Talking post event review with Parkes Elvis Festival

One of regional Australia's most successful festivals believes that the post event review process is the most important part of their event management process. In this episode we talk to Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival about the importance of visitor feedback and event review to the growth and development of their event.

Cathy shares great tips and insights into how they manage this process and the outcomes they have achieved as a result of a thorough and strategic post event review process.

Transcript

In this case study we’re catching up with the Festival Director of one of Australia’s craziest and most successful regional festivals. We’re talking with Cathy Treasure of Parkes Elvis Festival about post event review and the significance of that process for the festival.

Parkes Elvis Festival is an annual event celebrating the music and the legend Elvis Presley held in early January in the regional town of Parkes.

The first festival in 1993 was a one-night performance attracting 300 attendees. The festival today is a significant festival driving visitation to regional NSW attracting thousands of visitors from across the world.

Now let’s talk to Cathy about how she maintains such a successful regional festival.

 Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

Parkes Elvis Festival's been running for 27 years. We get over 25,000 people per year and it generates around $13 million into the local economy every year as well. So it's quite a big festival with over 150 events every year. We try to maintain 80% of those for free so that the festival is open to all income levels and demographic groups.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

One of the things I love about Elvis festival is it's off peak, so it generates that economic impact in a traditionally low season.

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

That's correct. It was initially started to actually generate some business in an off peak period in January and Parkes it's naturally very hot straight after Christmas. A lot of the locals used to leave town go to the coast so the businesses struggled in January so the idea to run a festival then was born and the economic impact from that has been extreme.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Can you tell us what the measure of success is for Parkes Elvis Festival?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

We really look at the overall vision of the festival. Our vision is to make Parkes known throughout the world, generate a really professional event and business for the local community. Success to us is really looking not just at the event itself, but triple bottom line sustainability.

Is it supported by the community each year? Are they happy with what we're doing? Is it bringing joy and happiness to Parkes financially? Is it becoming more self-sustainable? Do we have new revenue streams and are the people happy? Do they want to come back each year so it's growing each year?

So we have a lot of key performance indicators that we put out at the start of every festival and we measure against those and some are to do with visitation, but others are to do with community support.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

At the end of an event or when you achieve a KPI or a critical milestone, what do you do to celebrate that? I work with a lot of events and they just worked so hard and they forget to just stop every now and then and give themselves a little bit of a pat on the back and say, Hey, we did a great job.

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

I think that's something we probably need to improve - that we get through the event and that it was successful. But something we're trying to do more is we realised that the local community often don't find out about the success. So we may be winning awards, we may be getting 400 million media reach which is incredible and we didn't in the past communicate that to the local community. So really it was only the team that knew that.

So in the last couple of years, we've really started to promote through local media releases through Facebook, and through conversations with business Chambers on exactly what we are achieving and trying to celebrate that as a community.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Yeah, that's excellent. Actually, we’ve given that tip to a few other events. Unfortunately, there's always a few people in the community that don't understand the value of events and just see it as an inconvenience, taking parking spots.

It's really important that you celebrate and showcase success so people actually understand the broader impact. This is not just something that we're doing because we love being busy and not sleeping much. It's actually something that's really good for the local community and the economy.

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

I think it's really been lucky for our festival that we've achieved the tourism awards over the last couple of years and been inducted into the Hall of Fame. That has really communicated to the community that we are doing the right thing, and we're getting that exposure and we’re able to bring those trophies home. We get the locals’ jokes Have you got enough room in your office for another trophy?, but it, but it's sort of a nice joke to share with them and say, Hey, we have done the right thing for the town.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Can you tell me about the steps you go through in your post event review process? You've got your measure of success, but in a more practical sense, what do you do post event to really break down what you achieved and what you've learned from that particular event?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

It is a really extensive process and often probably one of the hardest processes in event management because you've been on this high of an event and then all of a sudden you have to spend… we spend months evaluating it, so we've only really just finished two months after the event and I said to my colleague the other day, If I hear another word about Elvis Fest I think I'm going to scream. But that's what we do - that's how we learn.

It starts during the event.

• We have surveys during the event and post event, and we use the same survey company so we can compare data.

• We monitor Facebook during the event and post event.

