The following article was sent to Coconuts HK by Paul McGoey, a man so incensed by his experience at White Party last Saturday he felt motivated to put finger to keyboard to complain, despite getting his ticket for free. The words below are solely Paul’s opinion and were not independently verified by Coconuts.
On Saturday, White Party Hong Kong gave a master class in how to run the absolute worst event you could possibly imagine. It was so bad that, for many of us who were there, anger wasn’t even the primary emotional response. It was more astonishment that a party in Hong Kong could be so badly planned and executed.
For anyone looking for pointers on how to pull off a feat of equal ineptitude, here is a how-to list:
1/ Promote the absolute shit out of your event. This is important. Really well received and spectacularly badly received events have one thing in common: lots of people have be a part of it. Post reminders on social media constantly. Absolutely wallpaper LKF with your ads. Get promotion companies in Hong Kong to hawk your tickets. NASCAR crashes are forever etched in the memories of thousands who were there to witness them firsthand. If that’s the effect you are going for, 3,000 to 4,000 people should be enough.
2/ Charge an exorbitant amount for your event. Clockenflap – a three-day festival that features numerous stages, international bands, food and drink vendors and cultural exhibits – charges about HKD500 per day. Make that the early-bird price. Then, make the advance tickets HKD680.
Want to buy tickets the day before? Sorry, now you have to pay the door price. Friday at noon is actually the same time here as Saturday at 9pm. It has to do with China and Hong Kong being all one big time zone. I don’t have the time to explain it to you now, there’s a lot of math.
Oh, and you want a V.I.P. ticket? Better cancel that next vacation, because you are well into flight cost territory. HKD1,080 please.
3/ Put your event in the most obscure place you can. People love getting off the beaten path – it’s very “avant-garde”. What could be more off the beaten path than an abandoned airport? As part of your promotion plan already discussed, you have plastered ads everywhere, except for in and around the MTR station you told people to go to.
You’ve hired “angels” (guides) who were supposedly going to direct people to the shuttles? Yeah, let them pack up early. It’s much more fun to let people wander around. When they get to where the shuttles are, they are probably better off taking a cab anyway. It’s faster.
4/ Pick a time of year when it is unbelievably hot and humid outside. Even though people think that they will be inside for the event, make sure they spend a LOT of time outside first. Even if people want to get some water, they can’t. Just like you planned, this place is in the middle of nowhere, so the nearest 7-Eleven is god knows where.
5/ Make the only entrance an incredibly small and nondescript doorway. Let people just sort of crowd around. Right inside that doorway, make sure the only means of access into the main part of the venue are two small elevators. Let people slowly recoil in horror as they pull in and catch a glimpse of the longest line anyone’s seen outside of Stalin-era Russia. In Hong Kong, a place of seven million people where everyone is used to lining up all the time, you’ve managed to break people’s spirits.
6/ Hire a very small number of incompetent security guards. Because there are no barriers, frustrated people start just crowding around, cutting the line trying to get in. Don’t worry, they won’t get in. Not because the security can keep any order, but because no one gets in. This pretty much includes VIPs, who have a line that could only be described as “short” if you’d also call the guy who got the silver medal racing against Usain Bolt “slow”.
7/ Have only one bar inside the venue so that people who are “lucky” enough to get in are forced to line up forever again once they are inside. Charge crazy amounts for drinks (see Step #2).
8/ When people start complaining on social media, delete their posts.
9/ Offer no apologies whatsoever.
Coconuts HK contacted the organisers of White Party for a comment on the individual points raised in this article. They issued this statement to Time Out HK:
“After thirty minutes everyone was inside the venue. We have only had four official complaints. Next time, we will take measures to speed up access to the venue. Of course, it’s in our interest to do that, we want people inside. But we had VIPs in there, we needed to ensure that no-one had any dangerous articles before entry. Hence the need for security at the door.”
And then supplied us with the following at 2pm on Friday, June 5:
“First of all, we would like to thank our audience for their great support. But for the sake of safety of every participant, certain security measures had to be applied at the doors. Guests could not be admitted without a valid ticket. Unfortunately there were a lot of guests not holding valid tickets on the night, making the checking time longer than usual. We tried our best to speed up the process.
“We understand that some guests have queued for an extended time partly due to the limitations of the venue and the policies that we are obliged to follow. Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience caused, and appreciate your patience and tolerance. – Secondly, as partner organisers of the event (namely Orbital Vibes Limited and Hybrid Group Limited), we would like to clarify that White Party Hong Kong is an independently operated brand in Hong Kong, and has its own discretion of how to manage its social media (e.g. Facebook or Instagram).
“Lastly, we sincerely thank everybody for all the feedback, and will address the issues raised in a proactive manner, so as to serve you better in the future.”
