcoran sits down with Paige Buck, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Kennedy Events, to talk about planning Scout’s user conference on a cruise ship terminal. Paige reveals Scout’s event concept, how Kennedy Events overcame the challenges of the chosen venue space, and how Scout’s acquisition impacted their conference.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the Kennedy Events Podcast where we feature top marketing, communications and future of work leaders and share their biggest takeaways and insights. We love these conversations and hope you will too. Let's get started.

Paige Buck 0:23

Hi, Paige Buck here, I am the host of the Kennedy Events Podcast where I sit down with inspiring event and venue leaders and corporate brand leaders in the San Francisco Bay area. I have John Corcoran here of Rise25 was done 1000s of interviews with successful entrepreneurs, investors and CEOs. We have flipped the script and he will be interviewing me. Hi, John.

John Corcoran 0:47

All right, Paige. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. And this episode, actually, we're going to be going through a case story breakdown about a software company that wanted to put on a 1500 person conference in San Francisco on a cruise ship terminal. They'd never done a conference of this size before and brought Kennedy Events in for your expertise. And so we're gonna give really a behind the scenes on what that looked like what types of considerations went into it? What happened with a number of different crude curveballs that came along the way? So it'd be it'd be great episode. Now first, before we get to that Today's episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events. Kennedy Events is your full service partner for stress free event planning with one goal in mind to help you plan a world class corporate event with strategy and style within an obsessive team that knows and loves events, they help you to pull off an event that shines and makes you look like a hero from support and strategy, venue selection decor menu and audio management. They're with you every step of the way. Discover design delight with Kennedy Events, you can go to Kennedyevents.com. Or you can also contact them at Kennedyevents.com/contact. To learn more. Alright, Paige. So you, of course are my guests here today partner with Kennedy Events. And we're gonna break down this company that came to you. It was a procurement procurement company named Scout that wanted to do a major user conference about 1500 attendees. They came to you about a half a year in advance. And they had a venue in mind. But they knew that with a two person, staff or marketing that they would need to bring in some expertise. So take me to take me through when they first came to you what the vision was and what what they gave you to work with.

Paige Buck 2:33

Yeah, so they knew they needed help. I love when a team says we've done some events or tried to do some events at scale before and nearly killed us. Now we need somebody else. They had, as you described a vision for getting somewhere between 1002 1000 of their users and prospects in you know, a series of rooms together to learn both about best practices in their industry. So they were sort of establishing themselves as an industry thought leader, and you know, planting a flag in the ground, but also teaching their users how best to use their software. And they know procurement is perceived as boring. And the poor folks in you know, a procurement department are underappreciated, undervalued, under loved. Probably not remembered when you're giving shout outs to your favorite people in your company. And they wanted to create something that was a really good time and really memorable for them. That kind of shut cobwebs off of a stodgy dodgy industry.

John Corcoran 3:39

Yeah. And so you end up doing it at Pier 27 in San Francisco, which is the cruise ship terminal, right? Yeah. And it's

Paige Buck 3:47

a big, gorgeous new space on two levels. You know, walk right in off of a beautiful park off of the Embarcadero. And you've got views out of the bay with sailboats, and Bruce, Jeff sometimes containerships is the word I was looking for, like often the distance, but the space also comes with its own challenges.

John Corcoran 4:12

On top of that, yeah, in one of those being that it has great doors that open up because there are masses of people that are kind of walking through the space. But interestingly, it was designed for people to offload from a ship and just kind of go straight on through. And so one of the big challenges was their bathrooms, but not enough power at all. Yeah,

Paige Buck 4:33

it's like a stunningly gorgeous space. And they definitely seem to have in mind that it could also be used for events that would wow, you know, visitors or, you know, people in the Bay Area, but they completely neglected to plan accordingly for that. So, all of the amenities of the space are gorgeous, brand new and you know, everything that you would expect except that it's only got about enough power, right run into the building to power up like the TSA is like passport check stations. And and that's about it. Yep. So generators, you have to bring in absolutely everything else. So you can light the space, like you would like an airplane hangar. But you can't make like attractive lighting that looks good on people's faces or lights, your stage and your screen. Everything has to be brought in from outside.

