Event Planning in Korea: Yevo Food Launch Event

Whew, it's finally over.

Yevo Korea Event Launch

Its been a long couple of months of planning, negotiating, and creating for a 1 day event that comes and goes. Well I guess that's what it means to be an event planner. Overall, I was quite happy with the event. We had a good turn out, the stage was created in time and there were no misspellings on the banners or any of the material that we produced. Plus it looked like everyone had a good time.

Our clients this time were Yevo 43 that wanted a dynamic, fun event that bridged both cultures: America and Korea. They wanted an event focused on explaining the importance of the 43 essential nutrients in their product and how their product was more than food that it was a lifestyle product. We've had other clients that say similar things but with Yevo, I actually do believe in their product. It's really good and good for you.

So what goes into planning a great event in Korea?

A whole lot of frustration, patience, and a good team around you. With an event for 1000 people there are lots of moving pieces. You have a stage to build, an audio and visual team to coordinate, banners and decorations to build, plus you need to get everything brought in and set up in 1 day or there are lots of fees. Oh and the clients. You have to keep the clients happy even in they might be at fault. The event team's job is to fix everything event if it goes beyond the call of what was originally arranged.

The Mind behind Yevo, Chip Marsland with CEO Dave Brown

At this event, we had a VIP press conference in the morning that we were lucky to have quite a number of press to come to. We were lucky enough to be featured on a TV channel plus 4 newspapers. We also appeared on a dozen or so blogs. Here are some of the different media and press that featured the event: Newdaily, Newspim, Naver, Heraldcorp and MBN. Not bad, especially since it was a busy news day (the Korean government wants to standardize the history books which is upsetting everyone.)

The stage with Yevo Product

The stage was an interesting build for the room the clients choose was a bit smaller than what we were used to. We set up two awesome LCD screens on both sides for powerpoints and for live feeds from the videos. The LCDS took all night to build and use a ton of electricity but it does add that high-tech pizazz to the event. For the stage, we had it custom built with 42 different foods on plates to represent how much one would have to eat in order to get the same amount of nutrients in a single bowl of Yevo. We had the speeches from the VIPS and special guests and also some performance guests. This required some great AV guys that could get the levels correctly. We had singer Hong Jinyoung as a performer and she was amazing. She was super charming and she had so much energy. She really charmed the entire crowd.

Hong Jinyoung Singer at the Yevo Korea Launch Event

MC: Kang Seong Beom and Special Guest: Jeon Soo-kyung

In order to establish the importance of the event we brought in a celebrity MC, the comedian Kang Seong-beom who entertained the crowd for the event. We find that it is important to find a Korean MC that has a lot of energy and can effectively deliver the message. We were lucky to have musical star celebrity Jeon Soo-kyung come to the event and give a special welcoming message. She just happened to be in the hotel at the time (well, her husband Eric Swanson is the GM so the Millenium Hilton usually has celebrity guests there). Having a celebrity performer also helps to legitimize the brand. It all added to the atmosphere and I think it was a brand launch that was quite successful.

What I particularly loved about this event is that many of the female Yevo distributors dressed up in Hanboks.

Overall, a really fun event and one I was proud to be a part of. I would like to thank the Yevo company for believing in us and I look forward to working with them again.

Daniel Gray

http://www.eventskorea.com/