Lend Me Your Ears Production - Music Concert For Breast Cancer Awareness With Coldplay Essay.

1. Apply business management theory to operations within the events industry.
2. Recognise, formulate and appraise operational decisions as a member of a management team.
3. Formulate a plan to identify the event supply chain within a specific sector.
4. Reflect and evaluate their own strengths and limitations when working with others and analyse others contributions to the management team.

About Lend me your Ears Production

Lend me your Ears production is one of the leading production houses of UK which has been creating waves in the industry for quite some time. The production house has been created a name for itself in the event industry and it is one of the popular companies one sought out for their event needs. Lend me your ears production is a pioneer when it comes to organizing funds for charity. The company in the past has entered into a lot of successful collaboration to secure the interest of the clients.

Lend my ears production has recently been approached by Macmillan cancer support to raise funds for the cancer patients and to increase the awareness regarding the growing terminal disease. Breast cancer is very prevalent in the UK and almost 15% of the entire population is fighting this battle. Thus, the institution with the aide of Lend my ears production wants to raise money to spread the awareness about the terminal disease and to make it affordable for the lower class people (Pearson, Millgan & Cain, 2017).

Lend my ears production has decided to go with organizing a music concert with one of the leading music artist of the world “Coldplay”. The purpose of the assignment is to identify the critical success factors of the event and design an event operation plan for running the event. Towards the end the report will cover the reflection on the journey of event operational planning.

In context to the management, Critical success factors which is also called as the Key result areas refers to the activities which has to be completed in order to achieve a high standard of quality to achieve the goals of the project(Alhabeeb & Rowley, 2017). The venue for the above mentioned event has been selected as Hyde Park, the history, landscape and its ability to hold large crowds makes it a promising venue. The park hosts more than 30 events in the year which are spread across music fest, food festival, carnivals and corporate events. The beauty and the openness of the park is what appeals to the audience the most, to top it the history of the Hyde Park in itself is intriguing.

The purpose of the event is to raise funds for increasing awareness about the terminal disease of Breast cancer. Lend my ears production has decided to rope in Coldplay to perform in front of the UK citizens. The popularity of the band and especially the lead singer and artist Chris Martin is huge; there are millions of followers of Chris Martin which makes the band highly desirable for the audience of the UK. The event will start around 8 and will go until the late hours. The rationale behind choosing a music event for the purpose of raising funds for the charity is owing to the footfall a music concert can generate. The event will be designed to gather as much funds as possible from the ticketing, premium sponsorship, F&B and media rights. For the very first the Lend my ears production has decided to air the live performance for the online audience, the same has been thought  to reach as many people as possible. The prime purpose of the event is to raise awareness regarding the breast cancer; hence the production house does not want to leave any stone unturned to spread the word.

Lend me your Ears Production and Macmillan cancer support collaborate to raise funds for breast cancer patients

A target audience is an intended audience for the message to be conveyed. The purpose of defining a target audience is to have a strong impact of the message on the people, and score high on relevancy (Malmkjaer, 2017). The purpose of the event is to spread the awareness about the growing terminal illness of Breast cancer which is spreading in the UK and to raise funds for improvement in the cancer treatment for the population of the nation. Coldplay is one of the leading performers across the globe and has a fan following of people across all the age groups. The target audience for the event is therefore people who enjoy and relish music, wants to have a nice evening and do well for the society.

Hyde Park is a great destination for entertainment events, the venue is extremely accessible to the people of UK and the lush green venue is a delight for the heart and soul. The venue has hosted several music nights, wedding functions, corporate events, Product launches and many more. The popularity, accessibility and the huge space makes the venue really a great choice for the musical event. Hyde Park which is located in London is accessible to a large number of people thus fulfilling the purpose of the event.

Every organization has an Event operation department which is responsible for the coordination and integrating all the operation within an event and its associated venues. The aim of Event operation is to remain focus on the goals and objectives of the event planning team in order to support and contribute effectively in the event operation planning process (Mallen & Adams, 2017).

In order to execute and carry a successful event, a lot of things have to be kept in mind. It is careful planning in the process with due diligence that paves the path for the success of an event. In context to the event mentioned above, following points have to be considered for mitigating the risk associated with the event and ensure a smooth delivery of event deliverable.

