Our Slice of Shoreview parade experience

Posted on 27. Jul, 2010 by Chris Dohman in Business, City of Shoreview, Community, Shoreview Post

I finally put the Shoreview Post name out in front of the public by entering it in the Slice of Shoreview parade this past Saturday. The weather was great, and lots of people were at the parade and Island Lake Park for the weekend festival. Planning for a parade was a new experience for me–signs, decoration, candy and give-aways. We took a stab in the dark with what we needed and went out to have a great time.

The Shoreview Post is an independent venture that I am taking on with the incredible support from my wife Karen, and our two boys. Being an independent startup and small business, I have to do things on a tight budget. I was not going to be able to have thousands of promotional items to give out, a bunch of factory-produced signs or a fancy float for the parade, so I thought I better get a little creative and save a buck.

Signs

I was planning to use our van in the parade and figured the Shoreview Post name had to be prominently displayed to be beneficial in getting the name out. I figured I would make the primary sign by making a template and using that to create a banner on a window shade that I would attach to a frame, roll out, and display on top of the van. I had a large outline of the logo printed out at Kinkos. I bought a big 4′ x 4′ piece of rubber tub-liner material at the home improvement store and made it tacky with some adhesive spray. I laid the black and white print on top of that and used an X-acto knife to cut out the logo in the rubber material. So far so good. It looked great. From here, my plans were a little flawed. I laid the template out over the window shade, covered the areas I didn’t want sprayed, and spray-painted the areas of the logo with the appropriate colors. The trouble was, I didn’t tack down the edges of the template, and the spray paint either ran a bit under or left a gradient effect under the edges, making for an ugly result. I would have been better off brushing on the paint while holding down the edges rather than using the quick spray paint method. A more porous material like a wood sign may have had better results.

So then I was out the cost of the materials and still no sign. Is was time to cut my losses before trying more homemade banners and order a couple banners online. I ordered two 4′ x 3′ vinyl banners at $38 a piece and received them in just a couple of days. Wow, I wish I would have done that from the start! Shades are not cheap, as you homeowners out there know, and tub liner material and large scale printouts just add to the cost. Live and learn.

My plan was to put the banners back-to-back in a frame and mount it on top of the van. Here I decided to go the home-crafted route again, but this time it worked like a charm. I went through a number of framing ideas, but settled on using 1-inch inner diameter rigid PVC with a base I made of 2″ x 4″s. I used a spade bit to drill a couple big holes in the base and slipped the two sides of the PVC down into the base. I used nylon ties to secure the banners back to back to the PVC frame and bungee cords to secure the base to the van roof luggage carrier. This all worked great, but I didn’t try driving it to the parade lineup, or home at faster speeds, not knowing how the banner would hold up. This sign also will work for future events and is good for on top of the vehicle again or setting up on the floor or ground.

I wish I would have got another banner to put on the front of the van so people could read who we were as we approached.

Vehicle window decals

I ordered 3 Shoreview Post window decals about the size of a standard letter size piece of paper 11″ x 8.5″. I put one on the back window of the van and one on each side on the two most rear windows. These were not really visible during the parade because I wanted the doors open, which put the rear hatch up and the side doors covering the rear windows. But, these are permanent decals and they will do their work every day as I drive around Shoreview in the coming years.

Candy

How much candy does someone need for a parade? I was not sure, and the only insight I had was from my brother-in-law, Ron Hanson, who is the pastor at New Brighton Christian Church. They often participate in the New Brighton Stockyard days parade, and Ron said they have had more than a few large buckets of bubble gum for their parades. That means you better be counting in 1000′s, and not 100′s, when it comes to candy. We bought bubble gum, tootsie rolls and dum-dums with a total count of 3355 pieces. That was enough with six of us passing out the candy, but the tough part is knowing how to pace yourself. To have candy left for the last leg of the parade, I found it worked well to divide the candy into 4 quarters and pace yourself by using the quarter-marks of the parade route. This can be done by mapping it out on Google maps or by driving it in advance. The Slice of Shoreview parade was 1.2 miles. I don’t think you would go wrong with up to 5000 candy items, depending on how many people you have to pass them out.

