Adelaide Festival Analysis - Case Study Example

Festival Analysis: Adelaide Festival Nam: Li Chuchaoran 110103802 Executive Summary Event planning and its entire management determine the final outcomes and impact on the participants. The Adelaide festival is one of the superbly organized and planned events in Southern Australia. The event attracts large audiences from across the world. When I attended the Adelaide Festival for the first time, I swore never miss the subsequent events. The event left a lasting hilarious and entertaining feeling that I had never experienced before. The theatre performances in particular were educational describing humanity in an elaborate and explicit manner. The humorous plays like the William Shakespeare’s play “The Midsummer Night Dream,” was a thrill and joyous. I was fully entertained. This report discusses the different marketing and promotional activities that the Adelaide Festival event organizers employed in order to achieve such a tremendous success in optimizing audience experience. Introduction The marketing and promotional activities of the Adelaide Festival was superbly integrated and coordinated where all communication was clearly delivered to the targeted audience. The promotional messages that the organizers used were compelling; branding the event as one of its kind. For instance, the main objectives of the event promotional messages were feelings, thinking and doing (Getz, 2005). The messages were transformational creating an attitude, feeling, emotion, and or belief that the event was going to be entertaining, exciting, and extremely captivating. The messages were also informational; for example, the creative awareness of the event, venue, time, program elements, ticket purchasing and pricing were well met through communication (Baum, 2006). I commend the Adelaide Festival organizers for working to ensure that everything went well through the seventeen days of the festival. I had never experienced high end theatre performances like those at Adelaide Festival. Everything was perfect and up to standard, each performance directly ushered in the next completely creating the link and relationship between each and every event (Getz, 2005). For the seventeen days Adelaide atmosphere was filled with ambience. The planning and the overall marketing and promotional activities pursued by the event organizers ensured the attraction of seasoned performers in arts, visitors and the general Adelaide audience. The marketing and promotional activities that Adelaide Festival planners and organizers used are extensively investigated and reported in this document. Marketing Mix of Adelaide Festival Background of the study My successful attendance of the Adelaide Festival that was held at Adelaide from 1st to 17th March, 2013 gave me a clear understanding of arts through various performances. The experience was hilarious and I was entertained to the fullest. My sponsor to the event The University of South Australia sought to know my experience at the festival and requested for a report explaining the marketing and promotional strategies that were used by the event organizers to make the event such a success. Scope and Limits of the Report Scope The scope of this report is to understand how event customers can be segmented into specific markets. The report will also describe the different consumer decision making processes for events. Accordingly, an intensive discussion of how the event organizers used concepts of integrated marketing communication in marketing the Adelaide Festival event. Limitations The downside of this report is that it does not explicitly describe the process of developing marketing and promotional messages. Similarly, the medium and methods of communication are not discussed. Further, the report only explain my personal feelings not taking into consideration the views and emotions of the larger festival audience. Methodology I used both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In the quantitative research I sought permission from the event organizers to access the valuable event marketing and promotional documents (Doherty, 2009, p.187). Accordingly, I used the publicly available event marketing and promotional materials like event magazines and articles of the previous Adelaide Festivals. These documents were vital in creating rather developing the background of the event marketing and promotional activities that the event organizers use. Similarly, I designed a questionnaire that I distributed to a selected sample of event organizers to provide their views with regard to event marketing. After the completing the questionnaire, I personally collected them back and entered the data into the computer after which I analyzed using the SPSS version 20. In the qualitative research, I personally interviewed the responded in the quantitative research, recorded their responses using the digital tape recorder. After the interviews, I transcribed the responses using the Microsoft Word processor before analyzing. Equally important, I made sure that the ethics and morals of research were not compromised (Hanlon & Stewart, 2006, p.80). For instance, I made the participants understand the general purpose of the research, and that I was only conducting the survey for educational purposes. Accordingly, I informed them that their responses will be treated with extreme confidentiality, and their participation is completely voluntary (Hanlon & Stewart, 2006, p.82). And in the event of the qualitative research, I made sure that the respondents were aware of what to expect during the interview and that their interviews will only be recorded on their permission. Key Findings and Analysis Event marketing is the process by which event organizers together with marketers gain un understanding of their potential consumers’ characteristics and needs for them to be able to produce, price, promote and distribute an event experience that fulfills the needs and financial or social objectives of the event (Allen et.al. 2011, p.259). Strategic even marketing on the other hand, is the process by which the event organizers align the marketing resources available to the event organization with the environments in which they occur, for them to meet the needs of event consumers and to achieve the events objectives (Allen et. Al. 2011, p.262). Through my survey, I established that all the participants agreed that event marketing a critically important activity as it provides a framework that event consumers base on in making decision to attend (Chalip & Costa, 2005, p.220). Consequently, they also observed that event marketing and promotion