Special events are meant to be "special;"
don't jump in without careful planning.

Special events don't just happen. Someone has to think about all the possibilities and make them happen. Deciding the general nature, location, and date of the event are just the beginning. After that, come such considerations as ...

• Who will and won’t be invited, and how will they be invited?
• How will people get in and out of the event? Will they need tickets or other identification to do so? How will unexpected and/or uninvited guests be handled?
• Will there be enough parking room to accommodate everyone who comes? Is it accessible, safe, and reasonably priced for the expected guests?
• Are there be adequate rest rooms? If porta-potties have to be used, will they be wheelchair accessible? What other accommodations are needed for people with disabilities?
• What will be done to ensure adequate crowd control and security? – Taking the location, number of people, and potential volatility of the circumstances into account, will plain-clothes greeters be sufficient, or would uniformed guides and ushers be more suitable? Will armed security personnel be needed? If so, should they be police officers or a private security force?
• And the list goes on and on. The questions and concerns are nearly endless.

Among the most critical of these concerns are health and safety issues. Some are simply matters of common sense. If you hold an open house in a manufacturing facility, for instance, how can you keep unsupervised children away from dangerous machinery?

Other health and safety concerns are dictated by government regulations. Food safety is an excellent example of this. In most places in the United States, food cannot be prepared or served to the public unless local health authorities have inspected and certified the cleanliness of the food itself, the utensils used in its preparation, and the food preparation and service areas where it will be prepared and eaten.

And, since many of these and other health and safety concerns have ramifications in terms of legal liability, their final disposition may be dictated by the host's insurance company as a condition of continuing its insurance coverage. For instance, many insurers will require that an ambulance and at least two certified EMTs be on site for every 10,000 people in attendance.

This kind of planning takes time. Smooth-running special events are not thrown together at the last minute. A major event, or even a smaller one that expects to attract a significant number of out-of-town visitors who'll need overnight accommodations, should be planned at least a year in advance. And, the bigger and more special the event is, the more planning time it needs. Here are two examples.

When the Smithsonian Institution decided to host a special event to celebrate the anniversary of the first walk on the moon and wanted the President to participate, it was a major undertaking even in Washington, D.C., a city where special events are an everyday occurrence. Everyone involved knew it would require extensive and very detailed planning with particular emphasis on crowd control and security.

Rita Cipalla, assistant director of communication for the National Air and Space Museum reported in IABC’s Communication World magazine: "Planning for the Apollo 11 anniversary began about 18 months in advance with a series of meetings held at first about every eight weeks. Later, we met nearly every day as changes and additions to the program were made and refined, and walk-throughs with the White House and the US Secret Service were scheduled."

Even more daunting – perhaps the ultimate special events challenge – is hosting the Olympics. It involves scheduling hundreds of competitive events, arranging housing, food, and transportation for thousands of athletes, and accommodating hundreds of thousands of spectators. Whether participating or spectating, these thousands of people speak dozens of different languages and have a wide variety of housing and special dietary needs. Beyond this, the planners have to provide for worldwide media coverage, contend with international animosities and potential terrorist attacks, and attend to the protocol and security concerns created by having dozens of heads of state in one place at one time.

For a potential Olympics host city and country, the preliminary planning which often includes a promise to build new sports facilities and athletic housing usually starts a decade or more before they submit their official bid to host an upcoming Olympics. And, that bidding is normally a decade before the Games. The potential hosts are, therefore, doing essentially 20 years of planning with no guarantee it will produce anything.

Even after their bids are in, the final site selection by the International Olympics Committee is a time-consuming winnowing down process that typically takes two or more years and often requires bidders to revise their plans to remain in consideration. Only after a host city is finally selected, usually 8 to 12 years before the Olympic Games it will host, does the planning really move into high gear. It then continues to accelerate up to and through the Games.

When Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, it was the culmination of planning that started more than 30 years earlier, back in the 1960s when it submitted its first Olympics bid to host the 1972 Olympics.

Obviously, these are extreme cases and are not typical of all special event planning, but they offer a useful perspective. Before public relation practitioners undertake special events, they need to look beyond the potential public relations benefits and understand what they're really getting into.

Don't smugly think you'll have no trouble handling your company's 100th anniversary party because you hosted a smash silver anniversary party for your parents. The two don't even begin to compare. A corporate special event is not just a bigger and more elaborate version of a party for friends. Even a small special event that's open to the general public can put reputations, financial stability, personal security, and even lives at risk. As a public relations practitioner, you need to be aware of these complexities, challenges, and legal ramifications, and you need to take them into account from the first moment you think about doing a special event.

Is this giving you second thoughts about special events? -- It should! -- My purpose is not to scare you away from special events, but it is to make you more thoughtful and more cautious about hosting them. It's also to emphasize their need for advance planning.

Please, do host special events if they make sense for your organization, but do them methodically and carefully with lots of advance planning, adequate resources, and fallback options in case things go wrong. That way, it's more likely that everything will come together smoothly and you'll have a well-planned special event that achieves its goal.

According to Rita Cipalla of The Smithsonian: "The payoff from special events cannot be overemphasized. They garner increased media attention for your organization. They foster goodwill and a spirit of community among local groups. They give staff members a feeling of pride and confidence. And they provide the public with an educational, family-oriented, fun happening."

That's effective public relations.