The format of the Event includes live performance by Coldplay, followed by gig by other artist. In order to play music in an open venue, certain licenses have to be procured. Apart from Music, Food and Beverage, Medical aide, ambulance, sale of alcohol and permission to organize an event has to be secure from various authorities (Colombo, 2017).

Execution of the Music Event

Licensing act 2003 states that if the event includes regulated entertainment or any other licensable activity such as the sale of alcohol, provision for late night refreshment one has to obtain or secure either a premium license or have to submit a Temporary event notice (TEN). The definition of regulated entertainment can be seen by understanding the following elements:

• Play performance
• Exhibition of a film
• AN outdoor sporting event
• Boxing or wrestling entertainment
• Playing of recorded music
• Dance performance
• Live music, recorded music or dance (Cook & Wilkinson, 2018).

The sale of alcohol and the provision of late night refreshment call for securing a license and falls under the purview of licensable activities. In the event above, beer will be for sale at the venue, hence a license has to be procured from the local authority. A designated premises supervisor (DPS) is required to authorize the sale of alcohol at the venue of the event (Knowles, 2017).

A premise license is required in the following cases:

• A capacity of over 499 people at one time
• Event running for extended 96 hours.

The event will have gathering in thousands hence the premise license have to be obtained. The authorities states that one should apply for a premise licenses 6 months prior to the event date. However, in case of Hyde Park, they already have the premise license, thus solving the purpose (Osborne, 2017).

TEN forms are specially designed keeping in mind the events and their impact on the crowd. A TEN has to be submitted to both the local authority and the Chief of Police for the area in which the venue is located (Nelson, 2018).

The utility of a personal license is to give authority for the event organizers to supply alcohol at the event venue.

PRS Music and the PPL license are required in the case when there is playing of copyrighted music in the event, in such case both the PRS and PPL have to be obtained. Performing rights society and Phonographic Performance Limited have to be secured mandatorily before the event. The authorities have complete power to stop the playing of the music or cancel the event in the condition of no license (Turris & Lund, 2017).

 Commission of Police gives the permit in case of charity events, any event being hosted in London with the aim of raising funds from the people have to secure the street collections permit.

Risk management is definitely an essential part of planning any event, the risk management plan covers all the possible types of risks associated with the event, plans on how to eliminate or mitigate them for the smooth execution of the event(Olson & Wu, 2017). The three types of risks associated with the event which has to be taken care of by the authority are:

• Risk of an employee, volunteer, participants or the audience getting injured during the event.
• The risk of damaging the organizational reputation if the event is not managed well.
• The risk of unforeseen financial challenges (Hilson, 2017).

Venue Selection and Critical Success Factors

Creating checklists-A checklist outlining all the possible aspect of the event will help the Event committee to take precautionary measures for any possible risk which might come up during the event (Hopkin, 2017).

Informed consent-Waiver or informed consent helps the organization to defend it against any legal constraint and liability, thus taking the pressure off from the management committee.

Formation of event risk committee- A formal risk assessment committee dedicated and designed specially to evaluate the risk and magnitude of risk associated with the event. The purpose of the committee is to have a step vice assessment of all the possible risk associated with the event (Luthans & Doh, 2018).

Continuing from risk management, health and safety also falls under the category of risk management. It is the responsibility of the authorities to ensure that the people who are part of the event, participant, audience, organizing committee and all the stakeholders of the event are safe and secure. Food audit, venue audit, equipment audit and many such audits are required to ensure the safety of all the stakeholders. The organization committee have to ensure that safe and hygienic food is provided at the venue and the equipment’s involved in the event are properly stacked up. Crowd control is another major area of concern, Coldplay has a great following all over London and it is expected that over 20,000-30,000 people will come for the event. Thus, to ensure that the crowd is well managed and behaved during the event, necessary precautions have to be taken. Emergency exists; exit strategy and signboard have to be placed all over the venue to ensure the safety of the people and the participants. A team of 50 people will be created to handle any kind of miscreants and nuance creators, the team will also assist the people with direction at the venue.

Supply chain management is a critical success factor of any event, more so when the magnitude of the event is extremely high. The event will be serving food and alcohol to thousands of people. A trusted vendor base has to be created to ensure that all the raw materials reach the venue o time and are sufficient in supply. Apart from F&B, artist coordination, supply of equipment’s, staging arrangement and other such small details have to be taken care of well in advance. The purpose of the event is to create awareness regarding the Breast cancer and raise funds to improve the facilities for Lower class people. In order to ensure that the deliverable of the event are achieved, the management has to ensure that it ties up with reliable players who have been working with them in the past or holds a great accountability and respect for their work in the past events. A good supply chain management process will ensure that the event is a great success.

