By Frank Price Founder Birthday University

What’s Red, has its own holiday and missing in almost all commercial birthday businesses? Read on and you’ll discover the answer.

For those readers who have children,  I believe you’ll attest to these truths. Parents will do and pay anything to avoid their children feeling a painful memory similar to something they went through, when they were kids. They’ll also do and pay anything to give their children things they always wanted when they were young, but never got.

Thousands of folks (young and old) who have been through a BU training or class, have visualized and journeyed back into their childhood to uncover buried birthday memories. The strongest responses have universally been the same, without regard to age, gender or even international culture. All birthday memories evolve around strong feelings. Love, feeling special or important because all their friends were there for them, or simply a genuine feeling of happiness as a result of all the special attention they received from someone in their life, who showed they really cared and made it all happen.

Next to Christmas, a child's birthday is the most important family celebration of the year and carries plenty of emotional anxiety. The ultimate success of your party program is not about the play attractions. They are merely the place or the setting for what has real memorable value. Birthday parties are a massive ball of human emotions, where love, warmth and showing you care are at the top of the list. Facilitating as many of these positive emotions throughout the celebration, creates longer lasting, memorable experiences and higher levels of “value” oriented satisfaction.  Where as creating or allowing negative emotions to surface and you’ll soon discover the emotional “Monster” that lives in all party parents on this day and has the potential to grow and pounce on you, if you are not careful. 

As commercial birthday offerings began to replace home birthday celebrations, the following two considerations must be understood. First, having a celebration at a commercial party facility means …  losing control. They’re out of their element, although they'll never admit it. This is a scary feeling, when they're not confident that your team will handle everything to their expectation or at least as well as they could have at home. Second, they lose the opportunity to put the "TLC" (tender loving care) into the party. Without you adding it back with human interaction and personalized fun, it’s a bland event and an emotional disappointment. If you think your play attractions will suffice, you’re sadly mistaken.  Your party concept and culture should address these two factors as the fundamental foundation for a high quality, long term successful party program.  If not you’ll never break away from parties based on price or location and end up grouped together with all other party facilities fighting to capture a small piece of the market with a party program that blends. Don’t Blend!

Manufacturing “High Touch” moments is now the goal of your party team. If you leave it up to chance, you’re only hoping that these key human moments will happen. Typically they won’t, unless someone chooses to make a plan and takes action to deliver.   A simple example of creating these feelings for the birthday child is making them the center of attention and the envy of all the invited guests. Most kids will not do this on their own, they’ll scatter and do what they think is fun, unless someone organizes and facilitates the group. Only then will the birthday child truly get the feeling that all their friends are there for them … and that’s how it should be.  

At every point of guest contact there is the opportunity for these high quality, human interactive moments that consciously or subconsciously register, someone cares about me. They can and should come from your entire employee team, including the owner.

Here’s an example of how it can work for party parents.

Pulling the heart strings example – a step by step plan

Step one:

• Find out exactly what’s most important to the party parents regarding their child’s party, in a personalized pre party call. Keep probing to uncover the clues of what must happen in order to see, hear and feel what they have just told you.

Step two:

• Then make it happen during the party. When you see it, you’re ready for step three.

Step three:

• Point it out to the parent. They usually miss it if not.

Step four:

• Step back and see the proud, satisfied, you just tugged a heart string, look on their face and enjoy.

Here’s a real example. The party parent told you that the most important thing for them is for their child to have fun. They continued to say that they’ll know their child is having fun when they are smiling, laughing and running with all their friends. After you make that happen, tap the parents on the shoulder, point to the action and whisper. “Look there it is”

Congratulations you just added the “TLC” back in.

Riddle answer “A Heart”