I'm not exactly going to be sad now that the blog is over but i hope you have enjoyed my blog and learnt a lot!
Thank you.
Monday, 12 March 2012
Direct marketing
Definition of 'Direct Marketing'
A form of advertising in which physical marketing materials are provided to consumers in order to communicate information about a product or service. Direct marketing does not involve advertisements placed on the internet, on television or over the radio. Types of direct marketing materials include catalogs, mailers and fliers.
Investopedia explains 'Direct Marketing'
Direct marketing removes the "middle man" from the promotion process, as a company's message is provided directly to a potential customer. This type of marketing is typically used by companies with smaller advertising budgets, since they cannot afford to pay for advertisements on television and often do not have the brand recognition of larger firms.http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/direct-marketing.asp#axzz1p20VtQZY
None of my events do any direct marketing for example, catalogs, fliers etc.
Although at the national wedding show the stall holders has the opportunity to apply to get free fliers so they can hand them out themselves below is a picture of the application form to get the fliers.
This is good as it means that the stall holders can hand out to people who they know this will help there own reputation at the show.
The x factor tour does no direct marketing, from this obviously the national wedding show has the better marketing techniques for the direct marketing.
public relations
What is public relations?
‘Form of communication that is primarily directed to image building and that tends to deal with issues rather than specifically with products or services.
‘Public relations uses publicity that does not necessitate payment in a wide variety of media and is often placed as news or items of public interest.’
- Friedman J, Dictionary of Business Terms, 4th ed (2007) Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series
- Friedman J, Dictionary of Business Terms, 4th ed (2007) Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series
The national wedding show
As the shows main aim is not to make a profit, it is more of to make awareness of the show and increase the amount of customers visiting the show. Although the national wedding show already has the customers a good way in which they have used as a way of public relations is Press coverage’s.
Stated in my one of my posts below the show has been seen in
Watch clips from How To Look Good Naked here- http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/gok-wan-presents-how-to-look-good-naked-from-the-uks-largest-wedding-show/6508688.article
By having the promotion on such a well known show as Gok Wan this can promote the show on a very positive level.
The x factor tour.
The x factor has had many things during the live show which could affect not only the popularity of the event but also the attendance of the tour. As part of the public relations research and an event would want to have the best press as possible as otherwise this could effect the shows participation. The most recent story to hit the news is Frankie Cocozza got kicked of the show for taking Cocaine. As the shows target audience is young females this is not the image in which the show wants to create.
The mop-topped rocker broke one of the shows "golden rules" by bragging about using the class A drug in front of production staff.
The afternoon Frankie 18 issued a statement apologising to mentor Gary Barlow and all the fans who voted to keep him in the show.
He Admitted Thins had got "out of control" and confessed breaking competition rules.
The mop-topped rocker broke one of the shows "golden rules" by bragging about using the class A drug in front of production staff.
The afternoon Frankie 18 issued a statement apologising to mentor Gary Barlow and all the fans who voted to keep him in the show.
He Admitted Thins had got "out of control" and confessed breaking competition rules.
He said "i'd like to apologise to Gary my fellow contestants and everyone who has voted for me, but as of today i will no longer be in the x factor
Although on the other hand sometimes by having bad press this can be good as it means you are still able to promote the show as it will be on the front pages of the news and you are able to sell more tickets. Also as the show has been going on for some time now the viewers know that there is going to be some bad stories withing the show but the good stories can usually undermine the bad ones and the amount of viewers are able to stay the same.
The graph below shows how the show is still increasing year on year and how the stories will not change the popularity of the show and tour.
Overall i believe that the x factor tour has taken most advantage of there public relations the reason for this is because although they have had some bad press over the 7 years of showing they have made the best of what has happened they have made every bad story which has been leaked into a positive marketing technique. for example, when Frankie Cocozza got kicked out of the show the stories made it out that the x factor had nothing to do with it and as soon as they heard they kicked him of the show straight away. The advertising they did after the story was to ensure that there target audience (Young females) would still watch it and there parents would still want them to watch it and attend the show. I believe the x factor make the most of any promotion they get, which is what an event selling tickets needs to do as there name will still be getting out.
On the other hand the national wedding show is not as big as the x factor tour, and in there case they do not need the same promotion as the tour, the reason for this is they have a direct audience and they know who they want to sell it to, as of yet there has been no bad stories out, there has been TV coverage on Gok Wans show which increased there profile but not excessively.