John Corcoran 5:29

Wow. And it doesn't end there. Right? That's the power piece. But you have other complexities. So multiple days of loading in do you have unions to contend with you have permits, you have fire marshal, kind of take us through some of the different things in your head, when you're evaluating a project like this that you know, you're gonna have to work on.

Paige Buck 5:51

And I don't know about you, but like, as soon as I hear permits, and fire marshal, I get anxious. And I know that our team know exactly what they're doing when it comes to that. But it certainly makes our clients anxious. They're like, what permits and how do you even file them? And how do you make sure they're going to work out. So an event of this scale requires a long timeline, this is about five months in the making, every little detail goes into that timeline. And we work backwards from the event date to identify all of the components and not least of which are like the dead deadline for you know, submitting floor plans to the fire marshal, who is going to tell you, you can't do it the way you're planning to do. It doesn't matter if you know all of the rules and regulations like the back of your hand, like our team and like our caterers and the client, the vendors that we hire, know, all of the implications, we may have rules on the books that say you need a corridor this wide, or you can't have rows of chairs more than this many before you have a break. And we will lay out our floor plan accordingly. And you'll take it to the fire marshal, and they'll tell you, nope, I know that it says that. But in this instance, we want it to be even wider, or those rows of chairs to be even shorter, they will require revisions, and you will be resubmitting them. And you have to bake that into your planning process. And, and then like you said many other components, we're talking about like a small subsection of it. But we're bringing in more than 30 vendors to make this happen. Who are bringing in multiple trucks, those trucks all have to be scheduled and coordinated for their unloading.

John Corcoran 7:36

One can all show can't have all those trucks showing up at the same time.

Paige Buck 7:39

Can't have them all showing up the same time. One vendor is going to be relying on another vendor, right? Like we can't put the furniture on the stage until the stage is built. Yeah, we but we do need to get the stage in before we get the seating in. And then we do need to come through and zip tie those seats and make sure that they match the floorplan with a ruler with a tape measure before the fire marshal comes through, which she's going to do at a certain point. And she's gonna come on a schedule, and then she's gonna have you know, feedback and opinions on what you've got laid out.

John Corcoran 8:13

Yeah. And by the way, I don't know if we mentioned this, but the one of the fun themes that you decided to go with the to make it more fun, because I know you said that was a big goal was everything was cruise ship theme, too. So adding to the complexity, you got bartenders wearing cruise ship themed outfits, and you had, you know everything themes talk a lot about that idea, because that's really cool.

Paige Buck 8:35

Yeah, so I mean, sometimes the client comes with an idea, like, we've got to make it fun. And sometimes they come with a very specific theme. And in this case, they honed in pretty quickly on one or two themes landed on that one with our help. And then it was ours to sort of make that broad strokes like we were thinking it would feel like you were on a cruise ship. And then what does that look like actually? So that looks like a Steel Drum Band. And it looks like yeah, you know, captain's hats, and really cute little details lots of like Kenta palms, lots of lounge furniture that felt super comfy, but also looked like it was out of like return and cotton so it could feel like you were you know, laying out on a deck on a cruise ship. Tons and tons of brand effort went into this look and feel as well. So it felt very much like you were on our clients cruise ship.

John Corcoran 9:35

Yeah. Now of course San Francisco is known for weather that can change on a dime and you're based in San Francisco. So I'm sure you are taking down to condense this into consideration going into all this.

