Overall...

Overall, I have to say, I have found this blog difficult. I'm not sure whether it's because I struggled as a person, or whether the promotion of my events, focusing on Derren Brown, just wasn't there enough to look into. I think if I did it again, I would definitely ensure that the events I pick are well known and so most probably wider promoted.

It seems likely that Derren Brown is the kind of person that already has a wide following of fans, and that as it's such a specialised type of show, it wont necessarily qualify for too big of a marketing plan. I can't see myself how it would be entirely helpful, and I believe that he could draw in attendees himself without having to spend too much money or effort.

With The National Wedding Show, promotion is more extensive, despite it being a more widely known event. I think it would be harder to find a person who hadn't heard of it rather than one who had. This means that the promotion they pay for doesn't need much more information rather than the dates, place and just generally creating a buzz for the event. I think the majority of the promotion goes on within the event, for the different companies involved.

I think it was really interesting to see how different the promotion strategies were, and how successful they were. The National Wedding Show is an annual thing and has a stigma attached which means that people trust it. Derren Brown managed to sell out a tour with dates all round the country, with less promotion and different marketing techniques altogether!

Target Audiences

I want to take a look at the Target Audience of each event. They are so different, that I am quite interested to see if there is any correlation between the two.

With Derren Brown, this is solely a Business to Consumer event, as it is a simple purchase of a ticket to experience it. It is slightly more complex with the wedding show, as, although the above still applies, there is still a massive chunk of the event and promotion that is directed at related business that may want to sell there.

It is important when promoting an event, that you learn as much as you can about your Target Audience, in order to be able to focus your promotion on them and ensure that you use the right measures in order to reach them. This may be slightly easier to pinpoint for the wedding show rather than Derren Brown, and slightly more research is necessary. With the National Wedding Show, the range of attendees are relatively simple to predict. Whether they be parents or friends of the couple, or the future couple themselves. (I would have mentioned the likelihood of the Groom being as interested as the Bride until I came across this. This is the perfect draw and I'm sure Best Men all over the country would be at this stall in minutes! )

Character profiling

I just wanted to do a quick post profiling the people I think would attend each of these events. I'll start with Derren Brown:

This is Steve and Gemma. Steve is twenty-seven and Gemma is twenty-five. They have been together for a year. Steve works with cars, and Gemma is an admin at a law firm. They enjoy going to the theatre and are very interested in lots off alternative things. They will be attending Derren Brown, as they follow his shows on the television, and are interested in seeing him live. 

I feel that these are a representation of the kind of people you will see at this kind of event- young couples that want to do something slightly different, and have a keen interest in this sort of show. (possibly watches a lot of television!)

Above, is Julia and her Mum, Katherine. Julia's boyfriend proposed to her a few months ago, and she is now beginning the preparations for the wedding. Katherine has treated her daughter and her bridesmaids to tickets to the National Wedding Show to have a look at some options for dresses etc and get the opportunity to create some excitement around the upcoming wedding! 

BOGOF!

Derren Brown doesn't seem to want to give away any of his tickets for anything! I have searched far and wide for any offers or deals that may be offered to draw people in, but nothing! On the other hand, the National Wedding Show are offering free things at every turn. Wedding magazines are offering the chance to win tickets, and the sponsors and related companies are offering the chance for free goodies. I know which sales promotion strategy I prefer!

The Institute of Sales Promotion use the following definition:

"A range of tactical marketing techniques designed within a strategic marketing framework to add value to a product of service, in order to achieve a specific sales and marketing objective"

These objectives are going to be intended to increase custom, whether this be current or future. Using these kind of marketing techniques (such as offering people to win, save towards using coupons etc or get for free using offers such as buy one get one free) will raise awareness of the event and it's related companies, and potentially gain otherwise uninterested custom. The companies can time their offers to go out at just the right time as to appeal to the target market, and they can research fully into the best way to reach them.

When looking at the marketing of an event, there is a common acronym that presents the common objectives. This is as follows:

Awareness

Interest

Desire

Action

These are pretty self explanatory- the idea that in order to draw in your customers, there is particular action that needs to be taken. The subject needs to be made aware of the event, through advertising. This is the time in which the companies can advertise in the paper, and start to email past customers reminding them that the event will be returning (however, keep in mind that an event such as a wedding show aren't going to have too much of a repeat custom- you would hope, anyway!). Following this, you need to grab their interest. This is when you can begin to advertise on television, and use social media tools such facebook to continually post about the event and build it up. The next area is desire, in which you need to make people WANT to attend. Give them initiative and research your audience to direct it all towards them in the most effective way possible. The last objective is Action, and this is the area that sales promotion will fall under. Putting together competitions, offers etc creates a buzz about the event and can spread news of it via word of mouth between friends and potential couples of the future!

Sponsorship

This aspect of the marketing was very interesting to me when focusing on the Derren Brown tour. I spent ages on the website trying to find some sponsorship attention, with not much luck. However, when I attended the event, I bought a programme, and found no end of advertising in there,which I can only imagine was funded.  I love that it all seems to be extremely connected to Derren Brown as a person.

The sponsorship of The National Wedding Show is more obvious online:

These sponsorships show a link between the potential attendees of the event, and the other forms of media they may frequent. There is a Wedding Insurance company, which is a fantastic form of advertisement for them. If a couple, or an individual, are visiting the National Wedding Show website, and they see that, even if they were not considering this kind of purchase beforehand, they are so likely to at least visit the website through the link. It looks colourful and pretty, which is a massive draw, particularly for the ladies!