Communication objectives
“In the article of “Communication Objective in Advertising”, it presents that the communication objectives in advertising can be put into the pyramid form. At the lowest level, the interactive communication objectives can create some knowledge and awareness of the products or brand to it target audiences. Then it may build up some association with and emotional connection with the products or brand through further development of the objectives. Consequently, the ultimate goals of advertising communication are creating the desire, purchase behaviour and loyalty towards the brand.”
Below is a diagram showing Schramm 97 thoughts on the different process in which the communication process goes through including
It is a Circular Model, so that communication is something circular in nature
Encoder – Who does encoding or Sends the message (message originates)
Decoder – Who receives the message
Interpreter – Person trying to understand (analyses, perceive) or interpret
There are many advantages in this process:
National wedding show
When considering this process on The national wedding show’s i believe there overall main aim is to be able to communicate with there audience as it is an exhibition. They want as many people to attend the show as possible.
I believe that there main messages are
To keep customer happy
To ensure all needs are meet
The customers have the best time possible
All stall holders are as helpful as can be
Also as the show has many of stall holders they need to ensure that they are all kept up to date and try and bring in anything new as possible as this will create more satisfying customers.
To show this you are able to sign up for a newsletter which is free, this send out new updates every week. This is good as this shows communication between the encoder to the audience and is able to get the message across.
Below is an example in how they show this.
They are also able to communicate by facebook and twitter by sending out day to day post allowing all of the audience information about new things that they are offering or new things which are happening at the event.
Below is the daily facebook and twitter pages.
Advantage of Osgood- Schramm model of communication
- Dynamic model- Shows how a situation can change
- It shows why redundancy is an essential part
- There is no separate sender and receiver, sender and receiver is the same person
- Assume communication to be circular in nature
- Feedback – central feature.
Disadvantage of Osgood- Schramm model of communication
This model does not talk about semantic noise and it assume the moment of encoding and decoding.
National wedding show
When considering this process on The national wedding show’s i believe there overall main aim is to be able to communicate with there audience as it is an exhibition. They want as many people to attend the show as possible.
I believe that there main messages are
To keep customer happy
To ensure all needs are meet
The customers have the best time possible
All stall holders are as helpful as can be
Also as the show has many of stall holders they need to ensure that they are all kept up to date and try and bring in anything new as possible as this will create more satisfying customers.
To show this you are able to sign up for a newsletter which is free, this send out new updates every week. This is good as this shows communication between the encoder to the audience and is able to get the message across.
Below is an example in how they show this.
Below is the daily facebook and twitter pages.
On the other hand the x factor tour is a much larger event and they want to be able to sell more and more tickets to this they need to be able to communicate during the promotion and advertising of the entire event. Without this they would not be able to sell tickets
I believe that the x facotor tours main message is that
To give the customer the best show possible
Meet all of the customers needs
Cater for all customer.
To do this the promoters have used facebook and twitter to keep and touch with the audience and show a strong a communication by constantly updating new things on both of the pages stated above.
Below is pictures showing there facebook and twitter account.
Overall i believe the x factor tour has used there direct mail to the best of there ability as they have got more followers and more likes on each both pages compared to the national wedding show. By having more followers there is more of a reason to send out constant tweets and updates as more people are able to look at it.
The national wedding show have created a newletter page people who sign up for this then also go on to delete there sign up for it as there is so much feeding into there emails and just blocks up there emails. this has become a less effective way for advertising.
Sales promotion- The x factor tour.
The x factor tour similar to the National wedding show uses many different techniques to promote there sale firstly below is a clip taken from the promotional marketing website and states that: “TalkTalk customers will be given the chance to win four VIP passes to the live tour. Thousands of tickets will be given away to meet the artists and watch the shows which kick off on 25 February in Manchester and tours the UK.”
Whilst researching for different sales promotion techniques in which the x factor tour does i came across Wink Bingo, this is as it says in the name a bingo site. It is offering tickets for the X Factor show in Manchester on Saturday 25th February and you could be there. All Wink want you to do is use promo-code LITTLEMIX when you deposit between £5 and £100 on their site.
This is good as it means that the target audience has been increased as all the average age for people who use bingo sites is
18 – 24 years: 13.75%
25 – 34 years: 15.96%
35 – 49 years: 25.26%
50 – 54 years: 5.82%
55 – 64 years: 6.66%
65 years+: 2.96%
25 – 34 years: 15.96%
35 – 49 years: 25.26%
50 – 54 years: 5.82%
55 – 64 years: 6.66%
65 years+: 2.96%
35-45 usually at that age have families, this is effective as the will be more people wishing to buy tickets and this promotion will be seen and they will try to get there whole family to go this will increase sales.
