My campaign evaluation

For my campaign evaluation, I chose to look at an event held by my local public library in Bristol, Va (the Bristol Public Library), in which they hosted Buddy Valastro, better known as the “Cake Boss” from his TLC reality show to speak about his life and do a baking demonstration. It took place on Dec. 1, 2011, but was announced in February 2011, with tickets going on sale on April 1.  I wanted to look at this event because it seemed like a big deal for a small town and was not an event put on by the library partnered with another organization, but the library alone.

Though the library has hosted high-profile speakers and authors before, such as Chris Matthews, Soledad O’Brien, Nicholas Sparks, and David Baldacci, this event was unique in that unlike writers and journalists, a reality show baker does not have an intrinsic relationship to a library. Also, having little prior knowledge of Valastro or the Cake Boss  show  and not attending the event, but having a background knowledge about the library, its audience, and local media, I thought this was a campaign I could look at objectively and analyze what worked and what did not.

Mainly, I examined how the library used local media and social media to overcome the challenges of putting on such as large show. First, tickets were expensive ranging from $25- $100. Moreover, if the library did not sell enough of the more expensive tickets they would not get enough return on investment and it would look terrible at the event if there were a significant number of empty seats in the first 5 rows. However, the library used its established media partners and good relationships with journalists to promote the event and had great attendance and sales.

Some of the critques I have of the campaign are the uneven media coverage throughout the year, the lack of strategic use of social media (yes, they used it, but not with a focused strategy it seemed), and the lack of mention of certain parts of the campaign on social media, such as a press conference the day of the event in which Valastro was at the library.

The positives were the great attendance, the ability to tie in literacy and library objectives to the event, and the excellent coverage by local media.

What I really loved about doing this project was looking at the ways dfferent strategies come together to create a successful event. I was also glad I chose an event because I was able to mentally compare this with the event we put on about domestic violence, and ask similar questions of this campaign that I asked when evaluating our event.

It was also a good opportunity to look back at my past blog posts and pick out what I thought were important elements of the book and see how I could incorporate them into my evaluation.

In summary, I thought the Christmas with the Cake Boss event was well-organized and received great media coverage, but if they had used social media more strategically, they just might have gotten that sell-out crowd they were hoping for.