Selling it: effective branding and marketing

Introduction

Marketing is the social process by which individuals and organisations obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others.

Kotler and Armstrong, 2010

Planning

An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan identifies and brings together multiple marketing methods into one strategy, and includes:

• A branding statement
• Key messages
• Identification of target audiences, including
  • segmentation (the split of your audience into groups with common needs)
  • market research
  • Objectives
  • Marketing budget
  • Promotional mix (which marketing avenues you'll use, such as TV, radio, social media, etc)
  • Plan for implementation
  • PR campaign
  • Method(s) of evaluation

 Your plan should consider the "6 Ps of Marketing":

• Product (your event/experience)
• Place (where in the market you'll distribute your collateral)
• Price (how much will you spend?)
• Promotional Mix (which elements will you use?)
• People (your target / audience)
• Performance (profitability)

Branding

Your brand is ultimately the unique identifier which differentiates your product, service, festival or event from the others in the marketplace. It can be described as the image, public perception or attitude towards your festival or event.

When considering the perceived brand of an event, you may think of:

• Function (how you facilitate your event, its purpose)
• Personality (the look and feel of your event, the audience it attracts)
• Differences (what is unique about your event, how your event is run differently, or how it "feels" different to other events)

Other Factors to Consider

Development of key messages begins with objectives and positioning statement. The key message must be honest and credible. You may choose to use a combination of images, words (written, spoken), sounds and other stimuli, semiotics and signs (i.e. use of colours, symbols) to evoke emotions and connections with audiences.

Key Messages might:

• emphasize a USP (unique selling proposition)
• indicate positioning
• aim to resonate with audience
• aim to arouse emotion

Who is the event aimed at? Consider:

• Demographics (the statistics of your audience, such as age, sex, amount of expendable income, etc)
• Psychographics (the values, drivers, attitudes and interests of your audience)
• Segmentation (the groups within your audience who share the same needs)
• Market research (researching findings from similar events to make judgements about who your target audience might be)

Marketing Objectives should be clear, measurable and achievable. As calls to action, objectives usually start with the word ‘To’ and focus on:

• Audience numbers ("To attract...")
• Awareness ("To reach...")
• Profit ("To make...")
• Efficiency ("To be...")

The budget for your event may be pre-determined, and is sometimes based on a percentage of overall profit or turn over. It is also often subsidised by existing contra deals and sponsorship. Each element within your promotional mix will need to be costed, and additional contra or sponsorship may be pursued to reduce your expense / increase the reach of your marketing collateral.

Promotional Mix

Your objectives and budget will shape your promotional mix, but your target market and how they "digest" information should also influence your choices. The promotional mix for your event could include:

• Print production (flyers, posters)
• Television
• Radio
• Newspapers / magazines
• Outdoor / signage
• Direct Mail
• Online, social media and new technologies
• Promotions

Once you've considered who your target audience is and how you will reach them, you will need to create a schedule to "roll out" your event's marketing plan. You'll need to:

• Create a timeline, including a calendar of deadlines for each type of media in your promotional mix
• Decide how and when you will commence distribution of your selected media
• Allocate human resources - who will do what?
• Engage suppliers, including graphic designers, photographers, printers, website designers/builders, direct mail houses, ad production, etc.

Public Relations

“Public Relations is planned in an effort to create goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics” (Black, 1993).

Others define it as the practice of managing communication between an organisation and its publics

Public Relations is a broad term to cover communications with all publics associated with an organisation/event. It is important to keep all publics informed on what you are planning, potential impact, getting them onside. Public relations covers COMMUNICATIONS (functional, instructional, informational) as opposed to MARKETING (paid promotions/advertising). Most important point – it’s the difference between paid promotions/advertising and non paid communications.

Public relations provides an organisation, event or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement without direct payment. Common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications, social media, and employee communication. Publicity falls under the PR banner and refers specifically to media coverage. PR is the difference between paid promotions/advertising and non-paid communications.

Benefits of PR

• Keeping stakeholders and publics informed creates goodwill, pre-empts problems and gets publics on side
• More opportunity to tell the stories and achieve deeper resonance and understanding – can delve deeper than advertising – big feature pieces
• Media coverage is free and more credible than advertising – third party endorsement – effectively someone else is saying your event or product is good!
  BUT you are at the mercy of the media – you do not have full control
• Sometimes despite perfect planning and execution stories still don’t run – not reliable – Fringe caravan tour / QLD floods – no publicity achieved

Launches

What are the objectives of Launches?

• Generate publicity
• Build excitement among key publics
• Make announcement
• Reveal program
• Unveil the new
• Media stunts
• Celebrate

Some things you’ll need to consider for your launch are:

• Venue
• Time (media and stakeholder friendly)
• Invite list
• Format
• Look and feel
• Stunts
• Speeches
• Hospitality
• Maximising media coverage
• VIPs and protocol
• Sponsorship profile and obligations

Evaluation

Evaluating the effectiveness of your integrated marketing communications plan should take place internally and externally.

Internally

Asking your staff for their opinions of what they felt worked or didn't work. Assess if you met your objectives. Try to measure effectiveness of each strategy – eg. How many people purchased tickets through a website, What days did your ticket sales peak/trough? Was it when you placed press ads? How were sales after a piece of publicity ran? Consider the ROI (return on investment, or how much impact your integrated marketing communications plan had vs how much you spent).

Externally

Asking your audience how they felt about your event, using the means of communication preferred by the segment (i.e. surveys, questions posted on social media, etc). Using feedback to measure effectiveness (such as the level of awareness of your event within your target audience). Referral statistics, such as how many of your attendees would come to your next event, asking “how did you find out about the event?” through surveys/at point of ticket buying.

Additional Resources

Included with this topic are the following additional resources:

1. A video interview with Ronato Capoccia, Marketing Executive at the Adelaide Festival Centre, discussing marketing and advertising of their performances.
2. A marketing plan builder
3. A document discussing different marketing strategies
4. A marketing and audience development toolkit