Blog me.

Marketing Communications:
Marketing is a mixture of advertising and promotion; they are both equal participants that stimulate the growing economy. Marketing includes the way in which you can communicate with your target audience, for example by selling products and services that relate to the needs of your customer. Some of the strategies used within marketing communications are based on the marketing mix theory created by Neil Borden.
John Egan (2007)

Marketing mix- The 4 P's

*Product
*Price
*Place
*Plan

AS WElL AS THIS DIAGRAM:

 

This is the process of which marketing is done, pretttttty fancy.

Advertisement;

Advertisement is another method of an event's integrated marketing communications; pretty much a fancy way of saying they way an event promotes themselves. There are various types of advertisement options that are causing dilemmas. Advertising for some events can be the only way in which they can communicate with their target audiences but some other events use it to make a point and support their original message. As well as this, advertisements are used to support businesses to business focused plans, this is where you the advertisements are designed to recruit or gain sponsors; these aspects of advertising can be done by using methods of direct marketing.
Guy Masterman (2004)

As well as theories on marketing, Abraham Maslow also has a theory describing the hierarchy of needs in advertising:
This type of hierarchy is used in motivational training.

Biological and Physiological needs - 

*wife/child-abuse help-lines, social security benefits, Samaritans, roadside recovery.

Safety needs - 

*home security products (alarms, etc), house an contents insurance, life assurance, schools.

Belongingness and Love needs - 

*dating and match-making services, chat-lines, clubs and membership societies, Macdonalds, 'family' themes like the old style Oxo stock cube ads.

Esteem needs - 

*cosmetics, fast cars, home improvements, furniture, fashion clothes, drinks, lifestyle products and services.

Self-Actualization needs - 

*Open University, and that's about it; little else in mainstream media because only 2% of population are self-actualizers, so they don't constitute a very big part of the mainstream market.

Abraham Maslow (1954)

This is the amount of expenditure spent from 2006-2010 within the media advertising area.
Mintel (2006)

MOVE IT! dance competition and The National Wedding Show both use various types of advertisement, but as the date creeps closer to The National Wedding Show, the advertisements seem to be more noticeable and constant as they are trying notify people about the event already. MOVE IT! dance competition began Friday, yesterday and today; having the event already going ahead gives me the chance to check the aftermath of the event!

Move it;

 











While MOVE IT! was trying to promote the event that has currently passed, they were also trying to build a brand image; the image they wanted was to become the UK's biggest dance competition and to do this, they need the best imagery and reputation. Gaining a brand image is a primary role of advertisement and it consists of setting characteristics , values, and benefits that make your organisation sound desirable and irresistible to their target audience. The way that MOVE IT! does this is by selling the image of the dance industry, they find it is full of never ending adaptation, creativity, and inspirational people, and when advertising this image, they have to reinforce this image by showing footage and imagery that promotes exactly this. Ways in which MOVE IT! has advertised their event and image:

• Booklets
• Website
• Press

Booklet:
The MOVE IT! booklet is well informed; it not only informs you about MOVE IT! but also as shown by me in this picture, it provides you with information on PERFORM 2012; don't mind my webcam, at least you can kind of work out the words.
Another job of advertisement is to create awareness, this booklet does this by notifying you on dates, times, and locations; it is also done by informing you on the certain exhibitions that are going to be there, for example: pages 6-7 show you floor plans and the A-Z exhibitor list.

Once again, webcam, not that good, but you can kind of get the picture. There is a diagram/floor plan/whatever you want to call it, of where everything is, and then it is numbered at the bottom where it explains what you will find at these numbers. Floorplans are very important at these type of exhibitions mainly because, they are so big you have no idea where to start, and just in case you get lost, which you should admit, it would happen. As well as floor plans, there are some of the most important parts of the event and that is the performances, there are pages and pages of various acts playing on each day of the event.


In other parts of this booklet, it includes advertisements of various:
- Shows in the London areas like Cirque du Soleil
- Performing arts schools like Mandy Ellen, Bird College of dance, music, and theatre performance, Cambridge Performing Arts school, SLP College Leeds, Tiffany Theatre College, Tring Park - School for the Performing Arts, PPA Summer School, Stella Mann College, Reynolds Performing Arts School, and Midlands academy of dance and drama
- Dance wear brands like Adara, BABY BALLET LTD, D.inc. Wear, Dance Direct, Evolution Branded Clothing Ltd, Mava Lou, Pineapple, and Punkyfish
- Other magazines that we could be looking at like Dancing Times, and Dance Today

AS WELL AS THIS... Bucks New University is mentioned like 545654 times in this booklet, by referring to our products and services in areas like:

• Artist/ Talent Agency/ Management
• Art Media and Marketing
• Dance Company/ Act
• Festival/ Event
• Filming & Photographic services
• Legal/ Insurance/ Financial Services
• Technical equipment

Overall this booklet has been one of the most useful things I've found on MOVE IT!, even as useful as the website! It goes to show that advertisement can be one of the most influential and informative pieces of marketing!