Following the success of tic tac’s The X Factor on-pack promotion last year, which grew sales by +14%, each of these top-selling Ferrero brands will feature an on-pack promotion, giving consumers the chance to win tickets to the live shows each week throughout the series, as well as tickets to The X Factor Live Tour 2012. The X Factor on-pack promotions launch from the 1st August and will run throughout The X Factor 2011 series.
By promoting the tour on something as popular as tic tac’s this is great for the tour as more and more people will see the promotion. Also the fact that more popular sweet/ chocolate brands want to get involved means that the x factor tour is being promoted to a wider audience and this will increase the target audience.
Overall out of the two events i believe the national wedding show does a better job in enticing there audience with incentives to attend there show they have 25 different competitions all linked to there main target audience, which will make them want to join the competition more. The x factor show however promotes themselves on a wider range of products this does have its advantages for example there name is spread over a wider range which can entice more people. On the other hand its not all linked to the product or sponsor itself, this can be seen as a disadvantage whereas the national wedding show have got all there sales promotion linked to there product which is the show.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Sales promotion the national wedding show
What is sales promotion?
Sales promotion is the process of persuading a potential customer to buy the product. Sales promotion is designed to be used as a short-term tactic to boost sales – it is not really designed to build long-term customer loyalty.
Some sales promotions are aimed at consumers. Others are targeted at intermediaries (such as agents and wholesalers) or at the firm’s sales force
There are many different ways in which organisations use to help them boost it.
- · Offers
- · Discounts
- · Free sales
- · Buy one get one free
- · Competitions
- · Incentives
The national wedding shows uses many differnt techniques to ensure that they can maximise there sales promtions. Firstly:
Competitions.
Competitions are a good way in getting the ucstomer interested in what you are trying to sell. The national wedding show as included the sales promotion on there website, as said before the website is a good way to include ll the information about your event. A benefit of doing this is that as you already have a website it is free for them to put this on.
Competions are a very good incentive because however big or small the prize is the fact that you may win something always gets a customer excited.
Some of the prizes in which you could win include:
There are 25 competitions altogether which have been stated on the website. Below is the website with them all on.
Saving money
The National Wedding show uses another good techinque which is saving money if you get in quick. This includes:
- · The National Wedding Show are offering a limited number of exclusive VIP tickets on sale in advance for £35 ensuring you plan your perfect day in style!
- · Included in the VIP Ticket offer;
- · VIP Glossy Box packed full of treats
- · Free glass of Freixenet bubbly to make a toast to your future happiness
- · Relax away from the hustle and bustle of the show in the comfort of the exclusive VIP lounge.
- · Benefit from reserved seating at the show stopping catwalk – ensuring you have the best seat in the house!*
- · Whisk yourself to the front of the queue through the fast track entrance – saving precious time to shop the show
- · PLUS all standard ticket benefits - full access to over 250 exhibitors and a host of live features.
This is appealing to many people as they feel they are getting a great deal. They also use the advanced booking technique, when tickets are purchased in advance, there is a discount from on the day tickets.
This is great for the National Wedding Show as people will feel compelled to buy tickets online and save some money. This can also just bring awareness to the show. Also as statistically people who attend the national wedding show also go with one or more people there is excitment on making sure that all who are participating the show will receive one
Advertising two- X factor tour
Twitter/Facebook
As said before facebook has become the world’s biggest social network. As the X factor has the target audience of young females ranging from ages 13 up, facebook is a great way to keep there audience updates and advertise there tour. This is a very effective way as it increases the amount of tickets bought before the show.
Another social media technique used is Twitter. Twitter has recently been on TV because of how much people love it. Everyone, including celebrities and television personalities are tweeting and posting information about what they are doing on their Twitter accounts. In Twitter, you just have to create an account and find followers. If you start to follow someone (even if you do not know that person) he/she will start following you as well. This way that person would be informed about any updates you make. At the same time your marketing purpose would be fulfilled. It is definitely one of the fastest ways of connecting to a larger audience isn’t it? And think it is for free.
This has become an effective way as it is quick and easy for the x factor tour to keep updating and letting people know about there event this will increase there sales of tickets.
Youtube advertising
The link below has been taken from youtube. As the xfactor is so well known by having a simply youtube clip advertising the event this can be a great way to bring in customers. Although this may not always be as effective as some people think, the reason for this is to enable your audience to view the clip you would need to type in the relevant information. Below the clip is the amount of views in which this clip has had, it is a minimal number of 387. Considering that there facebook account has 4,641,019 likes and twitter has 779,657 followers this is clearly not the most effective way of promoting the tour.
