Running head: IOWA RIVER FESTIVAL
Iowa River Festival during Welcome Week
Samantha Brooks
Ryan Wendt
Nick Kuchel
University of Iowa
Abstract
The Iowa River Festival is an event that will be provided during the next University of Iowa Welcome Week. This event will be held at the Iowa Memorial Union, Hubbard Park, and Iowa River Terrace. It will be an all day event and include live music, food vendors, and games. This festival will be open to all members of the Iowa City community as well as the University of Iowa community. The Iowa River Festival will last all day long on a Saturday to appeal to all members of the community.
Welcome Week at the University of Iowa provides many great opportunities for students, faculty, and the Iowa City community. The week
consists of various events and activities to draw the University of Iowa community and the Iowa City community together to unite and have a
good time. For first year and transfer students specifically, this week is essential to welcome them to the community and school. Many
students’ homes are far away so feeling a sense of unity and inclusion that first week of school is very beneficial and crucial to the rest of their
time spent at the University of Iowa. The different events provide learning, social, and entertaining opportunities for all people involved.
Welcome Week and the events that take place are a perfect way to draw an end to the summer and kick off a new school year.
An Iowa River Festival would be a great event to add to the next Welcome Week at the University of Iowa. This festival will include a little bit of everything from live music to food and games. Iowa City is a very creative and artistic community so the live music would be provided by local, up and coming bands. There will be various types of vendors supplying food, clothing, Iowa apparel, collectibles, etc. The food will include typical Midwestern food such as corn on the cob. Vendors can also sell Iowa gear and collectibles so students can start to show off their school spirit. Along with the music, food, and other vendors, there will be different fair-like games for everyone to participate in. Some of the games will include Iowa trivia which will help educate everyone on past Iowa history and events. Overall, this river festival will take place all throughout the day, attract everyone from Iowa City and the University, and provide a vast range of activities that will appeal to all students, faculty, and community members.
The Iowa River Festival has many objectives and goals. One of these objectives is create a sense of unity not only to new students and faculty but to everyone in the community. In college towns, it is important to bring together the residential members and university members so there is not a crude separation that could potentially cause problems. By having this festival and including all people, it can allow for the intermixing of societies and the feeling of a closer community. After all, almost all of the residential community members support the Hawkeyes!
Another important goal for the Iowa River Festival is to provide a social environment. For new students in the dorms, this will be a great time for students to get everyone on theirs floors together to go have a good time. It will also be good for new roommates to spend time together to better get to know each other. By bringing in a large crowd of people, there will be chances for meeting new people and making new friends. Creating a socially inviting atmosphere is essential especially during the first week of classes when everyone is getting settled in and back into the school mode. Also by allowing social opportunities, new students can feel a sense of home and support when they are adjusting to being away from home for the first time.
The last objective is to provide various types of entertainment through music, food, and games. Local bands will be invited to perform throughout the day. This will help create sense of community by introducing everyone to local talent. It will also help each band by getting their name and music out into the Iowa City area. According to the website, HelloIowaCity.com, local bands are listed and samples of their music are provided which would help in finding the various bands to perform at the festival (HelloMetro). A goal will be to bring in different types of music to help appeal to a larger number of people. Local food vendors will also be invited to provide Midwestern food which will be great for those who are not from the area. According to the website, DineSite.com, you can search by type of food for local Iowa City restaurants to potentially contact to be a vendor at the Iowa River Festival (DineSite.com). An example of this would be a place such as Pancheros. Though it is a national chain now, it was started in Iowa City and is a business that is always willing to help out a good cause. As for the games that will be part of the Iowa River Festival, they will focus on participants working together. There will be trivial games about Iowa’s history including Iowa City, the University, athletics, organizations, and academic/alumni. This will not only provide entertainment but will also educate those participating and watching. These games will include teams which will help teach teamwork and working together.
Furthermore, having a set of objectives and goals is very important when creating events for Welcome Week at the University of Iowa. There are different populations of people to keep in mind and their needs and wants should be addressed and provided for. By thinking about what will appeal to everyone, the event will be a success. The Iowa River Festival provides for everyone in the community in many different ways which will in turn be successful and full of enjoyment.
