Sports Event Management - Tough Mudder Pty - Research Paper Example

Sports Event Management Student’s Name Institution Sports Event Management 1. Problem Definition a. Background In fact, Tough Mudder Pty. Ltd. turns to be the company that is organising the Tough Mudder Melbourne 2015 episode that would be held on October. In this scenario, Tough Mudder Pty. Ltd. would stage three events in Australia (Melbourne, South East Queensland and Sydney). The events would be a portion of a network of 50 Tough Mudder events worldwide which turn to be engineered as mental and physical strength tests. Started in 2010 by two Harvard Business School graduates, the hindrances frequently play on normal human fears, like heights, water, electricity and fires. The key stakeholders of the event would be the players and the fans who would be involved. The sponsors of the event would be Garmin Australia, Under Armour, Bosch Blue power Tools, Soldier on and Coats Hire. As a result, Tough Mudder Pty. Ltd. is the client for my consultancy report. The name of my consultancy company is Simple Solutions Consultancy Company. b. The industry problem that Tough Mudder is facing is marketing its current event. As such, Tough Mudder wants our consultancy company to grow its event’s market to increase the number of customers. The micro factors include customers (players), competitors and general public (spectators and fans). The macro factors include demographic forces, economic forces, legitimate and political forces and social and cultural factors. c. Indeed, Tough Mudder wants to attract and engage as many customers as possible to its venues for the coming event. As such, it has approached our consultancy firm to improve its current marketing using innovative approaches during this year’s event. 2. Literature Review a. The purpose of this analysis is to discover the importance of improving market of an event for the purposes of increasing the number of people who would be involved in the event. This review would argue that the marketed events have a tendency of attracting a huge number of persons than the events that are little or never marketed. b. Understanding the concepts of marketing sports events are significant aspects of individuals or firms that are wishing to attract and engage more audiences to their planned sporting activities. According to (Gupta, 2003), the event marketing permits corporations to penetrate the advertising litter, aim at audiences via improving or creating images via connections with particular events, while strengthening the service or product and eventually pushing more sales. In fact, events turn to be happenings engineered for communicating specific messages to the aimed addressees. On the objectives of the sponsors and participation of audience grounds, events are classified into indirect events like the world cup and direct events like dealer meets, exhibitions, conferences, and trade fairs among others (Gupta, 2003). While individuals engaging within events that are indirect might necessarily not form the addressees aimed, word-of-mouth publicity and media coverage assist events in reaching much bigger recipients, who are the intended addressees. This proposes that the marketing concept is beneficial in increasing the number of customers in an event. As a result, the argument may be made that individuals or firms that actively engage in sport marketing turn to see many participants in participating in their events in comparison to the companies or persons that do not market their events. On the other hand, event marketing is the term that is used in describing various activities comprising of marketing with incidents and episodes’ marketing. As pointed out by (Close, 2015), marketing of an event is the special event’s underwriting to prop up the objectives of the firm consisting of sales, image and brand awareness enhancement. In fact, event marketing turns to be one of the many best ever growing marketing communication forms. This proposes that the event marketing concept enhances the awareness of an event to many people. As a result, the argument may be made that there are more chances of more audience knowing the presence of events that are marketed than the events that are little marketed or never marketed at all. On the other hand, the world economy internationalization has shown that several marketers of sports currently focus on the world market rather than the regional ones within their marketing endeavours (Santos & Alonso, 2014). As such, the various marketing techniques that are employed in sports support events and enhance the images of companies. The marketers of sports turn to be using worldwide interactive mediums of marketing to link with customers in the actual moment. Hi-tech innovative media made facilitated by Web 2.0 makes it possible for marketing to be more socially complicated and interactive. Other ideas of marketing sports have used blogs, Twitter together with specialized networking groups such as LinkedIn in aiming at particular kinds of customers. This suggests that the marketing in sports plays a significant role in increasing the reach to consumers. As a result, the argument may be made that organising a sports event without involving commercialization of that particular event cannot attract a huge number of audiences as it would attract when marketing has been involved. Importantly, event marketing concept focuses on satisfying the objectives and mandate of an organised event irrespective of whether it is profit making or not. c. Conclusion In fact, event marketing turns to be important in forming the link between organisations and clients. As such, the presence of a particular event turns to be known by the aimed customers through the marketing employed by an organization. Marketing of an event possesses the purpose of creating a benefit to both the consumer and the retailer. Admittedly, my chosen event of marketing sports event is important in order to increase customers who would participate in the event. Thus Tough Mudder requires tremendous improvements in its current marketing of the event. 