Official website
As said in my last post the official website is basically the main way of getting information out to the public and the main advertising technique. If any problems they supply a contact email and anything else you may need eg any other information.
X factor can improve on there official website as the tour does not have its own site which people may find either confusing or they may feel that it is not legit and do not want to buy tickets from them as they feel they may be taking there money.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Advertising one- national wedding show
What is advertising?
According to knowthis.com “Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people.”
There are many different ways in which the national Wedding show have used to advertise the show. All these different advertisement methods are there to promote the event in which is happening so people are aware of the show and will attend.
Billboards
This is a picture i took when walking through the London underground there are many located on the escalators going up and down from the underground. This picture shown on the left is a large poster located in the underground. This is effective as it allows a wider audience to see the poster on a day to day basis this can create more income into the show. Advertising in this unique environment not only allows advertisers to broadcast their message to everyone, it also offers a unique level of consumer engagement.
With an average of 3 minutes waiting time on platforms, commuters have plenty of time to read, consider and take in your message.
87% of consumers welcome tube advertising as it provides a welcome distraction during there journey.
All in all, the positive relationship consumers have with Tube advertising leads them to act on it. Our research shows that 79% of commuters have been somewhere, bought something or looked something up as a direct result of tube advertising.
A great way for brides to find out about the show if not already no about it is through magazines. The show is promoted in many of the bridal magazines for example, Confetti which is a bridal magazine; this is promoting the national wedding show. By having an advertisement in a magazine this promotes to there main target audience... Brides.
This is effective as this will increase the awareness of the show and increase the amount of income.
Facebook
Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.
They had 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011. It has become one of the most creative ways for businesses to promote themselves.Shown below is how many people have liked the page, but this doesn’t mean this can be accounted for the amount of views customers have had.
The national wedding shows facebook is constantly being updated with new and exciting things which are happening.
The main reason for promoting on facebook is facebook is branded as the largest social network in the world and is a great way of simply advertising and getting the event out there.
Official Website
The website is the main way of getting the advertising out as all the information for the event is on there. Including everything from when the show is what the show is and all the information about the stalls. Having a website as a way of promoting is very effective as it’s your own site and you can out anything you like to try and bring in more customers and raise awareness of the show which will increase the income coming into the show.
All events use this as a way of promoting to the customers.
TV coverage
Not all events have the opportunity to promote themselves in such an effective way like the television. The National Wedding Show has been featured on The Apprentice, How To Look Good Naked, Ten Years Younger, Cherry Gets Married and Wedding TV - this has raised the profile of the show, expanded there visitor awareness and provided coverage that money simply cant buy.Watch clips from How To Look Good Naked here- http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/gok-wan-presents-how-to-look-good-naked-from-the-uks-largest-wedding-show/6508688.article
Watch the London show featured on Wedding TV here- http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/story.aspx?storyCode=6509388&preview=1&hash=49D03F0C1B9567F03BB1FB09B1FE2F28
Watch the Birmingham show featured on Wedding TV here- http://www.nationalweddingshow.co.uk/story.aspx?storyCode=6509387&preview=1&hash=50CBF46B5B2B6E519F9A174A06929788
This is an effective way as it means that not only are you promoting to your target audience you are essentially promoting to millions of viewers.
Strong and Weak theory of advertising...
The strong and weak theory is used a lot in the world advertising.
Strong...
According to Simon Broadbent and Leo Burnett the “strong” theory assumes that advertisement influences people strongly because it is able to persuade the customer to buy the advertised brand.
There are several reasons why advertising is such an important part of many marketers promotional mixes (Belch 2001) believes because advertising can affect the degrees of change in the attitudes, knowledge, beliefs and behaviours of the audiences. Therefore this theory holds that advertising can persuade someone to buy a product that have never bought before (Fill 2003) believes it can accomplish repeating long term buying behaviour.
According to Pickton (2005) we can summarize that advertising is a strong promotional element which works by:
- Persuading people to buy
- Creating and building brands,
- Differentia ting between brands and
- Increasing sales
- Persuading people to buy
- Creating and building brands,
- Differentia ting between brands and
- Increasing sales
Weak...
While the “weak” theory insists that advertisement can at most provoke a purchase, but it is not a decisive factor in the customer’s choice.
