Event Management | AD & PR Lab

8 min readJul 1, 2021

Meet the Locals

As part of the event management workshop, we were invited to carry out the organisation of an event that will highlight Athens as a top tourist destination.

Initially the first steps we followed were to see how we can implement this task and so we thought to follow the need of the day and adapt to the COVID-19 era by organising an e-conference.Our first move to build our idea was to highlight our city as one of the main tourist destinations — both in Greece and abroad — with a reversal. We want to highlight the uniqueness of Athens, but not in the way we are all used to. An Athens for everyone! Our goal is to show a new version of our city, having as its main axis the location, but from a more urban point of view. Hidden treasures, colourful corners, underground hangouts, road music, walks in the Ancient Agora

More specifically, we decided that our speakers will be citizens of Athens. People who do business or work in Athens, are inspired by the neighbourhoods, love to discover and always evolve in our city. Each speaker will represent his own unique pillar and will convey his love for the city to the public.So we decided to implement our idea in a more interactive and fun way through hop on hop off and not just through a stage conference!

Modern Culture, History-Tradition, Wine-Gastronomy, Sustainability, Shopping and finally the Environment, are the stations on the route of the Hop on-Hop off bus, while highlighting the hidden diamonds of our favorite city.

We want to pre-filmed our guest-speakers on a specially designed Hop on — Hop off bus, designed with our logo. The event will be broadcasted live on Hopin platform on the day of the event. This way our guest-participants will be able to ‘ lay over’ on its pillar of interest and get to know the city of Athens, through speeches, stories and activities of local professionals, simple people and influencers that take action and love Athens.

Swot Analysis

Through swot analysis we developed the main points of Athens.
Regarding its strengths, we believe that it’s a multicultural city and also a worldwide known place for tourism. In addition, Athens has a rich history and so many landmarks and attraction points. Also it is an affordable destination and a growing place for business.
In relation to its weaknesses we noticed that Athens is mainly known as a summer destination. Also we have to add the fact that it has not so many green areas and the high traffic combined with limited road network.
On the other hand, opportunities like the good transport system, its rich cultural heritage and technological development can be taken advantage of. As for the threats, we have to mention the intense competition with other European cities, the neglect of some central areas due to increased crime and the existence of garbage around streets.

Social Media Strategy

Let’s talk about strategy! Organising a huge event like this, demands social appearance. In order to approach our age group 35–65 we decided to create a Facebook Page and Event, Instagram profile, LinkedIn for professionals and a Youtube Channel. Facebook is “The Engager” we aim to gain reactions, shares and comments for our event and invite more and more attendees to our online event. Instagram (aka Behind The Scenes platform) will be used in order to offer to our followers exclusive content from our speakers in order to invite more and more people to our event and captions of the local and pure athenian spots. With the hashtags #meetthelocals #localizeit we will invite people to send their stories and posts from places they have been in Athens that they think is worth visiting. Using LinkedIn platform we target professionals of the travelling business field and apart from the regular content we will also add some worth mentioning information about Greece’s rules and announcements that interest travelling and safety measurements. Last but not least, a Youtube channel is useful in order to gain young audience creating fun and memorable video content.

