The traditional connection between ‘marketing’ and ‘events’ is a curiously dysfunctional one. It conjures images of the cavalier executive impulsively funding ‘the same old’ events, with a philanthropic or perhaps indulgent intent.
The prevailing picture is of an unnecessarily narrow selection of events as extra communication or sales vehicles. Although this ignores some inspired event-based activity, the overwhelming picture is of events being tactical rather than strategic and detached rather than integrated.
This picture emerges from many sources, not least interviewees in my own research who characterised events as ‘a poor relation of the communication mix’.
Creating value has been ignored
This view has obstructed events from realising their value in the marketer’s armoury. However, over the past decade, marketing events have been enjoying heady days, characterised by increasingly sophisticated executions, with established and celebrated connections to overall strategy.
The conventional platforms remain, such as exhibitions, tradeshows and product launches. But there is a vibrancy and creativity to event-based marketing, with innovation that leverages events in countless ways, such as the brand entertainment experiences embodied in such creations as Red Bull’s Flugtag and Guinness’s Witness Festival.
"Choreographing event space is closer to putting on a theatre performance than designing a print campaign"
Strategic marketing events are better thought of as potential ‘value creation spaces’ where organisations can coalesce with desired customers, clients, and wider stakeholders.
The event space is pliable and can be shaped to encompass sales and promotion, word of mouth and PR, brand development, and customer consultation/ co-creation.
Why has the poor relation ‘made good’? There are seven key factors that have fuelled the growth of event-led marketing:
1 The intimacy and interactivity of a face-to-face event can trigger emotional connections that are a holy grail in the cluttered reality of modern marketing.
2 The participative and content-led character of events embodies the popular conviction of doing things ‘with and for’ rather than ‘to’ customers.
3 Young people’s zest for experiences, authenticity, and instantaneous interaction, each underpin the arrival of events.
4 Oddly even the eruption of social media is fuelling event investment as brands seek to create a physical core to provoke talkability (eWOM) to fire their virtual strategies.
5 Events are content led and, as experiences, provide an interactive showcase of the brand offering visibility and engagement.
6 Events present a structured venue to invest in more frequent and consistent ‘conversations’ with customers. Face-to-face is having a renewed emphasis given the upsurge of virtual.
7 Event space is a potential breeding ground for the ‘co’ philosophy that pervades so much progressive marketing thinking.
Potential dangers
Most business will have some, probably quite a lot, of space already as they host, or co-host, many events each year. Participants arrive in the space with costs incurred (travel, parking, hotel, and of course opportunity cost) and, inevitably, expectations driven by their previous event experiences.
So the event space is ripe with potential but equally high in risk, should the experience not reach expectations.
Events are a blank canvas and the best ‘event designers’ balance recognition of constraints with an artistic aspiration to cultivate meaningful and differentiated experiences. Decisions about setting, programme, services, theme, food and drink are the equivalent to choices of words, images, tone of voice, format for more conventional communications.
"The event space is pliable and can encompass sales and promotion, word of mouth and PR, brand development, and co-creation"
Choreographing event space is arguably closer to putting on a theatre performance than designing a print campaign.
Unsophisticated application might not only be inefficient but will almost inevitably be damaging to an organisation’s brand and relationships.
Successfully facilitating and optimising marketing space, with all of the contingent factors and considerations, takes the marketers outside of their core competence and into the realms of event designer, event manager, and even service recovery manager.
A complicating reality of marketing events is that a very wide range of people contribute to the execution. Brand ambassadors come in the form of receptionists, cleaners, catering, and security guards, in addition to the marketers, event managers, and senior executives.
Events make promises Tangible
The arrival of events as a mainstream marketing approach has profound implications. Suddenly, marketing becomes a promisekeeping business; ‘realtime’ marketing becomes a reality.
Events are participative in nature. Brand communication is instantaneous and of course relationships are enhanced, sustained, or diluted regardless of whether that was a prescribed rationale for the event.
Crowther is senior lecturer, Events Management, Sheffield Business School and pioneer of www.eventmanagementhub.com
This is an edited extract from the winner of The Tim Ambler Academy of Marketing Prize for 2011. The paper with full references may be obtained from the author.
British Brands Group
Apologies to the British Brands Group for not attributing Rory Sutherland’s article in Market Leader,
January 2012. We published an edited version of his lecture.
Since the year 2000, an annual Brands Lecture has been delivered by some of the leading lights in the branding world. The full versions of these lectures are available from www.britishbrandsgroup.org.uk/ the-brands-lecture.
- The 11th Lecture: Accountability is not enough. By Rory Sutherland, IPA and Ogilvy Group.
- The 10th Lecture: Brand new: Innovation in a challenging world. By Fiona Dawson, Mars Chocolate.
- The 9th Lecture: In brands we trust. By Lord Bilimoria, Cobra Beer.
- The 8th Lecture: Can brands save the world? Let’s hope so. By Richard Reed, Innocent Drinks.
- The 7th Lecture: They think it’s all over ... By Martin Glenn, Birds Eye Iglo.
- The 6th Lecture: The Lovemarks effect. By Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi.
- The 5th Lecture: Brands beyond business. By Simon Anholt.
- The 4th Lecture: Hybrids, the heavenly bed and purple ketchup. By David Aaker, Prophet.
- The 3rd Lecture: 100% Marketing. By Rob Malcolm, Diageo.
- The 2nd Lecture: Posh Spice and Persil. By Jeremy Bullmore, WPP.
- The Inaugural Brands Lecture: Are brands good for Britain? By Tim Ambler, London Business School.