assure and reassure event sponsors that their sponsorship will link their brand with their target markets (Doherty, 2009, p.189). Furthermore, I was made to know that different if not all levels of government require expertise marketing demonstration before committing funding. This survey as previously stated, I sought to know event market segmentation and its effect. Describe the different consumer decision making processes for events. Accordingly, an intensive discussion of how the event organizers used concepts of integrated marketing communication in marketing Event Market Segmentation Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into direct groups of consumers who might require separate products/services or marketing mixes. In this regard, a market segment is basically a group of consumers who share or respond to a given set of marketing mix (Chalip & Costa, 2005, p.220). There are four types of market segmentations: geographic, demographic, psychological, and behavioral segmentation (Meenaghan, 2001). The table below shows how the participants in the survey responded with regard to how different event market segmentation affected consumers Table1: showing how different event market segmentation influenced event consumers Type of market segmentation The level of customer influence Geographic 3 Demographic 4 Psychological 5 Behavioral 8 The above table shows that behavioral segmentation of consumers has the highest impact as compared to other forms of market segmentation processes. Figure1: A bar graph showing how different event market segmentation influence event consumers Event Consumer decision making process After completing my survey, I established that consumers make decision by evaluating different alternatives and choose the product or service that best meet or fulfill their needs. Accordingly, for the consumer to select a given product or service it must be included in the consumer’s consideration set (Jago et al. 2003, p.6). Accordingly, consumers tend to select those products that they have full knowledge about. In the same line of understanding, consumers choose those products that they strongly and uniquely associate with. Through reviewing the different Adelaide Festival’s documents I found out that the event consumer’s decision making process can be described as shown in the table below: Table2: The event consumer decision making process Stage in the Decision making process Implication for marketing strategies Marketing decision 1. Problem recognition Selection of appropriate target market segment – the have an obligation of identifying the needs that can be satisfied Target market – is marketing going to focus on a mass or specific audience 2.Information search Marketing communication options Is marketing process going to use the internet, direct mails, paid advertisements, publicity, or posters? (Bang et al. 2009, p.70) 3.Evaluation of alternative Event product, promotional messages The use of promotion messages 4.Choice Ease of purchase Internet, ticketing agency at venue, post office mail, and or email. 5.Evaluation Service quality standards Measurement of consumer satisfaction – how the experience will be rigorously evaluated (Jago et al. 2003, p.7). Integrated marketing communication in event marketing This is where a company integrates and coordinates its many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message the products they produce and the company at large. In this regard; every aspect of the marketing mix must communicate something. Integrated marketing communication maximizes the marketing communication message impact thus highly influencing the customer (Chalip & Costa, 2005, p.221). The integrated marketing communication promotional mix comprises of advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing. For instance, the main message objectives are thinking, feeling and finally doing. The thinking objective demands that the message should be informational thus creating the awareness of event, the venue, time, program elements, ticket purchases and pricing. The feeling part of the message objective requires the message to be transformational, as in; it should create an attitude, feeling, should create an emotion, make the customer belief or come up with opinion bout the event (Chalip & Costa, 2005, p.222). And the action part of the message should be behavioral; it achieve visitation, and it should also be rational; the message should create interactivity thus prompting the customer to repeat the action ones he is exposed to the event. In my survey, I established that Adelaide festival event managers extensively used the integrated marketing communication promotional mix to help attract excellent performers in arts together with a vast audience across Australia and from overseas. The IMC promotional mix tools that were used include advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Advertising is defined as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, and services by event organization (Ziakas & Costa, 2011, p.415). Adelaide Festival promotional team different media to communicate to the audience; radio and television adverts that were aired during prime times, magazines, newspaper printouts, websites, social networking sites, billboards, and mobile platforms like buses and taxies were also used. The respondents informed me that advertising was a vital tool particularly in informing, persuading and reminding the targeted market. Sales promotion is a short form of incentives that is used to encourage the purchase of a product/service. This tool is essential in motivating consumers to make a purchase in the now circumstance. The Adelaide event organizers used price reductions, coupons, sweepstake, and contests to promote the event. Consequently, direct marketing was also employed by the Adelaide event organizers. Direct marketing is regarded as an interactive system which provides an opportunity for communicating one-on-one with existing festival or event customers through mail, email, telephone and/or internet (Ziakas & Costa, 2011, p.410). This tool is effective as it offers an online presence that helps event in building significant brand relationships by increasing the power of interactivity. In essence, this tool combines elements of other promotional tools thus highly influencing the target market. Another promotional tool that the event organizers of the Adelaide Festival used extensively was Public relations. It is a communication function that is used to promote and build mutual understanding between the organization and its various stakeholder groups including customers. Adelaide Festival