Speakers

Our speakers and event agenda

One of the most significant stages, when you organize an event — virtual or physical — is the selection of speakers and host. In a few words, the people, the personalities that are going to represent your brand identity. We must never forget that when we talk about events, we talk about brands! More specifically, our project aims to point out the city of Athens as one of the top tourist destinations around Europe, inspired by specific pillars, such as gastronomy & wine, modern culture, history & tradition, sustainability, environment and shopping. As we have already mentioned in the article, the main idea of our event is “Meet the Locals’’. In a few words, demonstrate the city of Athens to the professionals of the tourism field, through the locals! That is why we decided to choose speakers that live and activate in Athens. People that do businesses or work downtown, are inspired by the neighborhoods, love to discover and always evolve in the city. Each speaker will represent its own unique pillar and will transmit its love for the city to the public. More specifically, our host is Mr. Nikos Moutsinas, one of the most well-known actors and tv-presenters in Greece, with a multiannual career in the field of entertainment. In the field of gastronomy & wine, we chose Mr. Adam Kontovas, a rising star in the gastronomy scene, so in Greece as in Europe, full of passion and innovative ideas. When it comes to modern culture our option is Alexandra Diona, an Athenian art director and conceptual photographer, with creative ideas and alternative point of view. In the matter of Greek history & tradition we are oriented to Dr. Thodoris Papakostas, archeologist and storyteller, based in Athens. Through his Instagram account he educates and introduces a different view of what antiquity is, in modern Greek mentality and promotes what is called “pop archaeology”. When someone in Athens hears about the sustainable mindset, Marilou Pantaki, also known as “Madame Ginger”, is the first person that pops into their mind. She is a wonderful example of how a food blogger became the ambassador of a sustainable way of life, with zero food waste, alternative ways of preparing food and vegan recipes. Furthermore, in the field of environment we thought about Stavros Tsompanidis, founder of the startup “Phee”. Using dead leaves of the seaweed Posidonia Oceanica, which are washed up in large quantities on the Greek coast, he manages to create useful everyday objects. Last but not least, in the territory of shopping and fashion, Vassia Kostara — famous fashion designer and painter — is a woman who can communicate our vision and talk about her art in a glorious way. When it comes to our agenda, we created a program based on the pillars given, following specific steps and guidelines. The event will take place on September 4th, from 12 in the noon to 16:15 in the afternoon, with a break of 45 minutes, in order to give our audience a moment to think and grasp everything that they have heard.

Website

Our website

We thought it would be a nice idea to create a website for our event in order to make it more understandable and representational to the audience. Through the website we wanted people to get informed about us, about our event and also its prosecution. So, at the beginning, we represent ourselves in a very short text and below we write a few words about our preeminent speakers. Moreover, we would like to inform the audience about the event’s schedule and the subject that will be pointed out so it is mentioned concisely and at the end we direct our audience’s attention to the date the event will take place.

Budget

According to our budget, we decided to range at the amount of 50.000 € . More specifically , we calculated 3.000 €for the hop on — hop off bus , 5.000€ for the HOPIN app , 3.000€ for the communications . Also 10.000€ for the production expenses , 25.000€ for the host and the speakers and 1.000€ for the courier. We also decided to leave a spare amount of 3.000€ extra in order for something to come up.

Our sponsors & delegate bags:

Our next steps, in order to proceed with our project, was to find Greek brands that could be sponsors and partners in our Event. After research, we followed an hierarchical and structured organization, with the brands we found, according to their offer and role each one will have in our Event!

So first, we chose as our big sponsor -Platinum Sponsor- the greek beer Fix with its special edition beer ‘’True Local’’. Our next partnerships -Gold Sponsors- would be the Acropolis Museum, Onassis Stegi, Coco-Mat & Coco-Mat bikes, as well as the Hop-On Hop-Off bus. Other sponsors we chose -Silver sponsors- were the National Gallery and Bioiatriki, since it would be necessary to conduct multiple rapid COVID-19 tests, to our production and guest-speakers. Finally, our -Bronze sponsors- were Vodafone and General Post courier and our -In Kind sponsors- were local brands such as Kora, Alex The Fresh Pasta, Buy A Boo, ODE, Overall, The Pie Shop, I Cake you, Dope Coffee, Fresh Line and Το Τσάι.

It is worth mentioning here, our extra idea — our Delegate bags! During the Event, the first 100 participants who will upload an Instagram story with the hashtag #MeetTheLocals, will be the lucky ones to win and have delivered a customized bag full with products from our sponsors and partners mentioned before.

Finally, we should talk about our media that we will communicate and present our Event! Some of them will be Kathimerini, Athens Voice, Pepper 96.6, Lifo.gr, Athinorama, Mad, Samano Radio, Sxedia and The Athenian Times.

Press Release

We decided to compose a press release email, in order to inform the press about all the details of the event — time , place , speakers , cause — . This way our event would get the press promotion , which would help it stand out.

This project challenged us to express all our creativity, to cooperate as a team and to try our best to plan an event that would be able to promote Athens as an all time travel destination. It was not an easy task , but we , as a team, managed to get through it and create ‘Meet the locals’ event.