I imagine that the majority of the companies that sponsor the show, will also have a stall there at the actual event. These are companies such as the flower company, the company advertising honeymoons and the aforementioned insurance company.

I imagine that this advertising is going to be heaps more effective in comparison to those in the Derren Brown programme. The National Wedding Show sponsors are so directly applicable, and also have the opportunity to have more of a stake in the event through being able to hold a stall there selling their product. This is not something that can really be offered through Derren Brown. It seems like his advertisements are also more of interest to him rather than doing any research into what may interest his target market. An example of this is shown in one of the pictures above, in which he has an advert for a parrot zoo. Derren Brown is known to own a parrot and have a very keen interest in them. But this is not necessarily an interest that is going to be passed on to his fans, no matter how keen they are. It is also strange to me how specialised this kind of advertising is.

Online Promotion

In this post, I am going to focus solely on the online promotion of my two events. Social media is such a powerful tool within marketing, as it means you can reach your target group directly using a medium that is so popular and commonly used.

This is The National Wedding Show facebook page. They use it to post regularly on related stories and topics. It gives people the opportunity to talk about wedding related things, and to sign up to the newsletter. Facebook works in a way that if someone posts anything about weddings or engagement, it can relate it to this facebook page, and suggest it to them. This is a cheap and easy way to widen your target group.

This is a screen print of Derren Brown's facebook page, which he uses to post normal status' and promote his products. Svengali is a main focus on here throughout the tour, posting references to each show and mentioning all the tour dates. This can increase excitement for those that are attending and also promote it throughout their friends and those with similar interests in such events. 

Particularly with that of the National Wedding Show, it gives related organisations the opportunity to promote their products via the social networking pages created by the public relations team for the event. As there are so many different companies involved, this is extremely beneficial. 

Derren Brown

So, my first event, Svengali, took place last week, and I was lucky enough to be able to attend. It was such a good night, and I ended up on stage! We were sat so close to the front, as you can see from the picture below.

Whilst waiting to go inside, I noticed the first clear bit of advertising that I've really noticed around Wycombe, which surprises me really. I took a photo of the billboard to show how little the poster was. I would have thought the promotion within the local area would have been more extensive to be honest!

Once the show was all over, and I had been publicly humiliated enough, I made sure I grabbed a programme to have a flick through. It was full of lots of random facts and interviews with Derren. It also contained lots of adverts for related companies, which I found quite interesting. I also noticed that in his acknowledgements and facts, he mentions his PR Manager. His name is Greg Day, and he works for 'Clout Communications Ltd'.

If you go on the Clout Communications website you can view all the different accounts that they hold, and see how much of a widespread company they are. When you focus on Derren Brown, you can see all the press coverage they have secured him, from magazines and newspapers. 

The marketing for the National Wedding show seems much more complex, which I imagine is due to the amount of different organisations involved. As an event, it is advertised in magazines heavily.

Difference in Marketing

The thing I find interesting when looking at the contrast of these two different events, is the different marketing and PR tools that are used. With something such as Derren Brown, where a touring performance is involved, there is plenty of free promotion all over the place. This is invaluable publicity, such as newspaper reviews and word of mouth. Whereas the Wedding Show is going to appeal to a certain niche market, and the promotion is slightly more limited and less accessible unless you are specifically looking for it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as it is much more straight forward when looking at who you want to advertise to and how to go about it.

The Press Association did a case study on the marketing strategy of the National Wedding Show (which you can see here. This was carried out, as TNWS wanted to "increase [their] web traffic".

On a year on year comparison, the study shows that:

• visits increased by over 18% from 128,696 to 153,833
• page views increased by 6% from 850,689 to 902,932
• average time spent on the site increased by 3% to average of 3.5 minutes

This shows that the PR of the event is successful and it can only be expected to increase. It is important to carry out this type of study every now and again in order to ensure that all work you are doing is paying off, and to highlight any changes you may need to make in the future.

Stories with The Guardian

When looking into some of the promo that Derren Brown has received following the mad rush of Christmas and pantomimes, I was quite interested to see that there was a story about Derren in The Guardian. He has received a lot of publicity in the recent months, following a bit of controversy regarding one of his previous stunts. Although this may not be great for his reputation, it can be really positive for the marketing of his upcoming tour. You know what they say- no publicity is bad publicity!

So the article in The Guardian isn't actually covering the event (it is a Q+A Interview with Derren), but it is clear that this is all part and parcel of the lead up to a tour. This is a great public relations move, as it gets Derren's name noticed more throughout the tour. This also could potentially widen his audience, as it can reach out to a different group of people, through the readership of The Guardian. The more people hear It is good to see that he is getting the promo that he deserves, and hopefully there will be a few more event related stories in the next few weeks...

It is important when running any event, that you create a buzz and gain people's interest throughout the promotion. You don't want to overload your audience with adverts, so this kind of attention is perfect. It can spark an interest in the performer for new customers, and create a buzz around the event for those that are already going. This is a massive part of your marketing plan, and needs to be carried out fully and in detail to ensure successful promotion. Below are the basic steps of a PR process:

Frontpagepr.com (1989) Front Page Public Relations provides public relations and media relations services to high technology and franchise clients in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Queen Creek, Chandler and Gilbert, Arizona. [online] Available at: http://www.frontpagepr.com/public_relations/ [Accessed: 13 Mar 2012]

 

National Wedding Show

The second event I am going to follow, is the National Wedding Show. This will be slightly different to Derren Brown, because the scale of marketing will be completely different. The National Wedding show is a large scale 'touring' event that reoccurs every year.

The promotion for this will increase more leading up to the event, which takes place in London on 24th-26th February 2012.