The best event staffing solutions for experiential marketing programs, conferences, events and product demos: All Aces Promotional Staffing Inc.

The entire consumer society is shaped by the forces of marketing. People mostly assume marketing is all about advertising or selling a product, but it is much more than that. Marketing is the key management discipline. To help brands find the right people to represent their companies, promotional staffing is currently the massive tide in the industry of marketing. In order to capture the audience and leave them with a feeling of closeness and connection with the brand, creativity and having the correct team is the key.

With a degree in neuroscience and work experience in the field of promotional staffing as a brand ambassador, Lauren had relationships with both the field staff and companies. In 2007, Lauren Raimondi followed her vision to help top marketing, media, advertising and PR companies execute flawless events, and officially started All Aces Promotional Staffing.

In-conversation with the elegant lady behind All Aces, we found a lot more about the leader of the event staffing 

Tell us about your first event.

Our first program was a street team for TiVO in NYC before they were going public. We had a team of brand ambassadors chanting and dancing in high traffic areas and taking pictures of people with the costumed character to create buzz. We had to store this huge costume in a storage unit and transport it in a van it was so big!

What challenges did you face in your initial years? What can your peers learn from it?

I started the company when I was 24 with no experience working a “real” job, so it took a few years of trial and error to really figure out what a functioning company looked like and put the various components in place.

Since I was solely focused on getting clients in the beginning there was no foundation for scaling. When things really started to pick up, we needed to change operational procedures a number of times to keep up.

I honestly had no assistance in setting this company up; just me and my relationships with the people and companies I had previously worked with. I’ve learned so much over the past 10 years. Today, All Aces has a solid foundation, but if I had to do it over again and give a key piece of advice, I would say to outline the structure of your company from the start and expand into it instead of the other way around. 

What were the grounds on which you have expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

As states became stricter about employment misclassification, we decided to partner with a company to hire all field staff as W2 employees throughout the country. As a small business, this has allowed us to operate like a large agency and has streamlined the HR and payroll process greatly, giving us a huge competitive edge from other event staffing agencies. We’re able to focus on our core business and go after bigger clients and companies, always meeting their requirements, as well as offer perks to our brand ambassadors that most agencies cannot.

If you have to list five factors that have been/are the biggest asset to your organization, what would they be and why?

• People: All Aces Promotional Staffing would be nothing without our staff both in the field and in-house. Though it hasn’t always been perfect of course, I have been very fortunate over the years to have had a solid base of people who care about doing a good job
• Linked In: The vast majority of my business had been built from using Linked In in the beginning, and we’re still using it as a great prospecting tool
• Our back-end partner: Without the ability to hire staff as W2 employees we wouldn’t be able to work with some of the large clients we do today.
• My colleagues from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program: Having a support system and resources of like-minded business owners is a key I was missing for many years.
• Our Talent Portal: We use one of the most robust talent management platforms on the market that is an end-to-end solution and a key factor in allowing us to scale.

How big your organization is today? Briefly explain the organizational structure?

We like to stay lean, so there is a smaller core team of project managers and administrators internally and we contract additional help as needed. We also have thousands of people throughout the country in our database, and have event staffing agency partners in London, Europe, and Canada to allow our clients to expand internationally.

Where do you see you and your company a couple of years from now?

Now that we have the award recognition and Woman-owned Business Enterprise certifications to go with our solid foundation, we plan on expanding our client base into government and high-level corporations and advertising agencies. We also plan to create more relationships with event staffing firms globally to expand our reach for our clients. We already incorporate social media into our activations, and I’d like digital marketing in general to play a more prominent role in our future programs.

Meet the leader

Lauren Raimondi is the Owner of All Aces Promotional Staffing, Inc. Lauren was also the Co-founder and Director of operations at Brand Influencers and a Financial Professional at Penn Mutual in the past. Lauren holds a degree in neuroscience from Boston University. She is a graduate from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program October 2016.

Lauren loves to read, play the drums in the video game Rock Band and love shows like Shark Tank, The Profit, Mr. Robot, and Game of Thrones. She is a science and travel enthusiast. She has been to many different places throughout the world and Italy is her favorite destination. Lauren speaks Italian conversationally, and strives to be fluent in Italian and Spanish.

“We’ve worked with many of our clients for years and have great relationships with them. Many continue to work with us even when they switch companies. Their loyalty motivates us to work hard and consistently strive for excellence.”

Keep in touch: www.acespromo.com