Three marketing professionals have been selected as finalists for the Event and Arena Marketing Conference’s first Impact Award. The inaugural Impact Award will honor a professional in the live entertainment industry who made a positive impact as a contributing member in their community in 2020.
“I’m glad we can highlight some of the good that is happening,” EAMC’s DEI Task Force chair Paul Bee says. “A lot of the submissions were people who were serving in need with food or clothing. Looking at COVID as a whole, people were affected in drastic ways. [The nominees] were looking at where the need was in their own areas.”
Jeff Butcher, director of operations for the Macon Centreplex in Georgia, was nominated for designing and executing a plexiglass program that repurposed old hockey glass into PPE barriers in local businesses to use for free when reopening. Butcher was also one of the founding members of the venue’s local Racial Reform and Inclusion Committee that formed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
Director of marketing for KLOS-FM Wendy Ellis was nominated for the Impact Award for the creation of meal distribution service California Love Drop. Ellis teamed up with Wahoo’s Fish Tacos co-founder Wing Lam and Blue-C co-founder Eric Morley to deliver nearly 20,000 meals at 61 different locations since April 2020.
Another Macon Centreplex nominee, Peyton Jeter stood out among the Impact Award submissions for her pivotal role in the creation of the venue’s Racial Reform and Inclusion Committee. The hard work of the Committee became a standard that Spectra Venue Management rolled out to the entire Management portfolio and led Peyton to be a Regional Champion where other venues can use her as a resource to get their venue’s committee up and running.
“There were tons of awesome examples of across the world over the past year of people helping out, so we wanted to highlight that,” says Bee, who adds that the Impact Award will becoming an annual tradition alongside its Hall of Fame and Gigi Awards. “We hope that as the world gets back to whatever the new normal is, that these kinds of awesome acts continue and we want to be able to recognize that from an entertainment standpoint.”
Submissions for the Impact Awards closed on April 30 and EAMC Virtual registrants will be sent an email to vote the finalists. The winner will be announced June 10 during the EAMC Virtual Impact Award session beginning at 4:30pm EST. For more information on the EAMC Awards and EAMC Virtual, head here.