Welcome Week at the University of Iowa takes place throughout the entire first week of classes as well as the weekend following. The Iowa River Festival will take place on the Saturday of Welcome Week. This will allow for everyone to attend because students and faculty will not have classes on Saturday and community members will most likely not be working on Saturday. The festival will take place from 10am-10pm to provide for a long, full day of entertainment and enjoyment for everyone. Having the festival take place throughout the entire day will allow time for anyone to attend no matter what their schedule is like. Some people may only be able to attend in the morning and some may only be able to attend in the afternoon/evening. Setting up the festival in this way goes along with one of the objectives of appealing to all members of the community and bringing about unity. The more options that are given to people the more satisfied they will be.
The Iowa River Festival will utilize a good portion of the Iowa Memorial Union. The bands and live music will take place in Hubbard Park. A large stage will be set up to accommodate the various types of bands performing. Because Hubbard Park is so big, this will make a perfect spot to accommodate for a large number of people. The vendors will line up all long the Iowa River Terrace. It is a pretty spot where people can walk along the river and enjoy what all the different vendors have to offer. The games will also be set up along the river terrace but they will also utilize the various ballrooms in the Iowa Memorial Union. The ballrooms are large rooms which can contain the many people that will be attending the Iowa River Festival. This will also be a good time for people to have a change of scenery, cool off inside the IMU, and enjoy the games offered.
Throughout the entire day, the vendors will constantly be open selling food, clothing, and Iowa collectibles. The live music will also be scheduled back to back from beginning to end so there is constant entertainment. The games will be in the middle of the day when the most people will be present. The key to this timeline is to keep the events and activities constant so people can come and go as they please when they have available time. With fewer restrictions, more people will be eager to attend the Iowa River Festival.
Our target audience will be all those involved in the Iowa City community. We will not discriminate against anyone as the Iowa River Festival will be open to all. However, we will try to target current University of Iowa students the most because Welcome Week, according to University of Iowa Student Government President Barrett Anderson, provides the opportunity for new and current students to explore the many different aspects that the University of Iowa offers (University of Iowa).
As mentioned earlier, our primary focus for marketing will be focused on the students at the University of Iowa. This includes current students whether they be sophomores, juniors, or seniors, as well as new students who will be freshman. We want there to be a mix of all different classes at the Iowa River Festival because we want some of the newer students to meet and socialize with current students at the university. This will allow for the new students to gain insightful information about the University of Iowa that maybe they did not learn in their orientation sessions and will be beneficial for them in adapting to life in Iowa City and college.
Students however will not be the only ones invited to the Iowa River Festival. We will also promote the festival to families in the surrounding area. It will be a great opportunity to get the family together and bring them down to the Iowa River Festival to partake in games, music, and food. We don’t this to be just exclusively for college aged students, we want it to be open to the whole community as a way of trying to enhance and enrich the local Iowa City culture. Also, we will target the majority of the high school and junior high school students in the Iowa City Community School District along with other surrounding school districts such as Solon, West Branch, Clear Creek Amana, and so on. We realize that often kids aged 13-18 look for new things to do and new places to hang out so we will encourage them to come down and participate with the rest of the community in the Iowa River Festival. Also, we understand that a sizeable group of the local music scene followers are high school aged kids and so we will use the lure of bands that they listen to and know to try and get them to participate in the river festival.
To acquire the attention of all these different people, whether it is college, high school, or junior high school aged kids or families, we as the organizers will create flyers promoting the Iowa River Festival. These flyers will give a basic description of what the Iowa River Festival entails, so it will include such facts as where the festival takes place, which is along the Iowa River by the Iowa Memorial Union, and also live music in Hubbard Park. The flyers will also say the names of the local bands so as to promote the music scene and draw in students by using the urge of live music to listen to. Also included in the flyers will be that the fact that food and game vendors will be setup all along the Iowa River and in Hubbard Park for their enjoyment.
We believe it would be best to make several different forms of flyers so as to try and get as much information about the festival out as possible. It would not be a very good strategy to just cram all words and information onto a flyer and hang it up without any pictures or anything. According to Palmer (2004), people do not want to sit and read some long novel about some event, they want to know the most important things first, there needs to be something there to catch their eye (Palmer, 2004). Therefore, we will make numerous flyers, all with the basic information, but each one promoting one particular aspect of an event at the festival. For example, we will make some flyers promoting the names of local bands saying they will be playing a live concert on a certain time and place. These flyers will obviously be better placed and utilized around the downtown Iowa City area and also at the local high schools and junior high schools because they will be interested in the live music and bands. On the other hand, for a different flyer we may promote the fact that food and game vendors will be at the river festival while listing some specific popular games. These flyers will then be posted at more family orientated spots in town, such as local parks and playgrounds, family restaurants, the Iowa City Public Library, local elementary schools and so on. Here we will be looking to try and attract the family aspect of the Iowa River Festival to come and enjoy the many different things that can be done at the festival as a family. These are just a few examples of the different flyers that can be produced and how we will figure out where to best distribute them to try and spread attention of the Iowa River Festival event during Welcome Week at the University of Iowa.
