Using Themes to Create a Total Environment.

In addition to covering all the nuts-and-bolts details required for a successful event, both meeting planners and their clients constantly seek ways to enhance an event's impact. Especially for high-profile clients, the continual challenge of "bigger and better" can at some point prove daunting. One popular and effective approach is to build a themed environment that will properly showcase the client and their products and services.

Some of the elements to consider include custom-built or rented set pieces and props, lighting and lighting design, live or recorded music, costuming for service personnel, and apropos foods and beverages. And when event planners take advantage of the proximity of businesses supplying the entertainment industry, some environments can be as elaborate as Hollywood film sets.

"We try to help the client feel they're entering a different world," says Randy Olsen, CEO of Celebrity Events, a Los Angeles-based company providing comprehensive event services for trade shows, conferences, and launch parties. For a millennium party for a government agency, his company turned a nondescript warehouse into a 21st century spaceport replete with robots, sets built of futuristic materials, and large balloons suspended overhead like planets. The staff were made up by Hollywood makeup artists and costumed as space travelers, with pulsating lights and futuristic sounds adding to the otherworldly feeling.

For a launch party to introduce the new Tanqueray No. 10 gin to Los Angeles, Olsen's company utilized a British theme. In addition to the requisite English pub setting, the environment they created included a red British phone booth and mailboxes, privet hedges, and a uniformed "Queen's Guard" keeping a stiff upper lip in a guard house near the entrance.

Some event venues already have an impressive themed environment. The House of Blues, for example, was built as an iconic tribute to the rustic but creative "American Primitive" style of architecture and furnishings. Maureen McGrath, Director of Sales for the House of Blues, describes it as a turnkey setting for organizations who want a "down home" Southern feel. Whether the client company is in the entertainment, high-tech, or law business, says McGrath, her venue tends to "appeal to genXers in both their workforce and targeted demographic."

In some cases, though, a client will want to modify the ambiance. For example, when "Days of Our Lives" held a 35th year anniversary party at the House of Blues last November, they gave Celebrity's team the challenging assignment of enhancing the venue's mood by taking the environment even further into the bayou. The solution? Hanging New Orleans-style chandeliers and Spanish moss, tall candelabras, aged wrought iron railings, rustic handmade wooden tables, and foliage and flowers native to the bayou country. In addition, Celebrity's chef teamed up with the resident House of Blues chef to create various Cajun specialties.

Various other unusual but compatible themes that McGrath has seen used at the House of Blues include 60's "flower power" and feng-shui themes. Yet any attempts to augment HOB's ambiance, she says, should be carefully thought out. "Silk brocade and Martha Stewart," for example, would not fit their mix. Yet whether the client uses a turnkey approach or adds to the existing ambiance, McGrath has noted an upswing in the number of events utilizing a total environment approach.

Large-scale events can include multiple environments. When this happens, it is crucial that each setting be both apropos and unified with the others, according to Craig Smith, VP, Special Events, Columbia TriStar Television Distribution. When the company held an exclusive multi-themed party last fall to launch their TV series and showcase the synergy of parent company Sony's various divisions, they held it on the Sony Pictures Studios backlot in Culver City. Invited were hundreds of executives from broadcast and cable networks as well as local stations, international clients, stars, producers, industry leaders, and major advertisers.

Several themed areas were created, anchored to the backlot's Main Street, including: The Havana Club, with giant conga drums, exotic flowers, huge plantain trees, and cigar and espresso bars; The Techno Lounge, with blue lights, chrome kiosks, Sony plasma screens, and lots of neon; The Torch Club, an art deco lounge with black and white table cloths and authentic period furniture; and an autumn themed buffet area, with harvest baskets, lush florals, and branches full of brilliant fall leaves.

Each environment was designed not only for maximum impact, but to tie into at least one specific division. The Havana Club, for example, helped showcase the Spanish-language network Telemundo, while the Techno Lounge provided an ideal backdrop for Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment and the various Columbia TriStar and Game Show Network websites. The overall effect, says Smith, was to showcase the diversity and breadth of Sony's products, thus enhancing the company's image and branding in the industry's eyes. And based on favorable comments he continues to receive, he is sold on the effectiveness of a total environment approach. "For an event of this magnitude," says Smith, "there is no better way to pull off."

Bill Hoversten is an independent writer and publicist based in Beverly Hills.