Planner Resilience: Event Highlights

When the wave of cancellations began in early March, Event Highlights thought things would pick up again for the second half of the year, but as late April rolled around they realized this wasn’t going away as quickly as we all hoped.

So, Event Highlights pivoted off of a client event planned for the Kentucky Derby. The client had planned to order embroidered windbreakers for their attendees, but once the event cancelled their client generously opted to extend the order for their entire staff and clients. The promotional marketing business was Event Highlights’ President, Amy Spaulding’s first career out of college, so she worked with what she knew to try to keep the business going amidst the 14 event cancellations for 2020. They then started taking imprinted orders for masks and then other logoed items.

Event Highlights also worked to learn from fellow event industry colleagues during this time to see how events could continue in a smaller fashion during all the restrictions. In addition to planning for virtual events and conferences, they bid on a drive-in movie in the summer, and then produced two walk thru style events with staggered timed entries for the attendees.