Event Marketing Mix

The marketing of events is the process of employing the marketing mix to attain organisational goals through creating value for customers and other stakeholders. The organisation must adopt a marketing orientation which stresses the building of mutually beneficial relationships and the maintenance of competitive advantages. The market mix is divided into the 8P’s of marketing events, namely; Product, Place, Partnerships, Promotion, Programming, People, Packaging and Distribution as well as Price.

·        Product:

A product is anything that can be offered to a market fir attention, acquisition, use or consumption that would satisfy a need or want.

There are 3 level products namely, core, facilitating and augmented.

The core product is about what the consumer is really buying and is usually intangible, whereby it cannot be touched or seen, and highly subjective. It is the main benefits the buyer identifies as a personal need that will be met by the product. At the Singapore Arts Festival, consumers are buying the experience of the arts and the atmosphere.

The facilitating product is the goods and services that must be present for the consumers to use the core product, which would be the performances and plays put up just for the Singapore Arts Festival. Also the various activities like Tangle is a facilitating product,  that helps to shape the core product.

The augmented product is determined by how the product and service is being delivered to the consumer and is the total product bundle that should solve all customers’ problems. For Singapore Arts Festivals would be the customer services booth as well as the easy accessibility from the City to the Esplanade Park.

·        Place:

The place mainly consists of the physical place and hoe it is created through design and programming. This would be the Esplanade Park, and how they decorated the place with booths as well as containers and bright lights. The park was morphed from a small park to a place filled with lively music and a buzz of activity.

The place also means the distribution of event products and how they are sold to the customers. Tickets for the theatre plays in Esplanade were being sold at SISTIC, whilst the Singapore Arts Festival was a free admission.

·        Promotion – Communication:

Promotion refers to the full range of communication mix , which includes advertising, public relations and sales promotions. The communication mix requires on-going management and relationship building.

Singapore Arts Festival app

Advertising consists of 2 types, ‘below-the-‘line’ and ‘above –the-line’; namely word of mouth, brochures and flyers to advertisements, magazines and making use of the media to garner attention.

Singapore Arts Festival has used the promotional mix to create attention for the event, with posters at MRT stations, posters everywhere near town and also articles published in The Straits’ Times Not only so, SAF has encouraged visitor participation in the event by releasing an application, allowing guests to be able to redeem gifts like t-shirts, and lanyards etc.

·        People:

One of the lively mascots wandering around Singapore Arts Fesrival

The people also shapes the experience of the consumer’s enjoyment as interactions and setting between customers and staff constitutes a large part of the event experience. The hospitality received by the visitors directly shapes the experience of each individual consumer and at the Singapore Arts Festivals, the staffs was friendly and helpful, not only at the customer services booth but also the staff in the mascot costumes roaming around, entertaining the guests. The Bridge Café Project staffs were also very friendly and would engage the audience in the performance by urging them to join in as well