Event Management for OneRoof
Situation With OneRoof
OneRoof, a music-social media brand I acquired (formerly called The Eire Nation), promoted emerging Irish artists in exchange for a fee. The business model was relatively successful in turning a profit and the brand was established within the urban Irish music community. In an effort to drive revenue and differentiate ourselves from competitors, I hosted an event showcasing trending Irish artists, highlighting OneRoof's ability to connect with local artists and supporters.
To achieve this, I organised and promoted a rap gig at the Button Factory, one of Dublin’s top music venues. The event featured five professional performing artists and aimed to position OneRoof as a hub for authentic music experiences.
My Task
To successfully plan, manage, and promote the rap gig with the goals of:
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Showcasing OneRoof’s commitment to supporting emerging Irish artists.
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Creating a memorable live music experience that resonated with attendees.
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Generating revenue through ticket sales and artist advertising.
My Action
Event Planning and Logistics
I coordinated all aspects of the event myself, including booking the Button Factory venue, negotiating artist contracts, and managing schedules for the five professional performers. I ensured that all technical requirements, such as sound and lighting, were handled in efforts to deliver a top-tier experience.
Targeted Promotion
I developed a promotional strategy leveraging social media and Eventbrite. This included:
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Designing and distributing engaging content on OneRoof’s platforms to build anticipation.
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Partnering with artists to cross-promote the event to their followers.
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Using Eventbrite to streamline ticket sales and track attendance.
Audience Engagement
To differentiate the event, I focused on creating an inclusive and vibrant atmosphere. This included branding elements like event-specific visuals and interactions with attendees to reinforce OneRoof’s connection to the music community.
Some of Our Promotional Materials
The Result
I would consider the gig to be mostly successful (minus a couple minor hiccups). We achieved key objectives and boost OneRoof’s presence in the urban Irish music scene. Outcomes included:
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300 tickets sold, filling the Button Factory with a lively and engaged audience.
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Increased brand recognition, with attendees and performers praising the event’s professionalism and energy.
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Revenue generation, with ticket sales turning a marginal profit we actually saw an increase advertisement services due to the brand recognition and professionalism of the event.
Learnings & Takeaways
PREPERATION, PREPERATION, PREPERATION!!!
The more you have prepared before the event the less likely you are to experience a 'white-swan.' Thankfully, before committing to the event this was made clear to me by my network within the industry, who'd previously hosted events. In preparation for the event, I created an interactive budget, a Gantt chart to track the timeline of completing tasks, social media promotion strategy, and a network of experienced professionals to assist in content creation.
While these were very effective in keeping order, we did experience some completely unpredictable situations. For example, one of our artists' driver got clamped meaning he turned up 15 minutes before he was scheduled to perform, then during his performance we experienced equipment failure where we could not hear any sound. Thankfully, that was quickly resolved by the sound engineer.
Time Is Your Best Friend
The event took place on Friday June 16th and we only began promoting the event at the beginning of April. This was not enough time to effectively run the social media campaign.
I believe that if we began promotion a minimum of 4 month in advance we could have sold-out the venue. However, due to my lack of experience in event management and already agreed upon date with the venue and artists, there was nothing I could do.
Greed Is Your Worst Enemy
Initially I wanted to get the 'hottest' Irish artists at the time as the headline, however I experienced contractual differences between their management in relation to branding differences. I believed that by getting these artists, we would have sold-out the event at the expense of little profit, which I was ok with, as the primary goal was to boost brand recognition for OneRoof. However, towards the end of the negotiations, I decided to move the pre-headline act to the headline, with the idea of maximising profits due to their lower performance fees. I believe this to be a mistake as we sold less tickets, meaning less profit in the end.
I think the mistake was my positioning of the event from the perspective of the 'hottest' artists' management. They didn't want their artists performing their first headline gig, hosted by someone else. If I positioned the performance as a guest appearance instead of a headline act, I think we would have been successful in booking them for the event.
Conclusion
On the outside the event was a success as we turned a profit, increased our brand recognition, and hosted a successful event. Personally this event was very mentally draining for me as I was managing it by myself, and I began to see other aspects of my life detreating such as physical health, my university grades, and my client work.
The most valuable lesson I learned from this situation was the importance of work-life balance, and not taking on too much tasks to the point where a lot is completed at 50%, rather than a few completed at 100%. These are lessons that I have taken forward with me and is now something that I'm very conscious of when committing to new challenges.
The Event