• We have a lot of research out there around media monitors and what exposure we've received.

• We do the good old fashioned handwritten survey forms at key locations and whiteboards as we've still got the demographic that will give us that feedback.

• Then we do we do so many debriefs with every different group - I meet with operations teams, with different event organisers within those 150 events, venues, businesses, operations amongst Council and we also do a community debrief evening where the local community are invited to come in and give any feedback.

• Then we compile all that information from all the different sources into a centralised document per category that we can then look at. We go through it and we analyse it: OK, a lot of people are giving us the same feedback from different angles - this is something to change or this is really a random comment that's not really relevant. You get a mixture of both, so you get some brilliant feedback and you get the other ones that just aren't viable to implement.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Can you tell me from a surveying point of view, do you think that there's a particular method that's more successful in getting a good return rate? I know some people still do the good old paper based surveys. Do you do online, like SurveyMonkey, surveys as well? Or have you tried different things in the past and have an idea of what gives you a better response rate?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

Look, we do a mixture. I don't think any survey’s perfect and it's always going to be slanted in some way, so you need to consider it from all angles. For some of the smaller surveys (that get fewer responses) like our market stallholders, we use SurveyMonkey. We did face to face personalised interviews during the event, and then we also do the online ones.

Then we look at it from all angles and get a baseline from that. So as I said, we've got a number of different ways we gather information and we pile it into one document and then evaluate from there.

It can depend on your demographic which way to gather intel is best. If you've got a festival with a really young population, or tech savvy, they're probably best just doing online surveys. With face to face surveys you may not get the full stories - people may not want to tell you everything. Sometimes on the anonymous bit of paper people are happy to write something that's not traceable and then put it in the box, so I think all ways have merit.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Excellent. Now I just want to talk briefly about the more negative feedback or the constructive criticism and how you deal with that. When you analyse all of the feedback that you get, you identify the actions that come out of that. What about the negative stuff? Have you ever had to deal with any negative feedback?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

Look, you always do. And I think you'd be lying if you said that you pleased everybody. We're quite lucky we get only a tiny percentage of negative feedback. The majority is very positive.

I think you take it seriously when you see a theme, like, there was one thing that went wrong this year and we received a lot of negative feedback regarding that that one issue, but it was something we could easily acknowledge and fix.

My solid belief is that you don't ignore any negative feedback. You respond wherever you can. So if we receive written complaints, I respond to all of them. Sometimes it's a personal phone call.

However, you may get negative comments on Facebook and often we don't enter into any discussions on social media. Normally our fans will come in and defend us on that, so I find it's best on Facebook to watch how it pans out. As I said, we're lucky we don't get much negative feedback, but often if we do get a negative comment we just let someone else defend us from a fan’s perspective and it all goes away from there. But anything directed to us, we do definitely respond. And I think you have to.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Do you have any examples  - whether it's negative feedback or constructive feedback or just general feedback from visitors - where you've been able to take some of that feedback or recommendations or suggestions and introduce something that has added to the overall event experience?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

Ohh, definitely we do that every year. Our fans are very passionate and they give us some really good ideas. We look at the ones that are practical that we can pull off - or sometimes they're not so practical and we still manage to find a way. A really simple example, when I first started - the main feedback we get every year is it's too hot. It's too hot. We can't change that, but we can make people more comfortable. So in my first year, I read that and thought, What can we do? We bought all these industrial misting fans. The positive comments from that little step have really helped improve the festival and it was amazing how many positive comments we received regarding how we've listened. Simple things like bringing in more seating in areas and more shade wherever we can.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

What about when you're looking at things like determining the entertainment? Do you go out to your fans and ask for feedback?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

A lot of them are proactive in recommending different artists - we receive a lot of recommendations and we'll definitely take that into account when we're booking performers. We look at crowd reactions. Sometimes, I look at video footage and see what the reactions to different performers are, and obviously ticket sales and repeat ticket sales are other ways we judge that.