Obviously, the Iowa River Festival will not pay for itself. Luckily, the University of Iowa as agreed to provide us with a budget of $1,000. However, this may not be enough and we as organizers may need to search out alternative forms of money to invest in the festival. Also, it will be a good idea to search out sponsorship so we can reduce some of the operating costs of hosting the festival.
As forms of sponsorship, we will try to find local companies that want to invest in the community and will not hesitate to invest in the festival. A good start will be one of the local radio stations here in Iowa City, such as KHAK 98.1 FM or Z102.9 KZIA. They will be able to provide music via their vans with built in loud speakers while the local bands are taking breaks from playing or preparing to setup their own equipment. Also, they will be able to provide free gifts to give away such as t-shirts, key chains, CD’s, etc. Also, they will be able to promote the Iowa River Festival on the radio all day along as they will be on-site at the Iowa River and can encourage all their listeners to come down and check it out for themselves. In this case with the radio station providing some sponsorship, both of the parties win. The radio station gets to promote themselves at the festival and also gets to interact with the community, showing that they care about developing the city as a whole. And the festival gets another attraction and way to draw more people to the river festival as a whole. Also, the festival will receive money to help in attracting other events and participants.
Another form of sponsorship that we will try and go after are food companies, preferably local based vendors. One example would be Hy-Vee Food Stores as they are locally based and also would be willing to invest in the community. Hy-Vee would be able to provide free food and drinks for all the people at the river festival. They could provide anything from pizza, wings, sandwiches, fruit, pop, water, juice, and other such party necessities. They could also hold contests where they could give away free gift cards and other Hy-Vee related items to the winners of the contestants. In return, we as the organizers will be provided with free food and drinks that we would otherwise have to pay for and also another form of marketing in that Hy-Vee can help us draw even more people to the festival.
The only problem is trying to get these companies on board and willing to participate and sponsor our Iowa River Festival. In order to do this, we will tell the different companies that participating in the festival will serve as another form of advertising in that they can spread the word of their company while also benefiting us. Also, another big pull for us to try and gain sponsorship will be the fact that the companies will be reinvesting in the community that they serve. They will be allowing for the culture of the community to be enriched by sponsoring our river festival in that they will be allowing for different members of the community to come together and have a good time. With their help, we will be able to promote the city of Iowa City and its traditions and cultures to other people around the state and region so more people will be drawn to the area in the long run, eventually increasing the overall appeal and life of the community.
When dealing with such a large scale non-profit event there is a very fine line on how much you can spend in comparison to the income you will receive. In marketing terms this is referred to as the break even point. All of you expenditures should not exceed the money people will pay for the event. So if you were to spend $300 dollars on a game of some sort and at the end of the day it only brought in $250 you would call this a net loss. This is a very serious issue that you cannot afford to have when your primary source of income comes from donations. To avoid this problem you need to do extensive research and find out which events bring in the best crowds for their cost.
This then brings up a very important part of this event and that is how much everything is going to cost. To find out how much money you need to raise for this event, you first need to find out how much the whole thing will cost. In the River Festival the costs should be pretty minimal. The first thing we will need to find is a stage for the bands to play on. One possibility is to look into the University and see if they already own one we could barrow. The second option is to find a stage rental place and rent one. According to the website,
midwestsoundandstage.com, the rental rates for this stage depends on your needs and how long the duration of the stage will be. This price though includes the setup of the stage and dissembling it (midwestsoundandstage.com). This is probably the closest stage around for rental which is located in Becker, Minnesota.
The rest of this event will not be as expensive because they are not the focal point and a lot of the events will be more voluntary items. All of the vending and apparel stands will not have a cost for us because it will be their option to participate. Each of these stands will get to keep what money they make but in return will not be paid to be there. We will have to make sure that each vendor is FDA approved so we are not responsible for any violations. We will have to pre-approve of each vendor and have a confirmed list of vendors that will be attending so we can assign them a designated spot on the terrace. This is a win-win situation for every one involved because it will give all the new students a great chance to see what Iowa City has to offer for restaurants, it will give the vendors great business, and it would give the Iowa River Festival a free appealing virtue that no where else on campus is exhibiting. This situation will share parallels with the food court in the mall. If a new student and their parents are hungry but for different foods, it will be convenient to stop at Hubbard Park and then they will also be likely to check out all the other aspects we have to offer.