Target Audience for the Event

Lend me your ears production is one of the leading event management organizations of UK; the company has proven its worth time and time again by delivering strong events in the past and present. The company’s vision is to ensure sustainability in the business, thus it believes in creating magical events for its clients. Sustainability in the business is ensured by sustained innovation, persistence to deliver best, ability to drive strong results from the event, deliver a highly engaged event and mitigating the risks involved in the event. The production house has mentioned in the company preamble that it will work for the community; hence it keeps on being a sponsor for different charitable events, a part of its earning go to a number of NGO’s. Corporate social responsibility is a great initiative which helps to give back to the society in return for their love, affection and time to the company, and opportunity to create events for them. The above created event is an example of the CSR activity the company is engaged in, breast cancer is a terminal illness which is affecting all the section of society. It is really a noble effort to increase the awareness about it and raise funds for the people who are unable to afford the medical treatment.

A good waste management system is recommended for any event, the system has to be suitable and easy to use. For the purpose of the event, the waste management plan is divided for 3 durations:

I have been working with the production house since 2015, in these three years I learnt a lot from the organization. I started as a project coordinator and recently been promoted to the post of operation manager. This particular event will be my first assignment as an individual operation manager, the responsibilities ranging from start to finish.

My learning with the organization has been consistent in my entire tenure, I got the opportunity to learn from the masters of the industry, people who have spent almost their entire life in the event industry and are known as the wizards of the industry. There have been quite a few changes which I made to my planning process due to my learning exercise. I was really bad with assessing risk; I did not follow any system or procedures and paid little or less attention to risk management. It was one of the recent events which changed my perspective towards the importance of risk management in the success of the event. Ever since, my first step after conceptualizing the event is to address and focus on all the possible risks associated with the event. This helped me in conducting better planning and gave me time to find the best strategy to mitigate the risks.

Hyde Park – The Venue for the Music Event

My learning from the theory of operation management has been really great, I always followed the structured 7 step process in the events, and the steps are as follows:

• Understanding of the external environment to determine the feasibility of the event and to create financials for the event.
• Establish a vision for the event, define the mission for the event and communicate the same to every stakeholder of the event.
• Defining the nature, scope of the event and using SMART objectives to identify the objectives of the proposed event.
• Extensive planning, diligence in organizing and smartly executing the event.
• Monitor and evaluate the event as it progresses.
• Execution and control of the event at the venue.
• Lastly, analyse the event, appreciate people for the good points, review the things which went wrong and learn from the mistakes by taking a corrective action.

I encountered quite a few challenges with my operational planning; to sight one of the challenges was to choosing the right venue for the event. There is hundreds of great venue at London; picking one venue out of so many options was really tricky. I was puzzled and was in a lot of tension to finalize the venue at the earliest. Hence I decided to draft the scope of the event, an estimated footfall, nature of the event, target audience for the event and the venue size, documenting all the points gave me a clear understanding of the venue I had to pick for the event. I therefore realized that scientific approach in event management always helps.

During one of the recent events of industry professional I met the CEO of Jack Morton Worldwide; it was a pleasure meeting the great gentleman. We had a good chat for over an hour and he was kind enough to tell me his journey in the Event Industry, it was by far one of the most interesting chats I ever had with such a senior gentleman. He gave me one really good advice which really made my day and set the tone for my future endeavours. He told me, “never lie to your client, always be specific in whatever you are communicating with them, this way you will establish a relationship of trust and faith leading to repeat business”. I vowed to practice this learning in my professional journey.

Conclusion

Lend me your ears production has been entrusted with the responsibility of creating and designing the event to raise funds and increase the awareness about Breast cancer. The production has decided to organize a music concert at the Hyde park, Coldplay will be the highlight of the event with information on how to stay aware and take precautions for breast cancer. In order to execute the event, rigorous planning process has been implemented, and teams are created to handle individual department. Teams like license procurement, venue selection, artist coordination; risk committee, budget team, volunteers, waste management team and F& B have been created to ensure that the event creates an impression on the audience. It is rightly said, detailed planning helps in creating great events.

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