organizers used PR to build the brand credibility for the event and sponsors, make specific event announcements and reach hard-to-reach target audience. The public relations activities that were used at Adelaide Festival include brand publicity, media relations, newsletters and other special promotional events. Conclusion Through the survey I honestly conclude that Adelaide Festival organizers were up to the task and worked to ensure that the 17 day event was a complete success. Their marketing and promotional activities had an outstanding influence on the target market prompting event consumers to come in their masses. Consequently, through their promotional activities they managed to recruit high end and seasoned arts performers that were iconic in the public domain. They deed a commendable job and I would recommend that all event organizers across the country should emulate their skills and expertise in event organization. Recommendations 1. As a manager I recommend that event organizers should use target markets as their primary focus when marketing and promoting an event. 2. The marketing messages should designed in a manner that will highly influence customers to make prompt event-purchase decision. Bibliography Allen, J, O'Toole, W, Harris, R & McDonnell, I 2011, Festival & special event management, 5th ed., John Wiley and Sons, Milton, QLD. Bang, H, Won, D & Kim, Y 2009, 'Motivations, Commitment, and Intentions to Continue Volunteering for Sporting Events', Event Management, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 69-81. Baum, T 2006, Human resource management for the tourism, hospitality and leisure: An international perspective, Thomson Learning, London. Chalip, L & Costa, C 2005, 'Sport event tourism and the destination brand: Towards a general theory', Sport in Society, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 218-237. Doherty, A 2009, 'The volunteer legacy of a major sport event', Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 185-207. Getz, D 2005, Event management and event tourism, 2nd ed., Cognizant Communication Corporation, New York. Hanlon, C & Stewart, B 2006, 'Managing personnel in major sport event organizations: What strategies are required?', Event Management, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 77-88. Jago, L, Chalip, L, Brown, G, Mules, T & Ali, S 2003, 'Building events into destination branding: Insights from experts', Event Management, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 3-14. Meenaghan, T 2001, 'Understanding sponsorship effects', Psychology & Marketing, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 95-122. Ziakas, V & Costa, CA 2011, 'Event portfolio and multi-purpose development: Establishing the conceptual grounds', Sport Management Review, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 409-423. EVENT EXPERIENCE LOG 1 Event Name Adelaide Festival Type of Event Arts Location of Event Adelaide Date of Event 1 – 17 March 2013 With whom did you go to the event? Audience My encounter of the Adelaide Festival was extremely hilarious. I was entertained to the fullest; all desires of experiencing outstanding performances in art were met. Prior to attending the Adelaide Festival I was a critique of such events branding them to be time wasters; however, this experience completely changed my perception and instilled a new kind of dimension. The different arts events that were performed exhibited the richness of innovations in the field of art. Particularly, the captivating theatre performances were educational; for instance, real life was sincerely expressed and how humanity neglect essential aspects of life. It was a real experience that I cannot afford to miss anymore, though entertaining; the theatre performances left no stone unturned with regard to humanity. When the William Shakespeare’s play “The Midsummer Night Dream,” was performed I came to a full understanding that life can be humorous, enjoyable, and extremely hilarious. The marketing and promotional activities of the Adelaide Festival was superbly integrated and coordinated where all communication was clearly delivered to the targeted audience. The promotional messages that the organizers used were compelling and branding the event as one of its kind. For instance, the main objectives of the event promotional messages were feelings, thinking and doing. The messages were transformational creating an attitude, feeling, emotion, and or belief that the event was going to be entertaining, exciting, and extremely captivating. The messages were also informational; for example the creative awareness of the event, venue, time, program elements, ticket purchasing and pricing were well met through communication. EVENT EXPERIENCE LOG 2 Event Name Rock n Roll Rendezvous Type of Event Rock n Roll Motoring Location of Event Adelaide Hills Date of Event 14 April, 2013 With whom did you go to the event? The general audience The Rock n Roll rendezvous was the worst and boring event that I have ever experienced in my lifetime. Despite my aptitude of being entertained the motor racing events turned my emotions the other way round. The organization of the racing event was compromised; the racing track was slippery and the competitors found it hard to compete effectively. Consequently, my expectations to see the top racers in the country competing were shunned when only a handful novices showed up. Instead of cheering the crowd jeered at the competitors because they never exhibited to have fully mastered the motor racing techniques. This was an annoying and boring encounter, particularly when the event organizers announced that the event will last half day rather than the expected full day. The worst part of it all was when one of the competitors lost the control of his racing car and rammed into the marshy bushes along the racing track. The event turned from entertaining to catastrophic. The Rock n Roll Rendezvous could not meet its objectives in exciting and fulfilling the audience’s desires due to poor planning and the final execution. The event organizers ought to have used or adopted the coordinated approach to attract the participation of the top racers in the country, and prepare the racing track in advance to ensure smooth competition and optimal entertainment for the audience. The organization of the entire event was poorly managed. For instance, the event never balanced the interests of all stakeholders; there was no enhancement and sustainment of the outcomes. The event lacked efficiency and further, the strategy used support the overall benefits; for instance, there was no positive association of events. Read More