Events Park With P-O-P

Once thought of as little more than handing out free samples, event marketing has become far more sophisticated. However, the overall strategy -- to avoid retail clutter and create a personalized experience for consumers -- remains the same."You can do more outside than inside a store by providing a larger and more in-depth experience," says Jeff Frumin, CEO of Universal Consulting Group (UCG), an event marketing agency based in New York with offices in Boston, Alabama and Washington, DC. "Events can be complementary and add multiple touch points by taking place both outside and inside the store. A lot of brand marketers have found that in-store sampling promotions alone are not as energizing and engaging as they used to be."He adds, "Event marketing has both an immediate impact on sales and a long-term effect on brand building. The immediate impact is right after someone tries a product or has a personal interaction with a brand. They are then very likely to purchase it. In fact, purchase immediately following trial is often as high as 70% according to some studies."Richard Black, senior manager, channel marketing and promotions, home products division, Sony Electronics Inc., San Diego, considers event marketing a key component of the marketing plan. "It is a tool we use when we need to go face to face with consumers," he says. "There is quite a bit of clutter with traditional in-store promotion. Event marketing allows you to differentiate your product or service from the competition."In the current hyper-competitive landscape of High Definition Television (HDTV), a lot of marketing noise is creating more confusion than enlightenment. Sony will use event marketing to educate consumers on the facts so they can make an informed purchasing decision and understand how to install and operate their new Sony HDTV when they get it home."Riley Hedrick, sourcing manager for Brown-Forman Corp. of Louisville, KY, agrees. "Event marketing is a very important marketing tool for a number of Brown-Forman brands," she notes. "Jack Daniel's Great American Tailgate promotion and NASCAR sponsorship, for example, have been very successful for a number of years. The function of event marketing is to involve consumers with the brand in a setting that directly intersects their lifestyle. To be successful, it should not only have an immediate effect on sales, but should also entice the consumer to see the brand as part of their lifestyle going forward."Event marketing is relationship marketing, according to Thomas Foster, head of new business development at Beer Nuts, Vernon Hills, IL. "We believe that our target consumers make the decision to buy from companies that are integrated into their lifestyle. Our product is fun and we want to introduce it when our customers are having fun," Foster explains.Eric Hauser, creative director and founder of Swivel Media, based in San Francisco says, "Event marketing is powerful both for heritage brands and for new products. Older brands need to try just as hard as, if not harder than, 'the new guy on the block.' If a category leader becomes complacent, it will certainly perish."GiveawaysExperience has shown that people will show up for an event if they think they are going to get something for free, especially if it's something good to eat. Barkley Evergreen & Partners Sponsorships & Events, for example, has developed and launched a program for its client, Blue Bunny Ice Cream, called the Free-ze Patrol. This mobile marketing initiative traveled to 292 events at Wal-Mart Supercenters across the country. The event allowed consumers to enjoy free samples of Blue Bunny Ice Cream and win free prizes. The Free-ze Patrol vehicle was a full-size Hummer wrapped in the brand's identity.But does an event have to involve free giveaways in order to be successful? "Not necessarily," says Dan Fromm, president of Barkley Evergreen & Partners, Kansas City, MO. "It does, however, have to be consumer-centric. The key is developing something that is relevant to the brand and still captures people's attention. If it's just a brand telling its story, consumers may start to question what's in it for them."Jack Daniel's Great American Tailgate promotion is a good example. After several years of implementation in the same media markets, a new angle was needed to secure media interest. Brown-Forman and its promotion agency came up with the idea of a research project to discover some of the unknown facts about tailgaters and tailgating."The objectives were to generate media interest in the tailgate markets and to provide talking points for the broadcast media to use during interviews," Hedrick explains. "In fact, we uncovered some rather quirky information. Did you know, for example, that more than 30% of all tailgaters don't actually go to the game? Facts like these led to a surge in media coverage and the search was covered impressively in every market.""Free items are always great, but not crucial to the success of a program," says UCG's Frumin. "Consumers are smart and generally interested in product information. A hands-on experience will engage and encourage them to find out even more about the product and create an even stronger intent to purchase."Sony's Richard Black shares Frumin's opinion. "You have to give the consumer something," he says, "but knowledge can be valuable and we have found that consumers will give you their time if you give them valuable information in return. Especially in the area of HDTV, which is still a relatively new technology. If your ultimate goal is to drive sales, then a purchase incentive is also a good 'thank you' for their time and can help close the sale."Event DisplaysP-O-P materials play an important role both in promoting upcoming events and during the events themselves. "When we participate in an event, we want to be highly visible," says Foster. "We use banners, signs and all sorts of displays to make sure people see us."Black notes that Sony