Branding events before there was a word for it.

observation — attributed to Esther Coopersmith

When Coopersmith was fundraising for Lyndon Johnson, she noticed his use of barbecue diplomacy at the West Texas ranch. She had Walter Jetton, the Texas pitmaster who cooked for the president, travel the country with wagons and a whole show. She got Paul Newman to attend in an era when celebrities did not yet do political events. In every state Johnson visited, she identified the wealthiest sympathetic host and asked if they would like to have the president to their home. Republicans and Democrats both said yes. The mechanics were what would later be called event marketing and branding, decades before either field had a name.

For political fundraisers, philanthropic event designers, and anyone building destination events. The observation is a useful corrective to the assumption that contemporary event-marketing techniques are recent inventions.

event-marketing, branding, fundraising, barbecue-diplomacy