Confessions of an Event Planner: Case Studies From the Real World of Events--How to Handle the Unexpected and How to Be a Master of Discretion (27 page)

CHAPTER 11

SOCIAL AGENDA

Em and her team take on their first nonprofit event as their way to give back. After attending several charity events and seeing major missteps costing the nonprofit company tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fund-raising—and after receiving numerous calls to step in at the very last minute—Em concedes to take one on from the very beginning. She experiences firsthand the challenges nonprofits face when creating events with limited funds; trying to raise sponsorship dollars and awareness; and depending on their appointed chairs—patrons of their cause—to help them bring in much needed dollars, attendees, silent auction articles, publicity and volunteers to do the work and help them to run the event.

NOVEMBER 16

Dee Dee, Daniela and I felt we had been transported to an alternate event planning universe when we received a frantic phone call from a stranger who turned out to be a full-fledged, lifelong, card-carrying member of a very exclusive club, the Ladies Who Lunch a.k.a. The High Society Lunch Bunch. It was surprising for us to discover that a very select few of its members were on a mission not to better the world through their acts of good deeds but to better their social ranking by using events with a cause as a means to help them gain social status and garner good personal PR.

Some of the actions we witnessed gave us pause but also gave us some very valuable lessons in return, including a new appreciation for what nonprofit organizations face when putting together an event without dollars allocated to fund it. They have the added pressure of not only raising dollars and awareness for their cause but the dollars to run it as well. They do an amazing job, but there is a cost they can end up paying, depending on who they partnered with as their event’s chairperson, as we discovered. We soon learned that there are two very different types of charity chairs. With more and more corporations partnering with nonprofits, what we took away gave us valuable insight as to what we would be facing now that many of our corporate clients wanted us to start exploring cause marketing event options that would tie their name to a charity that was a fit for them.

The events these Ladies Who Lunch—PamperedPartyPrincesses was our original pet name for them—got involved with came with a definite social agenda. When we answered their panic-stricken call to help (which we did for altruistic reasons; we viewed it as a means to give back by contributing our talents for free to what we believed was a very worthy cause) we were taken behind the scenes into a world of socialite chairs and committee members who were using chairing and heading committees for gala fund-raisers as a means to climb the social ladder and to achieve international visibility. Their personal agendas of social power, press, fashion, increasing their standing or controlling their social circles, even finding their first or next husband came first. For those using charity events and fund-raising for social climbing purposes, the events they lent their names to came second, and so did making sure that funds were actually raised. These Ladies Who Lunch were in a league of their own—in league together and in love with their own press.

These PamperedPartyPrincesses were a very different breed than old money and even rough-around-the-edges nouvelle rich like DiamondDiva. Their spoiled and often shocking behavior left them looking much more like PettyPartyPrincesses—who had never left junior high school mentality behind or attended top charm/finishing schools like so many of them claimed to have done—than the envied and elitist PamperedPartyPrincesses they envisioned themselves to be and how they thought the world perceived them.

It was an eye-opening and at times jaw-dropping experience and no one ever fessed up to giving the leader of this pack of PettyPartyPrincesses our telephone number. It was one hell of a ride while it lasted—trying to stay one step ahead of and out of the battling turf wars that took place between the alpha leaders of several PettyPrincess packs and their PettyPrincess ladies-in-waiting who were kept busy massaging the self-image of their leaders while planning and plotting their demise at the same time with their own coup d’état, while trying to make sure that the charity caught in the middle of all this inner circle fighting did not come out the loser. They, as were we, were dealing with egos that knew no bounds and who were dead set on marking their territory.

The bratty, prima donna and often vindictive antics of the PettyPartyPrincesses annoyed the heck out of Dee Dee and Daniela, who were more than ready and able to take them on in the name of good. They were more than a match for their tirades and tantrums. And Daniela could beat them at their own game (she easily out-dressed, out-classed and out-traveled them, having only traveled the world first class and stayed at the best-of-the-best resorts, as had Dee Dee and I) when they were being snotty and snarky around haute couture and the “shocking” fashion faux pas their competing PettyPartyPrincesses and their petulant and pouting ladies-in-waiting packs committed. The PettyPartyPrincesses wilted under Daniela’s critical eye and sharp tongue when she turned it around and turned it on them after she felt they crossed the line of acceptable social behavior, and she wanted to put them in check. These PettyPartyPrincesses would never misplace their lipstick but they sure didn’t have a problem mislaying their morals if they thought it would move them up one rung on the social ladder. Daniela was a master of giving a backhanded compliment. It’s a shame that most of it went over their heads. But Dee Dee and others present, wealthy contributors who were there as true patrons to support the charity cause, often had difficulty hiding their smiles.

Dee Dee discovered a website devoted to tracking the Muffys and the Tiffanys in the world of socialites, their rankings, their clothes, their choices of dates, the events to which they lent their names and their SR Silver Spoon Awards. They had down pat the categories some of these Pampered and PettyPartyPrincesses aspired to:

SR Silver Spoon Awards Categories

• Socialite of the Year

• Socialite Event of the Year

• Socialite Career Highlight of the Year

• Socialite Couple of the Year

• Designer of the Year

• Socialite Campaign of the Year

• Breakthrough Socialite of the Year

• International Socialite Award

• Socialite Dress of the Year

• Socialite Press Clip of the Year

• Socialite Sibling Team of the Year

Dee Dee and Daniela had a few more categories they would have added after going several rounds with warring camps of PettyPartyPrincesses and their ladies-in-waiting when there were two co-chairs hosting an event who tried nonstop to upstage one another with little regard for what they had signed on to do. Many of the nonprofit events the PettyPartyPrincesses undertook actually ended up running at a loss and costing the charities money instead of raising funds, which was not surprising because in many cases the events that PettyPartyPrincesses were undertaking or proposing were a means to get their names in the media, throw a gala party for their friends at no personal cost to them and increase their social status. All event elements were carefully contrived and orchestrated with military precision to further their personal social agenda and showcase them, not the charity.