Website:

Websites can be one of the informative pieces of media, and this specific website tries to encounter many roles of advertising, such as creating awareness and a beneficial brand image; they are also trying to stimulate action. Advertisements try to stimulate action by encouraging certain action after looking at the website, so for example: after looking at this website, the organisation are hoping that you will either go to the event or start something dance related. Websites like to influence people and they do this by selling their product and making it seem irresistible; MOVE IT! has a way of showing their visitors of the way things could be, the schools that they could attend, the lessons the could participate in, or the shows they could watch, and with this put in perspective to the right target market, how could you resist? 'The show for dancers, teachers, students and dance enthusiasts,' that is exactly what the website portrays, a show specifically advertised for this type of market.

'Save time by doing a year’s worth of business in one day, under one roof'
MOVE IT! (2012)

Not only is the website made to focus on the customers of MOVE IT!, it also focuses on the trades and retailers that will be working at the event. The website gives you a chance to register and find a place on the floor plan to put your products, and they also try to influence you by telling you the outcome that could be possible for your clothes lines if featuring them in this event, for example: 'Do business with senior decision makers and company directors.'


Press:

The press coverage of MOVE IT! has been a mixture of good and bad. There is a section of the MOVE IT! website that talks about how to get involved if you are the press and want to write a section about the dance competition. By clicking on 'press', you will find that you have to contact Fiona McPherson who is in charge of the press control in this event. An example of bad publicity towards people who have performed at MOVE IT! is when Kimberly Wyatt performed on stage and she basically got slated for being good at dancing; the headline: 'Don't Cha wish you could move like me? Ex-Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt demonstrates her impressive dance moves.' The way I see it, if you're good at something, why not flaunt it; in a way this didn't give MOVE IT! a bad name at all, but it made Kimberly Wyatt seem a bit smug, and that will be her problem to deal with, not the events.
Daily Mail (2012)


The National Wedding Show;

It is still a few more days until The National Wedding Show and the only advertisements I have seen have been on the website; I signed up for the newsletters and received none, as well as this I didn't receive any emails or notifications about what was going on. What I can say that did inform me, was being linked to The National Wedding Show on Facebook. So, looking at this, I would say that advertising on a social media can be one of the most affective types of advertising. The different types of advertisements that The National Wedding Show have been using is:

• Social media
• Magazines
• Press coverage

Social Media: 


Social media sites are a really good way of informing people about your events, and also trying to complete your advertising objectives. Advertising objectives include:

• Determine strategic direction and emphasis and align with other
• Identify target audiences
• Determine advertising messages
• Select media 
• Determine schedules
• Determine budgets
  
  Guy Masterman (2004)

This picture shows the difference countries that are mostly on Facebook.

Econsultancy (2012)

A benefit of using social media is that you can find out the type of people that are looking at your pages and then this will help you select the right media for those people, the budgets, and the schedules that would suit them best. The way in which you can tell what people are like and what they are into is by checking the amount of tweets/likes on a social network towards the organisation, for example: this picture below captures the growth of tweets at certain times in 2011; there is then a stereotypical person that would 'like' these types of events and that is how they move on from there.

This is the growth of twitter and the 10 most tweeted moments of 2011
Econsultancy (2012) 

On Twitter and Facebook, I also started following The National Wedding Show, and it seems that the level of tweets/comments/mentions/posts are both consistent with Facebook; this then shows that there is the same amount of attention on various media sites,
but is it enough?

In my opinion I think that for the types of people who are into these events, this is the right amount of information that would get to the target audience. Depending on what age you are, you tend to look on Facebook and Twitter a lot more, or a lot less often; for people who are going to married/ be a bridesmaid/ a mother in law/ etc you wouldn't check Facebook as often as a teenager who tweets 3859723 times a day.

This is the different types of advertisements and their current prices from 2010 to 2014
Econsultancy (2012)  

Even though The National Wedding Show is not so much using other types of advertising like leaflets, and booklets etc, social media and magazines seem to be notifying people about this event perfectly fine, mainly because the people who are targeted at this event use these types of a media on a regular basis.

Press:

In various magazines in the past couple of years, The National Wedding Show has been mentioned. They like to review the fact at how they are the best at what they do, and that they will be the top for a pretty long time. 


The National Wedding Show are classed as 'the experts' and that they provide you with 'the ultimate VIP experience,' none of this would've happened unless they didn't put themselves out there and advertise themselves with the right media choices.


There are two different types of magazines and they are consumer magazines, and business/trade magazines; the magazines that are mentioning The National Wedding Show are consumer magazines, they are selling to the customer, and they run with a high level of sophistication when targeting their opportunities. 


These specialist magazines can offer readers different services that are related to them, for example the magazine 'Brides' offers brides advice of what types of dresses to buy that suit your body shape, where to get your dresses, other suppliers that will help you create an amazing wedding.
Guy Masterman (2004) 













As well as this, The National Wedding Show has been mentioned in various TV Shows like:

• The Apprentice
• How to look good naked
• Cherry's get married
• Wedding TV

Whilst monitoring the types of advertisements used within both of these events, it has shown to me that media selection is an important factor that can determine many things like:

• Cost per opportunity
• Competitive advantage
• Budgets that are appropriately matched for certain requirements
• What's more effective?
• What will help meet the events objectives?
  Guy Masterman (2004)