The Concept of Creating Experiences in Event Management - Case Study Example

EVENT MANAGEMENT REFLECTIVE REPORT Name Institution Professor Course Date Executive Summary An event contributes to a personal experience of an attendee. Event managers and organisers manipulate an event experience through designing the event program. Drawing on my visit, observation and experience of Adelaide Fringe, this reflective report underscores one best experience at the event, which can be strengthened and maximised to attain the mission and objectives of the event. The report also highlights one worst experience at Adelaide Fringe, which the event organisers and managers can improve in order to attain the mission and goals of the event. To ensure improved event experience, the event managers should engage eliminate anything that contradicts, distracts and diminishes the theme of the event Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction and Background ............................................................................................. 4 2.0 Adelaide Fringe .................................................................................................................. 4 3.0 Marketing of the Event........................................................................................................ 5 4.0 The Best Experience............................................................................................................ 7 5.0 The Worst Experience..........................................................................................................8 6.0 SWOT Analysis.................................................................................................................. 9 7.0 Recommendations..............................................................................................................10 8.0 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................12 9.0 Reference List ....................................................................................................................14 1.0 Introduction and Background Contemporary event management is principally about delivery of experiences. The delivery of experiences applies to all events irrespective of their type or size. The core to an event for modern event attendees is the event experience and the effects it has on consumers. There is real interest in understanding attendee’s experiences within event management. This is because it is the quality of an event experience that holds the power to encourage attendees to return and speak positively about the event to their families and friends. Festivals are events that offer unique, diverse and new experiences, and this explains why people attend them. An event experience is inherently subjective, affective and interpretative. For instance, people do not only attend Adelaide Fringe for art, but also because of the general atmosphere of the event. Evidently, visitors’ experiences result from engaging in memorable offerings that hold a lasting affective element to them. The mood or the general pervasive feeling is indisputably essential in the context of comprehending an event experience. Experience is a crucial to the success of any event or festival. The focus of this report is to assess the 2017 Adelaide Fringe event in Southern Australia. The report highlights the vision, mission and goal of Adelaide Fringe and how the event was marketed and promoted. Through a SWOT analysis of the event, the report underscores the best and worst experiences from the event and culminates with recommendations that detail how to strengthen and improve attendees’ experiences. 2.0 Adelaide Fringe Adelaide Fringe is a festival or a special event that began in 1960. Adelaide Fringe is a yearly open-access art event that runs over four weeks. It is one of the biggest, most popular and diverse art festivals in Southern Australia. The Fringe is an annual arts event and renowned for fresh ideas, imagination, risk, fun and impulsiveness (Seal & Penrith 2008, p.407). Adelaide Fringe involves artists from across the world taking part alongside home-grown talent in all art forms. According to SATC (2005, p.18), Adelaide Fringe which started as a simple companion event to Adelaide Festival of Arts is currently a major artistic celebration in its own right. The non-curated event started with a small artists’ movement who performed during the Adelaide Festival of Arts. The event focuses on fostering the growth of innovative forms of artistic expression. Adelaide Fringe is held between February and March, and it features exhibitions and performances from Australian finest and international independent artists across a range of genres that include visual arts, new media practice, film, text-based theatre, poetry recitals, contemporary music, comedy, opera, dancers, plays and physical theatre shows. This year’s Adelaide Fringe took place between 17th February and 19th March. The event brought more world’s famous acts, hundreds of venues, and countless events from all corners of South Australia. 3.0 Marketing of the Event The marketing strategies used to promote an event correlates with event experience. According to Kumar and Meenakshi (2013, p.25), an experience takes place when a firm internationally utilises service as the stage, and products as props to engage individual customers in a manner that establishes a memorable event. While services and products are external to consumers, experiences are inherently personal and exist only in the mind of the person who has been engaged on an intellectual, physical and emotional level. Two different people cannot have similar event experience because every experience is as a result of the interaction amid the staged event and a person’s state of mind. Experiences have always been at the heart of entertainment business such as the Adelaide Fringe. Such businesses stage an experience whenever they engage consumers in a personal and memorable manner. Event managers add demonstrations, contexts, showcases and other attractions to promote customer experience. The event managers, organisers and marketers need to recognise the shifts towards a more digitalised way of interacting with customers in each and every stage of experience consumption. Modern event attendees look for unique experience. According to Ferdinand and Kitchin (2013, p.273), event attendees are more demanding and want to take part in the creation of experience. This means that modern event attendees want to co-create the experience with event organises. As a result, event managers and marketers must be in a position to understand customer experience and experience touch points for them to deliver outstanding experience. Adelaide Fringe has grown into the globe’s second biggest annual arts festivals because of the marketing