A well-conceived, well-designed, and well-executed event can have a major impact on companies, communities and customers. Frequently, events benefit good causes, but in so doing, events are also the perfect opportunity to define brand, kindle relationships and make meaningful memories. Most marketing pros specialize in one or two forms of communication and persuasion. But as the events detailed below suggest, Tim Gregg is comfortable organizing and orchestrating events on an impressive scale.
Taste of the Tour
In Tim's own words:
"The opportunity was enticing: build a start-up company's local market brand through involvement with one of the biggest sporting events of the year. The company was Aerial Communications, a new cellular provider in Houston. The event was the TOUR Championship, professional golf's year-end showcase event held for the first time in Houston at Champions Golf Club. Unfortunately, the TOUR Championship was the only PGA TOUR event closed to local sponsorships.
"As Aerial's marketing director, I realized that while there was nothing we could do AT the tournament, that did not preclude us from doing something in association WITH the tournament. Thus was born the "Taste of the Tour," a fundraising event held at Houston's Omni Hotel benefitting the PGA TOUR Wives Association. And nearly everyone got into the spirit of the occasion.
"Former President George H.W. Bush served as the event's honorary co-chair and he took his responsibility to heart. Houston's beloved "First Citizen" worked the crowd gathered in the Omni ballroom along with event co-chairs Dick and Butch Harmon. The evening also featured the majority of the top 30 players on the tour money list in town to play in the tournament, as well as local celebrities and some of Houston's top local chefs. Each of the city's culinary masters teamed with a pro golfer and local celeb at a tasting station featuring a dazzling array of food offerings.
"More than 700 people attended the sold out event which netted nearly $150,000 for the PGA TOUR Wives Association, marking their most successful ever fundraising event. Not bad for an evening conceived and planned in a mere two months time".
The Citizen Bee
In Tim's own words:
"One of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company's most successful community-relations initiatives was a high school academic competition called 'The Citizen Bee.' Organized nationally by the Washington, DC-based Close Up Foundation, the Citizen Bee found its greatest success in Oklahoma under the guidance of Southwestern Bell and a young public relations manager by the name of Tim Gregg.
"Having achieved success organizing and coordinating the company's statewide United Way campaign, my next major task was to ensure that the Citizen Bee garnered widespread participation and significant notoriety in cities and towns across Oklahoma. With participants representing more than 200 Oklahoma high schools, the event proved to be a successful and popular interscholastic competition.
"After working on the project for nearly six months, I was promoted into an area manager-community relations position two months before the Citizen Bee competition was held in a variety of locations throughout the state. That gave me the opportunity to actually host my own event in Bartlesville, OK, at a local college. Thanks to my broadcasting background, I arranged for the event to be broadcast live on local radio, with sponsorships. The program was a sellout, both in attendance at the event and advertising on the air.
"And I was 'rewarded' for the success of the initiative by serving as 'chaperone' for the five state finalists who travelled to Washington to participate in the national Citizen Bee finals.
Super Impact 17
In Tim's own words:
"For the past two years, in an assignment I hope will be a precursor to future opportunities, I carried the title 'marketing consultant' for Rebuilding Together Houston. The organization is an affiliate of a national movement which seeks to support low-income elderly individuals and couples by facilitating improvements and repairs to their homes, enabling them to age in place.
"Under the guidance of executive director Jim Soller, Rebuilding Together had become a successful and important non-profit entity among government agencies concerned with the issue of sustainable housing in financially-challenged neighborhoods. But few people not already involved with the organization had ever heard of it. Thus the need to build the brand.
"After spending nearly a year doing everything from building TWO new websites (one to promote the organization and the other to train volunteers), producing more than two dozen video segments to help tell the story and creating other marketing tools--such as the tagline, 'Repairing Homes. Restoring Hope'--Soller turned to me to run his 'catalyst' fundraising campaign entitled Super Impact 17. That meant another website, specific to the campaign, called GoalToGo.org, and managing the campaign's kickoff event.
"NRG Stadium's West Club served as the location for the Super Impact 17 kickoff rally in September 2015. A quintet of local notables, including original Houston Texan Chester Pitts, KHOU 11 meteorologist Chita Johnson, HomeShow Radio's Tom Tynan and popular local sportscaster Butch Alsandor, served as 'Honorary Crew Leaders' and by the time the rally took place (see photos below), more than a quarter million dollars had been pledged to the organization. Not a bad start toward a campaign which had as its goal by February 2017 to raise $500,000."
