I was recently perusing Instagram to see what my friends and fellow event industry folks have been up to and I came across a gem of a post by our friends at Pantone. Expertly designed in Classic Blue (their 2020 color of the year), they decided to offer unlimited free access to their recently launched Pantone Connect Extension through mid-summer. This gives you access to their up-to-date color libraries and PMS (Pantone Matching System) as well as the ability to easily convert CMYK, RGB and Hex values to Pantone colors. The most exciting feature to me… build, save and share palettes!

Why is this worth noting?! Because it allows for creativity to continue to flow between you and your clients during the downtime. Use this as an opportunity to preplan that hard-to-nail linen palette a client wants to see at their reception or for a corporate client that must have exact CMYK logo colors throughout the ballroom space.

While the Pantone color tool is useful, this represents something arguably more important. It’s a wonderful example of a company’s willingness to help the community at the expense of their bottom line. They have chosen, in this hard time, to do what’s best for their community members and recognize this could make their otherwise gloomy days, brighter.

We should all be like Pantone! How can we, as the planning community, help others in need? How can we help the vendor partners we typically lean on day in and day out? Everyone is doing their best to offer unprecedented services in order to make it through the next few months when social gatherings can recommence.

One opportunity I’ve noticed within my Denver event community is how caterers are choosing to respond. When they would have been bursting at the seams with springtime weddings and non-profit galas, they are now resorting to “freezer friendly meals” and specialized holiday meal packs via delivery or curbside pick-up. If you are a family in need of a scrumptious Easter Brunch, including a beautifully designed floral centerpiece, they’ve got you! They have taken their incredibly devastating circumstance and turned it into a very unexpected and AWESOME way to reach out to more community members and bring hope and delicious food to many.

What’s even better is that this information was presented to me via one of our longtime venue partners, not the caterers themselves, asking for all of us to support each other. I challenge you to do some research on your local catering partners and see if any are doing something similar! Let’s support these vendor partners as best we can now, to ensure they are able to brighten our end client’s special day come summertime.