strategies that attract thousands of people. As an open platform for arts, the event marketers use creative marketing strategies to attract artists and event attendees. Particularly, the event promoters and marketers took the advantage of the emergence of novel communication technologies. With the understanding that technology is nowadays omnipresent and that people rely massively on their mobile phones and social media to get relevant information, Adelaide Fringe marketers advocated for the use of social media campaigns to attract large audiences. Besides social media, the Fringe marketers predominately used conventional marketing strategies such as Television. This is because TV is known to be the most effective mass-reach medium. The marketers and promoters established integrated activations that generated excitement, thereby, attracting more people to the event. Billboards, posters, radio and TV adverts, social media, Fringe Websites, guides and magazines, and online marketing besides other marketing strategies managed powerful sales of tickets and event attendance. It is noticeable that the event organisers implemented numerous marketing strategies to engage all people and particularly, the youth and artists from all corners of the world who are the events target market. Remember that the mission and goal of the Adelaide Fringe is to offer an opportunity for more avant-garde and newer artists to perform and appeal to diverse audiences and market segments. The marketing strategies attracted attendees and anyone with artistic drive and vision. One had the chance to use his/her skills across all Fringe’s aspects from programming to PR, marketing and artist services. 4.0 The Best Experience Experiences hold three dimensions, which are affective, cognitive and conative dimensions. The dimensions represent the emotions and feelings that people use to describe an experience, how people make sense of experience through judgement and awareness and the conduct of people. Experience varies with the type of event. The best experience of the event was the variety of shows. The 2017 Adelaide Fringe featured more than 1100 events and shows. It was well worth a trip to Adelaide to experience the event’s fun and variety. I liked the positive feeling about the show. My attendance to the event was fuelled by the desire to analyse the event experience and draw recommendations for the event organiser. I noted that Adelaide comes alive between February and March during Adelaide Fringe. Between 17th February and 19th March, the state of Adelaide was filled with pop and colour. The event included street theatre with non-stop parting. There was a mainstream schedule of international and local artists. Visual arts were available that presented a showcase of cutting-edge artworks (Adelaide Fringe 2017). Art films were shown at different venues with scores of pubs offering jazz, folk and rock music. I really enjoyed almost every bit of the event. To me the event was about discovery and entertainment from comedies, films and circus. Examples of the shows that I liked most include music by Mercan Dede Amanda Palmer, comedies by Sam Simmons A-K and Tom Ballard, Problematic and Circus by Driftwood and 360 Allstars. The event organisers used of the festivalscape to ensure that visitors have a memorable experience. The festivalscapes enhanced my perception of event satisfaction and quality. Mason and Paggiaro (2012, p.1331) define festivalscape as the physical environment experienced by festival attendees and it include tangible and intangible factors as well as the festival atmosphere. Besides good use of festivalscape. The event organisers attained the goals of the event through matching customers’ experience of program content. Drawing on the expectancy theory that states that people are inspired to behave in a particular way based on the expected results of the selected conduct, my expectations were met, and thus I was satisfied and would return to the event 5.0 Worst Experience My worst experience during the festival was congestion especially during outdoor events. More so, there were long queues and delays in service delivery in hotels. This negatively affected customer experience and satisfaction as most customers became angry and frustrated Generally, the festivalscape was poor and affected service quality. According to Mason and Paggiaro (2012, p.1331) festivalscape entails the physical environment experienced by tourists that makes it possible for festival visitors to indulge in event experience. It entails the attribute of layout and facility that allows visitors to have more space to avoid congestion. It must be noted that the physical environment in which a service takes place affects the insight of service quality and satisfaction (Bitner 1992, p.59). Physical setting of an event is a crucial determinant of prospective behaviours and consumer perceptions. For instance, the overcrowding and congestion negatively affected consumer satisfaction and perceptions about the event. To manage the negative experience, the event organisers should embrace crowd management. Crowd management is the practice of organising large crowds during an event to prevent and manage negative experience. During the event, the event organisers did not manage the crowd. This is because visitors were crowding at the main stage areas; the queues for services were not well managed while the movement of the audience from one place to another was uncoordinated. There lacked free flow of people as there were no design and situate signs and information sources to steer and advise attendees to their desired shows. Adequate space and good venue arrangement is important for management of crowds and queues. The event managers should focus on managing the queues and crowds to achieve its objectives of promoting customer satisfaction. Adequate facilities and space should be improved. This is because physical facilities play a major role in attracting customers and influencing their buying behaviours in an event. The organisation of festivalscape should be improved to ensure positive customer experience and satisfaction 6.0 SWOT Analysis Strengths Creative and innovative artistic experience Diverse Venues/ artists Experienced team Marketing strategies and team Access and Capacity Weaknesses Inadequate space and facilities Safety of attendees and their properties Service delivery Events coordination Opportunities Increasing demand Wide coverage Favourable environment Support from the state government Art infrastructure Threats Ticket vendors/ Ticket pricing Less facilities Distance amid event venues Other major events Adelaide Fringe is an annual arts event and renowned for promotion of arts. The event promotes a creative and innovative artistic experience and involves artists from different nations