also uses P-O-P materials both before and during events. "We not only use everything from posters to tent cards to 'take one' displays to promote an upcoming event, but we also provide retailers with ad bugs and templates to make it easier for them to advertise it. During the event itself, we use everything from posters and banners to inflatable domes and a NASCAR show car representing our sponsorship.""We use a wide variety of materials to promote upcoming events," says Fromm of Barkley Evergreen & Partners. "It varies by client. For example, we often publish event calendars online. In some cases, we use direct mail to tell current customers that we have a special event coming up in their market. We've used radio partners in many cases to drive traffic to our events as well."Joel Benson, president and founder of EventNet USA, Fort Lauderdale, FL, says his company uses all types of interactive and static materials. "It totally depends on the type of brand we are presenting to the buying public. Our clients usually run traditional advertising along with in-store signage and sometimes even direct mail to support an event appearance.""We use P-O-P materials at retailers and malls to advertise an event before we arrive," says UCG's Frumin. "Radio commercials as well as street teams distributing flyers are also an effective way to pre-promote an event. For enclosed mall events, we usually put catchy creative clings on the doors at the entrances that include date and time information. Inside the store, we use creative signage to drive purchase after consumers have seen the product outside the store."But how does an event compare with a traditional in-store display in terms of results? Quite favorably, according to the brand marketers we interviewed. "It's much easier to stand out in front of the store than in one of the aisles," says Barkley Evergreen's Fromm. "We've had tremendous success doing parking lot events that engaged customers in a branded experience right before they went inside the store."Regarding the Blue Bunny Ice Cream promotion, Fromm says, "One of the objectives of the promotion was to drive sales performance and merchandising activity within Wal-Mart stores both during and after the five-month promotional period from May 31 through October 29, 2005," says Fromm. "We gave away a total of 233,374 free samples. We achieved sustained double-digit sales growth during the promotional period and for as long as four weeks following each event. We estimate more than 1.7 million people were exposed to the Blue Bunny brand via direct interaction, brand exposure, indirect interaction and road impressions."Sony's Black finds in-store events utilizing a display more effective than those held outdoors in a store parking lot. "With our HDTV program, we have dramatically improved our event marketing results by moving our people inside the store, where they have a greater ability to assist with the sale in addition to conducting a relevant product demonstration."Foster of Beer Nuts views events and traditional in-store displays as complementary, working together to accomplish both short-and long-term objectives. "We understand that our product is one that is purchased on impulse, so we spend 90% of our time and money on in-store promotions," he says. "In-store is where everything happens. As an example, we work with Miller Brewing Co. on cross-merchandising tie-in campaigns. On the other hand, we use event marketing to develop our next generation of consumers. It's one of the elements of our 'GenerationNext' campaign."Measuring Events To measure the response to their efforts, marketers tend to look at events individually because there isn't really a system in place.Fromm of Barkley, Evergreen & Partners says, "The biggest challenge we have in developing any 'non-traditional' marketing effort is establishing up front what success will look like. In most cases, there are no standards for measurement. We often look at both sales and impressions and establish a value for different degrees of consumer engagement. The key is to establish the criteria long before the program is created."UCG's Frumin works with the client to set an objective. "We decide together whether we are interested in impressions, distributing a number of samples or coupons, or driving traffic to a website and we set a quantitative target for whatever we decide to measure. You can also measure success by capturing e-mail addresses or phone numbers and doing a follow-up study on their brand recall and intent to purchase the product."Sony's Black feels that measuring event success is still a real challenge. "During a mobile marketing tour, we measure success by impressions, traffic and exit surveys," he says. "At sales-related events, we try to measure the direct impact on sales and foot traffic.""We measure the success of an event by the number of consumers touched or involved with the brand at the event," says Brown-Forman's Hedrick. "We obviously can't give away samples of our product, but we can measure not only the number of consumers who become involved with it, but also how deeply they become involved."Our Early Times Tagged Fish Promotion is a good example of this. We tag 50 bass in each of seven states (Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia) with one potentially winning tag number per state. To be eligible for a chance at the grand prize of $50,000, the consumer has to pass through two stages -- the semi-finals drawing and the grand prize drawing. Consumers who catch a tagged bass and register their tag number on the Early Times website automatically win an Early Times prize package and a spot in the semi-finals. The semi-finalists are randomly selected for the grand prize drawing in each state, and we announce the winners at the end of the promotion. Requiring multiple steps to enter and win assures the deep involvement of theparticipants."

Events Park With P-O-P

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