But an example where we sort of have to make a judgment call is our gospel service. It's very polarising every year and reading through feedback this year was quite it's quite hard to know which way to go. We get some feedback and says, Look, it's too much like a church service. You need more music, and then we also had responses of this year there was too much music, we need it to be more like a church service. So it's really balancing what people want, and trying to get the middle ground because you're not going to be able to please all people in something like a gospel service. People have different interpretations of what that is, whether you're coming from a religious perspective or coming from an Elvis fan perspective, it could be dramatically different what they're after. As an event organiser, you have to listen to what the overarching feedback is and then adapt your entertainment accordingly or try and get a happy balance between the two.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

That's always a challenge. How do you continue to get creative inspiration? How do you keep the event, particularly an event with such a long history, fresh and cutting edge? Do you have a process around that?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

We do. We've got some crazy ideas in the office. We normally spend from January to May coming up with all these weird and wonderful ideas. And then in June we go, OK, what can we actually achieve?

The starting ground of that is we look at where the weak points are. We don't want to change what works. I think we've got a good formula. We always maintain the soul of the festival and that's important. Don't change the soul or the base of what your event’s successful for, but look at where the areas of weakness are that you can make a dramatic difference in a year.

For example, we had one area of the street that is really hot. I guess it's not the most attractive stretch of street. We tried putting market stalls up there but that didn't work. We needed something solid because it was a wind tunnel as well.

So then the following year we brought in a classic car show. They don't blow away, and it really improved the atmosphere within that area and it wasn't a difficult initiative. It was just looking at what are all the problems and what solutions you can come up with. I find just listening to our fans, we listen to the feedback, we look at where the gaps are, and then we brainstorm. We simply sit round a room and just go what random ideas can we put here?

We look at other events and what they're doing successfully and what we can bring in, but we make sure it still matches. It's very important still to match the theme and the soul of your event.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Absolutely. Do you have any other events that you specifically look at?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

I think you can learn from any event and probably that's something I'd like to tell an event management student when they're starting. Once you work in it, you'll never go to an event again and just sit back and relax. You'll always sit back and think, Ohh, look how all of their queuing's wrong. Or wow, they've done that really well. So, you could be getting inspiration from, it might be an Elvis festival…I've worked in sport. There are things from that industry that I've brought in.

You look at any sort of event and how they run, it could simply be watching a movie and you see something done that's quite quirky, and you think, Ohh, I've got to bring that into the event. Always have your creative brain on it and looking around and looking for inspiration.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Yeah, good one. My next question is your top tip for regional event committees.

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

The top topic for regional event committees would be, I think, keep it simple when you're starting but always plan for growth and plan for success. Events can grow quickly and if you don't have a plan for that, you can be in serious trouble. So keep it simple to start with, keep a central theme, and a really specific target market that you can really sell your event to.

Have a plan for growth each year and don't rest on your laurels with the same thing every year. Try and bring in at least a new element but keep the soul of the event.

Linda Tillman of rEVENTS Academy

Good one. And what about a recommended event resource that others could benefit from?

Cathy Treasure from Parkes Elvis Festival

I think it's really important, especially in the regional events space, I'm a firm believer in sharing information, talking with other events. We shouldn't be seen to be in competition. It's really trying to establish that inland event touring route with other groups - working together to make sure that you're not clashing with other festivals within your area, you're complementing them.

And go and attend other events. I mean, there's so many. It's great to go to things like regional events, conferences and networking events within your region and make sure you get to know all your local business chambers and different community groups within your region. I think it's really important to get them on side.

Go to other events - that's where you learn. That's where you see what people react to, what doesn't work: stage facing the wrong way which you may not have considered as far as the sun in your eyes or the spectator or the performer comfort. Have a look at what other people do. Look at their mistakes, look at their successes and how they would adapt. I think you learn more from that than you do from a lot of from reading resources, to be honest.

I think it's just really important to continually improve where you can again - don't reinvent, improve sometimes, sometimes less is more. So you might be trying to run a six day event with hardly any resources and with hardly any budget. Perhaps you're better off running a one day event, and putting all your resources into that and getting it right and then expanding?

Make sure it's sustainable for budget, but also for your staffing and your volunteer levels. If you try to do too much in the first few years, you may have staff burnout or volunteer burnout. So make sure that you're building for growth, so it’s not just one or two people that are going to be doing double the amount each year. Look at sustainable growth and don't introduce something if you don't have the people to run it. If you've got a new idea, is it actually feasible?

And make sure you do contingency planning. That’s very, very important.