across the world. It covers diverse artists and venues and comprises of an experienced team of managers and marketers. Adelaide is a good city that is easily accessible by visitors and has different facilities to accommodate numerous people. However, with the ever-increasing number of attendees from all over the world, the facilities are inadequate. The event managers and organisers are not responsible for safety of attendees’ properties where every attendee is required to be vigilant and watch over his/her properties. Given the increased number of visitors, service delivery can be jeopardised while event coordination becomes challenging because of the increased number of venues. Despite the numerous weaknesses, the event will continue to grow because of its wide coverage, favourable environment, government support and support from the business world besides improved art infrastructure. The issue of tickets is a threat because of the high-ticket pricing and the small number of ticket vendors who cannot meet the overwhelming demand of tickets. The distance amid event venues is challenging an aspect that makes event coordination difficult. Other major events such the Edinburg Fringe, which is the largest art festival in the world, can negatively affect the attendance of Adelaide Fringe. 7.0 Recommendations Best Experience Drawing from my best experience in the 2017 Adelaide Fringe, the event managers should further strengthen the festivalscapes to ensure greater customer satisfaction (Bitner 1992, p.59). To reinforce the festivalscapes, the event managers should engage experiential marketing such as giving out free tickets to subsequent shows to loyal attendees besides ensuring attractive event designs. The basic nature of the event should be extended to a set of physical, interactive and tangible experiences. Worst Experience With respect to the bad experience that include congestion and delayed service delivery, the event organizers should embrace capacity management (Preda & Watts 2003, p.86). A design capacity that limits the number of attendees in certain performances should be implemented. The event organizers should also practice crowd management. They should limit the capacity through placing barriers at the gates. Prior to the event, the event manage should conduct thorough market research to ascertain the number and demographics of expected event attendees. In this perspective to should focus on the 5Ps that includes product, place, price, promotion and people. With respect to product, event organizers should focus on ensuring that they include new shows to attain the goals of ensuring memorable experience, customer satisfaction and return behavior. With regard to place, event organizers should ensure that they get large venue sites to accommodate large crowds and avoid overcrowding. The ticket price should be reasonable and affordable while promotion of the event should be done through the right channels. An analysis of the demographics of attendees and their expected numbers should be done via market research. With regard to delayed service delivery, the organizers should increase the number of their staff to reduce long queues and prolonged waiting time. According to the queue theory, a queue length determines the waiting time (Mowen, Vogelsong & Graefe 2003, p.68). Overall, eliminate anything that contradicts distracts and diminishes the theme of the event. 8.0 Conclusion The concept of creating experiences is not only crucial to event management, but also important to consumer. Event experiences start with engaging individuals in a personal way and the impact of these experiences persists for a longer period. Event experiences cannot be produced or stored before service consumption. One positive thing about an experience is that when the work is completed, the experience value remains in the event memory. The memory that people hold after an event is the feature of the event and is, as a result, important in comprehending the aspects that contribute to a positive or good experience. Festivals are special events. A festival entails a themed celebration with a formal program. It holds a core activity and other additional activities besides a timescale, which accomplishes both the core activity and the additional activities. Adelaide Fringe is a special event that brings together artists from across the world. Key in an event is quality service and event experience. Apparently, people do not attend an event to see who wins, but to experience entertainment value. Attendees in an event are the principal sources of revenue for the event. They are a major constituent of the success of an event. However, attendees are different in nature and this affects their perception of service quality and event experience. Apparently, not all attendees are inspired by similar factors. Event attendees are far from being homogeneous. As a result, event managers should ensure that event attendees get positive experience and experience service quality. 9.0 Reference List Adelaide Fringe 2017. Retrieved from https://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Generic%20Year%20Round&gclid=Cj0KEQjw0v_IBRCEzKHK0KiCrKMBEiQA3--1NnSW_dt9UQagMZuOGwXSSe84H0aUejRhRJQuRuwYsiEaAvCC8P8HAQ Berridge, G 2014, 'Designing event experiences', in Page, S & Connell, J (eds), The Routledge handbook of events, Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, pp. 273-288 Bitner, MJ 1992, 'Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees', The Journal of Marketing, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 57-71. Ferdinand, N & Kitchin, P 2016, Events management: An international approach, UK, SAGE. Hightower, R & Brady, M (2002) ‘Investigating the role of the physical environment in hedonic service consumption: An exploratory study of sporting events’, Journal of Business Research vol.55. no. 9, pp.697-707. Kumar, A & Meenakshi, N 2011, Marketing management, 2nd edition, UK, Vikas Publishing House. Mason, MC & Paggiaro, A 2012, 'Investigating the role of festivalscape in culinary tourism: The case of food and wine events', Tourism Management, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 1329-1336. Mowen, AJ, Vogelsong, HG & Graefe, AR 2003, 'Perceived crowding and its relationship to crowd management practices at park and recreation events', Event Management, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 63-72. Preda, P & Watts, T 2003, 'Improving the efficiency of sporting venues through capacity management: The case of the Sydney (Australia) cricket ground trust', Event Management, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 83-89. Seal, J.M & Penrith, D 2008, Live & work in Australia, UK, Crimson Publishing. South Australian Tourism Commission 2005, In and around Adelaide: A souvenir guide, AU, Wakefield Press. Read More