Paige Buck 9:48

Yeah, so often and especially at the peers or a venue like this that can have like some indoor outdoor vibe. Sometimes our clients will want to do things with food trucks because it will Couldn't get people out doors and fields related and I recall, could be wrong with that this client wanted that. And we actually ended up talking them out of it because food trucks are, at the end of the day, no less expensive than traditional catering for an event of this size and scale, because you need a number of trucks, and you need to hone in on well, you know, going to a food truck isn't that inexpensive and experience to begin with? Yeah, but then once they're building it out at scale, you actually have to choose like one item on one menu for one food truck, so that they can plan for hundreds and hundreds of that and to be able to serve it pretty quickly. But we have to have backup plans for weather here in all instances. Now granted, they're indoors. But those doors you described roll up really nicely and provide access to the outside. And even though this event was in February, but where it can be one of those shockingly gorgeous months in San Francisco, where it's clear, and sometimes Sunny. And if you're lucky, you really do want to get out get out there. But we've got to be able to stay at space that I mentioned that along with not enough power comes. Yeah. So you know, built into, like, our timeline for that day is like, you know, bringing in extra heaters heating the heck out of the space in the morning, then if it's nice enough, rolling up those doors on that heat escapes, you got to you know, you're gonna want to close those doors again by two o'clock and crank up the heat at a quiet moment when there's not a mainstage presentation going on. So you can warm everything up back up again. Okay, so

John Corcoran 11:37

there's an infinite number of complexity here. Many details. But on top of this, I love this a couple of weeks before the event happens. There's actually a big event that that impacts it. So share what happened.

Paige Buck 11:50

Yeah, so Scout guy acquired by Workday, which I think has been scooping up brands left and right. And that was an incredibly exciting moment for the client. For their business. It was everything that acquisition was something they very much wanted. And then there was a couple of weeks more of like, wait and see will we will we want to announce this one a co brand. What does co branding look like in a pinch, you've now got this ginormous parent company that was going to have opinions and lots to say about how their brand and the two brands together are represented at the event. And they basically decided to double down. They were like, Yeah, let's do this. Let's use this to really announce the acquisition, the new parent and home of this organization. And they said, Let's build out a whole suite on the second floor that allows us to take meetings with clients so they can understand what this new business is going to mean for them what the opportunities are. What else

John Corcoran 12:55

do a couple of weeks notice in your building up suites for people that meeting rooms before Yeah,

Paige Buck 13:00

cuz they got like blank space. So if they want meeting rooms, we're bringing in like hard sided fabrication spaces that look like you can imagine like the conference rooms that might ring the outside of a co working space. Yeah, and then a center space within that that was a gorgeous countertop. With a multicolored stools, again, kind of keep it festive, keep it light, because you want it to feel like you're on a cruise ship that had the work day and Scout co branding. And then we threw in a bunch of other layered additional CO branded opportunities, like throw pillows with the brand on, on all of that gorgeous, you know, lounge deck, you know, death of a cruise ship. lounge furniture,

John Corcoran 13:45

so just bringing it full circle here, the idea beforehand, it was a two person marketing team, they knew they wanted an event to track 1000 to 2000 people in the middle of it all in the midst of planning this insane event with you know, 1000s of people coming and you need heat, you need electrical, you need permits, all that kind of stuff, you got the curveball of the acquisition, which it needs to be integrated end result tells me you know what the end result would have felt like with having this final event.

Paige Buck 14:17

So I mean, I also want to give the client major credit for the content. I mean, I they run they ran every single thing that happened on three stages over two days. So a main stage and two breakouts, multiple sessions attracting people you would just watch throngs of people like you know, flowing into these spaces, getting all the energy and the excitement that they needed to use this piece of software and then flowing out of it into a shared space that felt like a party, you know, all day, every day. But as we often say, like a party with a purpose where they felt like they were getting connected to the brands connected to the clients connected to one another. So they walk out saying like Have a really good feeling about Scout really good feeling about this parent company of theirs workdays, I can't wait to keep doing business with them.

John Corcoran 15:07

That's great Paige. This has been a great kind of behind the scenes look of what it takes what goes into pulling off an event of this size and caliber? Where can people go to learn more about you connect with you and ask any questions?

Paige Buck 15:22

Yeah, so we are very easily accessible at Kennedyevents.com. And then if you want to learn more about how we can help you, there's a link in the upper right corner that says schedule a consult. We make it fun and easy to get to know us. Alright, thanks so much. Thank you.

Outro 15:42

Thanks for listening to the Kennedy Events Podcast. Come back next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.