Reigning
PamperedPettyPartyPrincess
Ladies-in-Waiting Rules

#1 It is
always
all about ME

#2 See rule #1 (all you really need to remember)

The nonprofit planners had our total respect for having to deal with the demanding and entitled attitudes of an event’s ruling chairs and hosts when their charity aligned themselves with a PettyPartyPrincess type, having initially been taken in by dazzling monetary returns projections for a gala fund-raising endeavor headed by them but underwritten by the charity if their event did not raise money. They could have instead aligned their organization with a true patron of their cause (the other Ladies That Lunch Club/Respected Society Mavens) that had only their organization’s well-being at heart and were prepared to put their time, energies and, in many cases, their own money into making their event a rewarding success.

One celebrity gala fund-raiser that ended up in the red, costing the charity thousands and thousands of dollars they did not have, only received $5,000 from the celebrity host. To add insult to injury, the celebrity host was perceived in the media as underwriting the entire cost for the event along with the PettyPartyPrincess who was anxious to link her name to theirs. The charity was just being used a PR tactic and society-positioning tool. Prices were set and tickets sold to only their Rolodex of personal friends and/or given to friends of the PettyPartyPrincess in lieu of their support for her—not for the nonprofit organization—before all the costs of the event were known and they came in much higher than the PettyPartyPrincess chair ever anticipated. That is, if she’d even given it that much thought. She’d done nothing to secure major corporate sponsors to help pay for the cost of the event so that the monies from all tickets sales plus silent auction items and donations went to the charity as profit. She did, however, spend money on a new designer gown, professional hair and makeup, new jewelry and her own personal photographer to make sure that she got all the pictures she wanted of herself with celebrities, other select top society folk and politicians gathered around her.

When the media queried the dollars raised, true figures could not be given because that would have been an admission that a great private party took place but unfortunately—too bad, so sad—no actual monies were raised, and in fact the charity went into the hole, and was left scrambling to find the funds to pay for their event. Sometimes charities do enter into this kind of arrangement knowing full well they are being used but hoping that having their organization shown as being in partnership with well-known names will help bring added exposure to their cause and make securing corporate sponsors the next go round easier.

For us, it was fascinating to see the social and political games being played for personal gain in another side of our industry and where being a master of discretion involved much more than we had encountered before. Sure, there were still the secret—or not so secret—affairs, misspent money, backstabbing, and unethical behavior we encountered on a daily basis but the level of cutthroatness of the PettyPartyPrincesses was something new added to the mix, as was the despair and unhappiness we saw when the veil got lifted at times and we were able to see what was driving these PettyPartyPrincesses.

We learned that all the money in the world doesn’t buy you class and doesn’t ensure happiness. Many of these women lived their lives on the superficial surface and radiated being miserable from deep inside. Many of their marriages had been fueled by their love of money, not the men in their lives. We witnessed mothers who had been groomed to marry money or marry into a higher social status doing the same with their daughters—and that was another purpose of getting involved in society gala fund-raising. One PettyPartyPrincess mom gushed at how her daughter just “loved” dating much older businessmen and she worked the seating chart like a mom on a marriage mission. Her daughter was 17. For many PettyPartyPrincesses, social climbing was their career and a way of furthering their husband’s career. They had to look the part, play the part and produce the business and social connection results their spouses were looking for or there was hell to pay at home. After all, they could easily be replaced by a younger PettyPartyPrincess model.

Daniela witnessed one PettyPartyPrincess’s meltdown at home when she discovered a miniscule pulled thread in her designer gown that she was going to wear that evening and dissolved into tears telling Daniela that “she just didn’t understand how important being and looking perfect was and that her husband was going to be furious with her about the tiny—invisible to almost every naked eye—flaw in her dress.” She, along with her gown, would be perceived as damaged goods. It was essential to her livelihood that she be considered a prize accessory on her husband’s arm.

Daniela was able to share with her tricks from her past haute couture modeling days and restore the PettyPartyPrincess’s spirits, all the while knowing inside that what had just taken place would not stop the PettyPartyPrincess from mocking someone else’s misfortune that night should they be viewed as less than perfect in the eyes of her peers—but at least it was someone else and not her.

Behind their façade of flashy jewelry, fake smiles and air kisses (PettyPartyPrincesses know not to muss their dress, makeup or hair) and their seemingly narcissistic belief that they looked more fabulous than anyone else in the room, things were not always as they appear. There was a great deal of insecurity, along with insincerity, lurking there. And if the PettyPartyPrincesses sometimes wrapped themselves in protective layers of expensive fur coats bought by their “adoring” husbands, or so they said, it could be from trying to warm themselves from the frozen iciness some of their spouses displayed towards them when they were not on show. Working with them in their homes, you could often cut the tension between picture-perfect couples with a knife, and you found yourself wishing for something with which to ward off the chill. Their entitled arrogance, while very real, is also used as a self-defense mechanism.

A PettyPartyPrincess, Dee Dee, Daniela and I learned, is a type of woman that wants something at all cost, will do almost anything to get it, and never says thank you, but man, can the personal price be high. Wouldn’t want to be one nor spend my life energies working with them to further their demanding diva goals. I’d rather work with DiamondDivas any day. While DiamondDiva may be a connoisseur (in her own mind) of expensive trinkets and toys and had tons of rough edges, she did have a truly expansive heart when it came to making sure that “her kids” were taken care of and thanked. She knew that they buttered her bread, provided her with oceans of champagne and she gave back, but not only to them. She was also a big patron supporter, with no strings attached, to charities and causes she believed in.