3. Data Collection & Findings Viable Options (Advantages/Disadvantages) The options to be used in improving marketing for the Tough Mudder event would be newspapers marketing, television marketing and Facebook marketing. a. Newspapers Marketing In fact, newspaper advertising turns to be the oldest form of advertising and it still today turns to be the one many businesses around the world thinks doing (Brasil, 2015). Those advertisements do extra work of not only advertising on a single sale or one item, but they also bring in several customers continuously. Thus, Tough Muddle would prefer this method to attract massive numbers of participants in its coming event. Additionally, the newspapers ads reach several people of various ages mainly those aged above 45 years as they read the papers more frequently in comparison to younger generations. Importantly, it would be possible for Tough Mudder to target its advertisements to ideal markets through asking for its advertisements to be run in the part(s) which would be most closely relating to the aimed addresses (Brasil, 2015). Additionally, similar to other advertising kinds, the print advertisement costs would be dependent on several things: the publication(s) used, the size of the advertisement, the sections the adverts would be appearing in, the colours used in the adverts and the frequency of running the adverts. The advantages of newspapers advertising are: newspapers provide various dissimilar sizes of adverts, they offer conventional publication frequency, several people purchase newspapers for the purposes of reading adverts, and newspapers allows advertisers to reach very many people primarily geographically in a short period (Brasil, 2015). The disadvantages of newspapers advertising include: no guarantee exists that the adverts are read by everybody who reads the newspapers, advertisement spaces sometimes are costly. Moreover, newspapers are currently faced with limited readership in the sense that many people are preferring reading newspapers in electronic versions thus, skipping adverts pages, and lastly poor quality of printed images (Brasil, 2015). b. Television marketing In point of fact, television advertisement turns to be the duration of TV programming which is created and paid to a company that conveys the message, normally to market a service or a product (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). Television advertising turns to be among the most famous means of transmitting messages. Some studies indicate that the average daily viewing of television is 5-6 hours. Despite the newspapers having the capability of covering huge metropolitan areas, television provides the biggest opportunity for inventive advertising (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). This makes it a possible option for Tough Mudder to market its event through the television. The television’s power turns to be within its capability to concurrently appeal both to hearing and seeing together with reinforcing interest via the movement’s dimensions the entire colour’s realism. In fact, television advertising comprises of words and pictures, where the pictures turn to be substantially more imperative than the words. TV advertising possesses the capability of telling and showing several people about services or products and mainly displays the ownership’s benefits (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). As people see how the product or service is working together with its packaging, every moment they see it they are reminded the wish for having it psychologically. Truly, television has for long been a famous medium with huge retailers, but as a result of reduced costs of production as well as the cable’s capability of reaching smaller areas of various markets, its popularity by both medium and small size businesses has gone up. Interestingly, television has confirmed its power of repeatedly influencing the behaviour of humankind. On the other hand, television also turns to be the advertising costs ruler. As a matter of fact, the television possesses several pros, giving a stable outcome and reaching multiple addressees. On the contrary, television being a medium of advertisement possesses certain cons that are viewed as hindering its usefulness. The advantages of the television advertising are many. The first advantage is that it is expedient and flexible in that it has the widespread popularity that makes it easy to deliver messages to multiple people both nationally and internationally (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). The other advantage is its powerful impact. In this scenario, television makes use of both visual and audio effects that creates durable effects. Additionally, marketers are capable of interacting motion, colour, sight, and sound in ensuring that their message turns to be persuasive and convincing. The other advantage is mass coverage. In fact, the television access amounts to huge numbers of people across the globe making it possible to view the available adverts. On the other hand, the TV advertisements have some disadvantages. The first disadvantage is that the costs of placing an advertisement on TV are high. The second disadvantage is that