Digital and Live Events: A Powerful Future Together

Trevor Foley

Director
The Events Industry Alliance

Trevor Foley illustrates how the events industry has benefited from the rise of online marketing while the digital revolution continues to challenge other sectors.

According to The Times, Britons are the ‘social networking’ champions of Europe, displaying a far greater appetite for websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo than our fellow citizens on the continent. According to the research, British internet users spend an average of 5.8 hours a month – about 11 minutes a day – on such sites. Coverage of the Media Planning Group’s (MPG) report on shopping habits revealed 92% of families have shopped online at some point, and 54% use the internet to shop at least once a month. There can be no doubt that digital is the rising star.

Yet, despite news stories on the death of other channels as the internet grows in popularity, the majority in MPG’s survey (68%) say they still visit their local high street at least once a week. Let’s face it, we do it all the time: hop on the internet, pin down a product and then nip out to the shops to check it out for real: to touch it, feel it, talk about it. The bigger the spend, the truer the reality. That is the symbiotic relationship between digital and ‘live’ marketing, a relationship that continues to grow.

Rise of Events

As online advertising spend overtakes that ploughed into the national press and is forecast to top TV advertising in three years time (according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau), the rise of digital is well documented. But alongside Bellwether’s reporting of increased online marketing budgets, 2008 will see the introduction of head-to-head statistics on the growing spend on live event marketing, as more and more marketers tap into its power to engage and deliver real results.

Concern among traditional media is very real and continuing to grow, yet of all other media at brand owners’ fingertips, it is event marketing that is not suffering ill effects from the digital revolution. In fact the evidence shows that the events sector is being thrown to the fore of brand campaigns, in part because of its symbiotic relationship with online.

The second wave of digital media is drawing the traditional mass media sectors under its pull. This isn’t just because today’s consumer wants to “consume” what they want, when it suits, but also because TV, radio, magazines, et al., can all be replicated online. Ironically, it is event marketing, the oldest kid on the block that is riding the digital wave. It’s not just that event marketing is complementary to digital, but that the two have so much in common, to the exclusion of the traditional mass-market media.

The key characteristic of both digital and events is “pull” rather than “push”. Unlike the interruptive push techniques of broadcast, direct mail and other media forms, pull, or permission marketing, is exclusive to digital and live marketing formats.

Engagement

In 2007, ‘engagement’ took centre stage for marketers and brand managers in our increasingly fragmented world, where consumers need to be able to make sense of the messages they are bombarded with. Taking a brand into a live, face-to-face environment allows the consumer to build a relationship with that brand beyond what is achievable online, or in any other media form. Where communities and relationships can be built online they can be consummated face-to-face. So, event marketing, which for so long has not even been regarded as a mainstream marketing medium, has now joined digital on the stage as a “now media” star.

Brand Users

Among the greatest users of event marketing are online or airtime brands such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, eBay, Channel 4, O2 and Orange. O2’s use of events is a detailed and multi-faceted study of effective brand positioning and relationship building, through countless touch-points with consumers. The O2 Wireless Festival and the re-branding of the ill fated dome as The O2, the coolest new venue in town, is a lesson for all brand managers in extending and building trust in a brand.

The innovative team at Channel 4 has begun to infiltrate the events world, bringing its brands to life through ownership of dedicated experiential activity. Following its acquisition of a 50% stake in Taste Events, Michael Hodgson, Managing Director of Channel 4Rights division commented, “Taste is a complete sensory overload and it’s in the area of food, with which Channel 4 has got a huge resonance and reputation. What we’re now trying to do is build or own our own properties and within that objective, events is one attractive area”.

During his time as director of brand marketing at AOL (UK) Timothy Ryan exalted the effectiveness of digital and live marketing when implemented side-by-side. AOL’s involvement with prestigious events conveyed to Ryan how these media can feed off one another, to the benefit of the brand: “Live events offer a forum to demonstrate our wide range of products, allowing us to alter perceptions of what AOL has to offer. For example, showcasing a live Webchat with Robbie Williams is a great way to convey AOL’s music content. Digital and live marketing work well together. There is something about an event that people want to be part of, and digital has the ability to extend a live experience before, during and after the fact.”

Mobile phone company Motorola showed live marketing’s ability to achieve multi-objectives, at its 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. The company achieved a tour de force in interactivity that included a creative show stand, a major press event, a “guerrilla marketing” campaign at the city’s Pacha nightclub and a mobile marketing trailer outside the event venue. Leslie Dance, Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing at Mobile Device Business commented, “Consumers want to interact and experience a brand personally. That is why Motorola is increasingly focusing on experiential marketing.”

Exhibitions and Conferences

In 2007, EIA formed a strategic partnership with Madgex, providers of Backnetwork.com, the online event networking service. The partnership works on two levels: firstly, demonstrating impressive networking capabilities to the event community and, secondly, to show the wider media and marketing community the synergies between the digital and events world in developing marketing solutions. Brands and marketers need to be able to achieve interactivity and engagement via ‘permission’ marketing channels. It is the mix of digital channels and live events that create communities, which can engage via conversation 24/7 thus extending the life of the event brand itself pre, during and post event.

Digital tools are used extensively to enhance the engagement of visitors on the floor of the event too, not just in the networking and meeting arrangement modes, with innovative use of real-time voting and interaction during seminars and conferences as well as business related (or not) activities and games to attract target buyers to stands.

Event venues also recognise the need to provide even more comprehensive and faster IT and communications facilities, with many teaming up with professional providers. ExCeL London is a fine example, whose partnership with ntl:Telewest Business delivers the very latest secure and reliable solutions. This partnership enables even the most complex event networks to be built and its permanently cabled exhibition halls ensure service reliability and flexibility.

Together Forever

But will ‘digital’ replace ‘live’? I think not. We are a distrusting race! Seeing the colour of their eyes and shaking hands on a deal will never be replaced. Cyber venues, no matter how ‘authentic’, will never supplant a real meeting place, be it a sports arena, exhibition hall, conference auditorium, hotel meeting room or even internet café. The need for real life social networking is, in fact, increasing the number of venues now available to host events of all kinds from weddings and conferences to festivals and trade fairs.

Independent research commissioned by award winning Marketing & PR agency Wyndham-Leigh last year found that 46% of marketers polled expect events to play a greater role in their communication strategies in the future with 61% saying that they will allocate more budget to events in the next 12 months. Coupled with Birmingham Midshires’ summer YouGov survey on the UK populations’ dream jobs, which found that becoming an Event Organiser topped Ant and Dec’s job and even Amy Winehouse’s, (5th behind author, sports personality, pilot and astronaut), it is clear that the sector is not simply held in high regard on marketers’ 2008 strategy sheets, but is also embedded positively within the mindsets of current popular culture.