As is clear from the preceding section, use of events as a marketing communication tool not only takes care of the problems associated with traditional media but also offer certain advantages because of which events are gaining importance over them. Some of these advantages are detailed below:
Events have the ability to bring together sharply defined participants since the capacity for a particular event is usually limited. A specific number of the target audience could be invited or enticed to buy tickets for a show specially created for a particular profile of the target audience.
Since the audience is actively targeted, the option of controlled reach can be exercised and ideal audiences for narrow-casting of information can be gathered. This leads to lowering of the media networking budgets and focused Communication with the specially gathered audience. The audience that has been specially invited invariably is an ideal audience.
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An event carried out professionally and cleanly is invariably a memorable experience. The word-of-mouth publicity that this generates is an advantage that lingers on a long time after the event has actually been carried out. This provides an advantage of a higher brand recall to the client.
The involvement of all the senses in experiencing the event is one of the greatest advantages that events can offer. Events can be designed such that the audience is actively involved in every part of the event and made to feel good.
Thus, events as a live media offer a certain amount of immediacy to the experience-of being there while it’s happening. For the audience, it is undoubtedly a thrilling situation.
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Live media also enables interactive communication. Live media scores over conventional advertising in terms of reach, impact and tangible immediacy of measurement.
Live media communication is a complete sensual experience as compared to a press advertisement or TV/Radio commercial. This is so because a press ad is basically a flat piece of paper and a commercial is just an audiovisual experience. The high recall value of live media communication is also a major factor.
No other media can boast of the ability to provide such massive collection of feedback instantly as events. Being a live media, it is possible to feel and deduce the reactions of the audience to the aim or objective that the event was conceived for.
The easily customizable nature of events, mean that specific traits of the local inhabitants can be incorporated in the big picture to ensure that the event is socially and culturally in tune with the local culture. Thus, the localization of events is very easy.
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The advantage in terms of post-event publicity that events can offer over and above the paid or bartered media is the benefit associated with reports of the event in the newspapers and news on the electronic media.
For such reports there is no extra cost to be borne-neither by the sponsor nor by the event organizer. This is a double edged sword because, in case the event is not up to the mark or is dogged by controversies, then, the same is also reported impartially.
The conversion of good events into television software for future use either by the sponsors for their commercials or by media houses for programming is also a unique benefit that events offer. Such software become products by themselves and can be used profitably in the future.
Apart from the above, there are some other important reasons for using events because they provide a solution to deal with the legal restrictions pertaining to marketing communication.
Cigarette, liquor, gutkha and other tobacco related products are officially banned from being advertised on the Government controlled media and hence are forced to use events with a mass base as a marketing tool. Examples include the launch of 555 cigarettes, a Benson & Hedges product.
This product launch held at the Turf Club, Mahalaxmi Race Course grounds Mumbai, involved a lot of hype and hoopla. As discussed earlier, this event other than aiding in the brand launch also provided for the first contact with the actual consumer who got to try the product free of charge, giving an instant feedback on the quality and the post-event brand recall.
Thus, it provided Benson & Hedges with an alternative media with an equal, if not a better capability to create the desired impact. In fact, for decades, liquor and cigarette manufacturers, unable to advertise through the mass media, have been sponsoring car rallies, horse races, film premieres and cricket matches to earn mileage.
The McDowells Derby and Wills Made-for-Each-Other contest represent the earliest attempts at the corporatization of commercial public events.