Had a smoothie at Panera Bread. They use Monster Straws. Great example of a small detail that makes a big impact.
I enjoy a thick smoothie. The Monster Straw Company makes their straws extra wide so people who enjoy thick smoothies won’t have to, in their own words, deal with “sore cheeks and exploding lungs”. The fact that Panera Bread even pays attention to the way I experience straw drinking makes me feel valued and thought of.
As event producers, how many small details like these do we let go unnoticed?
Reminds me of an annual conference that we plan for one of our clients. On an otherwise flawlessly executed event, the registration process was our kryptonite.
Our client requires us to pre-print the attendee badges, instead of setting up a registration system that will allow us to print them onsite. Year after year, we were confronted by long lines of impatient attendees who were in a hurry to get into the ballroom. Rushing to get everyone registered quickly, our staff had to jump over each other to get to the badges, which were kept in alphabetized card boxes and would often wind up scrambled and out of order.
Determined to make the registration process go smoothly, one of our staff proposed an idea. What if, instead of placing the badges in boxes, we place them in plastic sleeves in binders? That way, the names will be easier to find and we won’t have to worry about looking for badges that were put into the wrong boxes.
That one small detail changed everything. The wait time on the registration lines were reduced significantly and the whole process went more efficiently. We even had an attendee notice what a great idea it was and say that he’d never seen anything like it.
It’s worth it to spend time thinking about all the details, whether monstrous or small.