advertisements turn to be short; therefore little expression of the product or service is made. The other disadvantage is that it entails complex process. As such, creating TV advert typically demands the hiring of a scriptwriter, video editors, actors and advertising agency (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). The other disadvantage is intrusiveness. In this regard, viewers frequently complain about the TV’s advertisement nature and seek ways of avoiding those commercials. Additionally, consumers move out at the moments of commercial breaks or just switch to other channels. The other disadvantage is that it requires many exposures to attain consumer action and retention of messages. c. Facebook Marketing The other option would be the Facebook marketing. This option would be used in improving the market for Tough Muddy and would be briefly described here. Facebook turn to be a famous free social networking site that permits all the registered consumers to upload videos and photos, create files, send messages together with allowing users to communicate with family, colleagues and friend (Facebook, 2015)s. An in-depth explanation of Facebook would be made in the following section. 4. In-Depth Action Plan of Facebook Marketing In fact, the Facebook website comprise of unrestricted features like; (i) marketplace that permits users to respond to, read and post classified adverts, (ii) groups that allows users who possess similar interests to seek one another and begin interacting, (iii) events that permits users to make public an occasion, attract visitors and follow the guests planning to be present at that occasion (iv), pages that allow users in making and promoting public pages made of particular topics and (v) current technology that permits users in seeing the members who turn to be online and begin chatting with them (Facebook, 2015). In every personal profile of a member, there are multiple components of essential networking. The most famous element is the wall. The wall is an almost statement board. Messages that are left on the wall of a member are photos, videos or texts. The other famous constituent turns to be the album carrying photos. Interestingly, the uploading of photos can be done from the Smartphone or desktop. No limit exists on the number of photos to put, but employees of Facebook typically remove copyrighted or unsuitable pictures (Facebook, 2015). The status updates is the other famous profile constituent. Importantly, Facebook provides its users with various privacy options. In this case, members possess options of making visible their communications, block their particular associates or maintain privacy in their entire communications. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Facebook Marketing In fact, Facebook marketing has both benefits and cons. This report begins with the advantages. The first advantage is Facebook has more than one billion users. In fact, Facebook possesses 1.4 billion users on earth, and the active everyday users turn to be roughly 890 million (Shrimp & Andrews, 2013). Therefore, marketing any product or service reaches several people some of whom become customers of the marketed service/product. Second, it has customized designed pages making it easy to involve with new guests. Third, Facebook offers the share, comment and like features. As such, followers are capable of ‘commenting’, ‘liking’, or ‘sharing’ someone’s pictures with their colleagues thus exposing someone more. The other advantage is accessible information. In this case, it is possible to link with the community together with displaying someone’s business in a manner that is accessible. The other advantage is analytics (Shrimp & Andrews, 2013). Updating of a Facebook page with additional content helps in getting a better view of the manner fans involves with someone via analytic reporting on-site suite. The other advantage is Facebook advertising. As such, it is possible to aim someone’s advertisements at budding clients via interests, location, age, and sex among others. Also, there turns to be more sophisticated demographics to select from like, work, language, status and deduction. The other advantage is the availability of promoted posts. In this case, it is possible to reach a vast audience through promoted posts where someone pushes posts to the selected friends and fans. On the hand, Facebook marketing possesses some disadvantages. The first disadvantage is resources and time (Shrimp & Andrews, 2013). In this scenario, maintenance of Facebook page consumes a lot of energy, resources and time. The second disadvantage is reputation management. As such, since social media turns to be strong medium, someone requires having in place policies of reputation management. The other disadvantage is maintenance costs. In this case, content pages require being updated on a continuous basis with fresh information that would be found valuable or interesting by the readers to ensure the effectiveness of the Facebook marketing. In fact, involving Facebook Marketing in the Tough Muddy event would widen the awareness of the event that would eventually contribute to added registrations. The Facebook marketing exercise would begin by building the Tough Muddy’s event within the organisation’s Facebook page events application (Cvent, 2012). In fact, the profile of the Facebook is by default designed with Events application, thus with the standard login we would build the event after login in. In simple terms, on login in, we would hit the ‘’Events’’ tab on the left-hand side and afterwards hit the ‘’Create a New Event’’. Then, we would fill in the event’s details while including