The next costless attraction for us will be the bands that will be playing. Since we are going to give local bands the opportunity to show their talents we will not need to pay them. This will be one of the main attractions for the Festival but will not cost us anything nor will it cost the students who are attending the festival. They will just be able to come and enjoy the music at no cost.
The only cost that is left now is the games. Depending on which games picked depends on how much money will need to be spent. Obviously the trivial games held in the IMU will be minimal because they could just be built from scrap. The more costly games will be held outside on the terrace. A fun activity that could be brought in real cheap is a rock climb. The Army would bring in a mobile rock wall cheap if not for free as long as they could advertise the Army a little bit. This would not be all that bad anyways because this allows students to learn about other programs that Iowa has to offer, such as ROTC classes.
The best idea for games, money allowing, could be from megaevent.com. This is a Chicago area business that rents out all kinds of inflatable games. These games can range from a giant slide, mega maze, giant twister, laser tag, radar pitch, and many more. Add a couple of these to the festival and you might have a better outcome. The only problem with this is it might get kind of expensive so a fee might need to be set to participate. With each activity having an average rate of 100 participants per hour we could charge a fee as little as $0.50 and still break even. Having to charge the students though would have to be a last resort if needed because having to pay extra for anything would be unappealing to participate.
While assuming basic security will be provided, we will be able to use little other staffing for the festival. There will be no need for staffing on the vendors or most of the games because the people who own these will be watching over them. The one thing we will need to pay for is for someone to keep the bands in order and make sure people show up on time. This job could be filled by anyone though so we could find voluntary Recreation students to switch shifts.
With all of these varying costs we will need a back up plan if the $1,000 is not enough. There are a couple of ways to go about raising money for this cause. One would be to ask different big businesses for donations to support this festival and if they did give a donation they would get their name put up at the Festival publicizing their donation. Another great way to get little donations would be from the vendors. We could put an add in the paper that applications for having a vending spot for the festival are open; you would not be charged to set up your spot, but if you gave a donation you are guaranteed a spot. But if everyone gives donations, spots would be awarded to the highest bidders. The final idea for scraping up some easy cash could be to hold some sort of benefits for it. Or we could just set up can cages around down town and people who have pop cans just put their cans in these cages and we receive all of the profits to finance this event.
To ensure that all of these events are done in time we will need to make sure our goals are reached in time. We will first need to know the exact amount of money that is needed so we can decide if we need to find some sponsors. Once we have this number calculated we will have a short dead line to get the money in time. We will have to make sure all the money will be accounted for by mid-July to make sure we can get all the arrangements with the companies. The second major deadline will be the beginning of June. If we can advertise this welcome week to all of the incoming students during their orientation we would be able to get their full attention on it instead of hitting them with the idea of it when they are worried about actual classes. Along with this goal we would have a follow up in August with a postcard that is sent out to every incoming student to invite them. The final assessment to make sure that everything is in place would also occur August 1st and that would be a checklist. This list would have every vendor, game, and band on it and make sure they are all in line to be present the Saturday of the festival.
The Iowa River Festival is an excellent opportunity for new and old students to make new friends, learn a lot about Iowa that they did not know, and have a great time. This event may not be as active as all the other events planned for this area but will draw the likes of all sorts of people. It will not only attract people who love music, people looking for fun with the games, but also people who might just be hungry. The other great thing about this festival is it is only one day so the cost will be minimal and more people will show up if it is only a one day event. Being held on a Saturday will help us out because there will be nothing else going on. Two day events at this location might get drug out and people might not be willing to come Friday if they have other things going on. This could be the perfect idea to help promote Hubbard Park along with showing how many different forms of recreation can be involved at one location.
References
DineSite.com. Retrieved March 22, 2008 from http://dinesite.com/city/city-9794/?&t=3.
HelloMetro. HelloIowaCity.com. Retrieved March 22, 2008 from http://www.helloiowa
city.com/music/.
Megaevent.com. Retrieved March 22, 2008 from http://www.megaevent.com/inflatables
/index.htm
Midwestsoundandstage.com Retrieved March 22, 2008 from http://www.midwestsound andstage.com/index.html
Palmer, Adrian. (2004). Introduction to Marketing: Theory and Practice. USA:
Oxford University Press.
University of Iowa. uiowa.edu. Retrieved March 22, 2008 from http://welcome.uiowa.edu/.