The most notable writer who has got arguments about this theory is “Ehrenberg who believes that a consumer’s pattern of brand purchases is driven more by habit than by exposure to promotional messages” Fill (2003) believes Due to this fact Ehrenberg suggested a framework which is the awareness-trial-reinforcement (ATR) framework. Awareness is necessary before any buying made and the period between the awareness and the action will be very short or very long term (Fill 2003) After this a very few people convinced to try the product and this can be effected by retail availability, advertising, word of mouth or personal selling. And the following stage of this framework is reinforcement which follows to provide awareness and reassurance to help the audience to repeat the thinking and behaviour and placed the product for the occasional buying. In this framework advertising’s role is to cause brand familiarity and provide identification (Ehrenberg, 1997) so according to Ehrenberg advertising just provides more power on the consumers habits and make them to choose and buy the brand between the other brands already exists in their minds.
Sponsorship
What is sponsorship?
When an event or company has a Sponsorship it means the sponsor is supporting an event, activity or organisation by providing money or other resources that is of value to the sponsored event. This is usually in return for advertising space at the event or as part of the publicity for the event. According to Guy Masterman who is a key speaker in the event industry and has also come up with many ideas suggests that sponsorship is:
“mutually beneficial arrangement that consists of the provision of resources of funds, goods and/or services ... in return for a set of rights that can be used in communications activity, for the achievements of objectives for commercial gain.”
Why do you have sponsors?
· Increases amount of promotion and advertising.
By having a sponsor your company has more of an opportunity to increase your name getting out. For example, Samsung sponsor Chelsea football club. There name has become the main logo for the football club and every time you think of Chelsea you associate them with Samsung. This is good as it allows Samsung to have a good name and is also brand on there tops and around the stadium.
· More word of mouth more income
One of the main reasons why companies and events have sponsors is that it will automatically increase the amount of income the business will be seeing. For example by allowing your name be spread around more people will hear about you and be interested in you, which inevitably by the end of it you will have an increase in income in your business/event.
· Reliable (gives a better name)
If you are sponsored by a reliable/responsible company you will immediately be associated as the same. However a down side to this is that if something bad happens to the sponsor your company/event will be shot down the same way. For example, Tiger Woods’s £7million-a-year contract with Gillette was in jeopardy after the company axed him from its advertising campaigns following allegations he has had a string of extra-marital affairs. This can have a very bad effect on the company/ event.
· Target specific audience.
A positive effect in which sponsorship can have on the company is if they choose the right sponsor they have the opportunity to be able to focus on there targeting audience. For example it would make no sense to promote the National weddings show in a children magazine top of the pops as it you not be seen.
In conclusion Masterman summarises various authorities on this and concludes that whether the Return of Investment is achievable depends on the sponsorship being: Planned to align with objectives, Accountable.
Miles, G & McDonald, M (1999) Sport Marketing: Managing the Exchange Process, London: Jones and Bartlett
Matching a sponsor with the characteristics of the sponsorship vehicle was critical for its success. Not only would a good match enhance the donor’s brand – but a bad one would damage it. Any incongruity between the sponsor’s message and the attributes of the sponsorship vehicle would be confusing to target audiences.
The national Wedding show.
After researching for sponsorship on the national wedding show I have come to the conclusion that they do not have any. I believe the main reason for this is because as it is an exhibition, each of the stalls will have there own sponsor and the main show its self will not need any. The expenses of hiring out the venue will be made back as a result of all the different stalls that are required to pay a fee for them to be able to stay there. Although they do not have any sponsors.... that I no of, they have created many different ways of promoting themselves effectively this is to in order them to get 60,000 customers a year.
Negative effects.
As the national wedding show does not seem to have a sponsor this can be seen to have a negative effect on the show as.
· There advertising will need to be done all by the show and they can not get advertising from other companies.
· By not having a sponsor this may lead to less customers coming as they may be unaware of the reliability of the show.
Positive effects.
On the other hand by not having any sponsors this can also mean a good thing.
· As stated above the show it is not out to make a profit it’s the stalls that want to make a profit, which means that they do not need a sponsor.
· It can create a bad fit in terms of image and characteristics.
· Sponsorship clutter too many messages.
The Xfactor tour.
The Xfactor tour is sponsored by Talk talk which is a very reliable mobile phone company; they have been there sponsor for them for since 2009.Negative effects.
· As Talk Talk is a very well known brand if they do something bad the tour will be immediately affected by the sponsor, this could lead to a decrease in the amount of customers attending the tour.
Positive effects.
· Talk talk have a very wide audience which allows the xfactor tour to be promoted to a much larger audience which again will create more of an income into the tour.
· The sponsorship strap line echoes ITV's own channel identity for ITV1, ‘the brighter side'. This again increases the amount of people who will see the tour advertised.
Below is a link to a clip taken from youtube from one of the adverts used on the Xfactor show.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)