photos. Moreover, we would complete the events page to the level best. Importantly, we would make the event public to permit everybody to glance and RSVP. That would as well allow individuals to invite their Facebook colleagues to the coming event. The second thing would involve updating the event well as well as sending updates (Cvent, 2012). The moment the event’s preparations would be going on; we would frequently go on posting updates of the event on the wall of events and message sporadic reminders to the already RSVP-ed visitors. Since the wall posts would not inform someone except if they would proactively glance at the wall of events, alerts would be sent out to people’s email inboxes by guests’ messages. To make the event livelier, three event mementos would be sent out via Facebook: one message would be for encouraging those who would attend to welcome more of their friends and increase more awareness of the event via Facebook through making sure they share the incident on their Facebook’s profiles (Cvent). The second message would be sent some weeks ahead of the event acting as the reminder of ensuring that people would have their calendars updated and would require doing something on your wall of events. The other reminder would be sending a message a few weeks before the occasion having the last instructions and details. Importantly, we would frequently be posting on the event wall about the event to capture the minds of people to make them both attend, and invite as many Facebook friends as they would. The things that we would require being shared on the event wall would comprise of: video links, previous event photos, event’s agenda links, blog posts or articles regarding the event topic, and information about the people who would be speaking (Cvent, 2012). The third thing on Facebook marketing would be inviting other people to Tough Mudder’s event via email. Importantly, we would send invitations to the event through email. In this scenario, we would hit the ‘’Select Guests’’ during creating the event and move down beneath personal links to insert their emails. In this case, we would put personal notes in order not to make the invitation email an auto-produced message from the Facebook (Cvent, 2012). The other thing on Facebook marketing would entail including the incident on our individual’s Facebook page. As such, everybody in our organization would be required to include the coming event on his/her personal Facebook page. Including the event on one’s Facebook page would involve adding the application of Facebook Events to that page to make the event being also listed there. This would demand the exploration of the Facebook applications listing for the “Events’’. The major Events app would surface. We would hit on that app where on the left-hand side we would spot the choice to ‘add to my page’ and we would click it. The other thing on Facebook marketing would entail sharing the event on pertinent Facebook groups and pages (Cvent, 2012). In this scenario, we would aggressively market the event of Facebook to the individuals outside our immediate associations through posting links to the occasion on other Facebook groups and pages (Cvent, 2012). In this case, we would use cool words in explaining how we feel the event would be valuable to that page’s fans or certain group members. The last thing on Facebook marketing would be prompting active check-ins to Tough Muddy’s event on Facebook. In this case, people who would attend and possesses RSVP-ed to Tough Muddy event would be capable of viewing live the event from their smartphones (Cvent, 2012). Importantly, we would provide free Wi-Fi to enable attendees access Facebook. They would also be capable of letting their whole network have the information of their arrival at the event. We would encourage the entire attendees to log in to their Facebook accounts at the beginning of the sessions or events since that would help in informing all their colleagues that they are already at the event. We would also encourage the people who would be attending to utilise the “places” part as well. The section would let attendees sign in at the place (Cvent, 2012). Persuading those who would be attending to utilise that feature would be a considerable way of creating goodwill with the venue, as it would be offering the attendees extra word-of-mouth marketing through the Facebook. Eventually, through marketing the Tough Mudder’s event in the Facebook, there would be an increased number of people of who would attend that sports event. References 2015. Facebook. Retrieved 16 October 2015 from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Facebook Alonso, M., & Santos, D. (2014). Strategies within Sports Marketing: Technologies and Rising Trends. Hersey, PA: Business Science Reference. Boone, L., & Kurtz, D. (2011). Modern Marketing. London: Cengage Learning. Close, A. (2006). An IMC Approach to Event Marketing: The Impacts of Sponsorship and Experience on Consumer Attitudes. Journal of Advertising Research, 36(4). doi: 1017/50021949905050440. Cvent. (2012). Event Marketing 2.0. Retrieved 16 October 2015 from http://www.cvent.com/en/pdf/social-media-event-marketing-ebook.pdf Damster, G., & Tassiopoulos. (2006). Event Management: A Professional and Development Approach. Lansdowne: Juta Academic. Gupta, S. (2003). Event marketing: Matters and Challenges. IIMB Management Review, 87-96. Retrieved http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/public/uploads/1357239416.384311339084.pdf Shrimp, T., & Andrews, J. C. (2013). Marketing Promotion and other Features of incorporated promotion Communications. New York (NY): Cengage Learning. Read More