Give-aways

With the Shoreview Post being brand new, my goal was to give out items that people would keep, which would display our printed logo for others to see.  With reusable grocery bags getting more popular, I thought they would be a good idea. People can use them over and over and take them to the grocery store where they can be seen by all the other shoppers. I also wanted something on the fun side–so we got some beach balls that would get some exposure by kids bopping them around the parade route. Both of these items went over huge, maybe too well. The demand for them obviously was greater than we could ever meet. I could only afford 100 of each. The toughest part was trying to pass by kids, parents and parade goers because I didn’t have enough for everybody and needed to try to pace our give-aways so we would have some for the last part of the parade route. I had to figure out how, and when, to inflate the beach balls. Space was limited in our van with all the gear and family. We blew up 60 of the 100 the night before the parade. The rest we inflated during the pre-parade lineup. That worked fine with the 8 of us, as it was pretty quick work. I bought a couple sports ball pumps to inflate them, but using the good o’ lungs was the fastest way. Our electric pump at home did not work well because the fittings didn’t work for the beach ball nozzle.

Again, the biggest issue was deciding how to pass these items out without hurt feelings for those that wouldn’t get one. My suggestion is to limit the number of people passing out the limited items. Designate just one or two people for these items. Another idea would be to toss these things out in an anonymous fashion, kind of like T.C. shooting t-shirts into the crowd at Twins games. Make it so you are not choosing who gets the item. But on the flip side, I wanted adults who shop to get the bags while kids got the beach balls. I think the parade organizers don’t want participants throwing items from the vehicles for safety reasons (like bad throws attracting kids into the line of parade traffic or catching a sucker stick in the eye). You would have to get advanced approval by parade organizers to shoot soft items into the crowd ala T.C. and his t-shirts.

An alternative idea we have is to pass out cards directing people to go to the web site and enter their name for a chance at a give-away or maybe just have a booth with a method of doling them out. This issue will take more thought before next year. Any ideas are welcome!

Decoration

With the decals covered up, and only a big sign on top of the van, somehowI had to decorate the sides of the van  to make it more festive. The idea we had was to hang beach balls and the reusable grocery bags on the sides of the van. These items are colorful and would cheer up the presentation of an old van. Karen had the idea of using the removable plastic hooks by 3M. We stuck 6 hooks on each side sliding door window and filled them with beach balls and bags. It worked great and added some colorful cheer to the presentation. I would do this again. These hooks could be used to hang lots of different items you may have.

Camera

Next time, I would designate someone in our group to take pictures and video. We had a camera, and I took a few pictures, but not nearly enough. Most of my time was spent talking to people and passing out stuff. Having someone on top of the vehicle on a swivel would be pretty cool and provide a good view of things.

Bikes

Our boys rode their bikes during the parade. Although this complicated passing out candy for them, we swapped out their candy bags for small buckets which made handling their bikes easier. Riding bikes was fun for them and kept them a little cooler in the hot sun by creating a bit of a breeze. Be sure to plan space for hauling the bikes to the parade lineup area. We were short on space and used a bike rack.

Business Cards

I printed up 500 business size cards. One side had the Shoreview Post logo with our web address and the back side had a short line of text along with icons of other ways to connect with us like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, email and RSS. These worked nice as something to give to people that wanted to know who we were and how to find us. I would print more of these next time, probably 1000. For next year we are thinking about having some sort of a give-away associated with the card providing even more motivation to visit the website.

Other thoughts

• We dressed our crew in Texas orange Shoreview Post t-shirts. Supplying t-shirts is seems to be routine for most businesses in parades. It’s a nice little perk /thank you for the people that walk with you.
• Bring a cooler filled with water and refreshing drinks. Don’t forget hats and sun screen. The parade is pretty short but if you are in the sun it will take a toll on you without them.
• Take some time during the pre-parade lineup time if you can and walk around to meet others in the parade.

Share your experience

I know many of you out there have done many parades and must have plenty of tips. If you are willing to share your ideas and experiences there are many of us that would love to learn how your business or organization approaches a parade. Leave your story, tips and comments below or just say hi!

Tags: 2010, Feature, parade, Slice of Shoreview