Rallye Sunseeker - Marketing

Hi again, today I’m going to go briefly over the marketing conducted by the Rallye Suneeker. I will aim to keep text to a minimum and give as many examples as possible! I’m going to finish up by giving a quick comparison between the marketing of Rallye Sunseeker and Cisco Live, I will identify the differences in their visible marketing and put forward some opinions on why these are.

First of all I will show some of the similar marketing techniques that the Rally has shown to Cisco:

Such as…… Twitter!

One of their most used mediums for marketing is Twitter, to date they have posted 748 tweets to their 541 followers. One interesting trait that they have taken up is to follow back anyone who follows their page, such as me!

I think this is an interesting example of the ‘Feedback’ stage of the communications process model in action. Rallye Sunseeker want to know what sort of people are following them, so what better way than to monitor their followers everyday use of Twitter, something that many people use to voice their opinions on all aspects of their day to day life. This could also be effective because by following people who have already shown an active interest in the Rally they know they are monitoring the correct audience for their event.

Media

Recently I utilised Google’s ‘Alerts’ feature to follow any news found on the Internet about Rallye Sunseeker, I chose to receive the emails as soon as the news was posted in an effort to see how often it is being reported on. The results were very positive with 28 emails being sent to me in the space of 9 Days, many of these emails contained more than one piece of news. This shows that as well as marketing directly to their target audience they are taking part in promotional activities and liaising with the media to boost their image.

A screenshot of all the email's I received regarding Rallye Sunseekers media activity 

'Sponsors and Friends' 

Other areas that we see the Sunseeker Rallye appear are through almost all of their ‘Sponsors and Friends’ websites, in the advertising section of their website they dedicate a page to this with an image and link each.

From looking at these stakeholders we can see they are varied and cover all different sectors. For example ranging from ‘Premier Foods’ to ‘Spearmint Rhino’, one thing they all have in common is that they are almost all local or in some way associated with the Bournemouth/Poole area.

Although I have not been able to travel down this year in the past I have also seen posters advertising the Rallye in the local area, these were in the High Street and on lampposts. This twined with the local sponsors and friends I think shows how the Rallye tries to bring the community together, I think it plays on the fact that it is bringing big rally names to a local area and uses it as a selling point to encourage locals to attend.

I think from the small amount of research I have shown today that we can fairly say that the advertising of the Rallye Sunseeker and Cisco Live are very different, yet very similar. It is obvious that Rallye Sunseeker advertise to the public and Cisco Live advertise to Business, this leads to different paths of marketing and but ultimately the same goal, to gain interest and sales of their product, which in this case is the event.

In my next post I am going to talk through the differences in Business to Business and Business to Consumer marketing, and demonstrate some examples of where this can be seen in my two events, for now I will leave you in peace……

Cisco Live - Marketing

Just a quick update this time on where I have seen Cisco Live Marketing, I wouldn’t expect too much though… Its few and far between…..

Twitter

First up, and probably the most utilized is Twitter. You can see here that Cisco System’s have posted 2,062 tweets to date, quite a large number you may question for a company who are mainly Business to Business? After all isn’t Twitter for all us ‘youngster social addicts’ to talk rubbish on? Well that’s not what research over the past few years has shown…..

This on-going research conducted by the Pew research centre in the US shows that in the last year usage of twitter from 25-44 year olds has almost doubled, they also state that 15% of twitter users have a household income of over $75,000, maybe not just bored teens after all………

Although this research is conducted in the US one can presume that the data would be similar in the UK, this I think gives us an inkling to why Cisco would feel this is a suitable medium to market themselves. In this modern day any wage over $75,000 is more than likely to rely heavily on technology, just the sort of people Cisco Live would be interested in talking too.

Due to the huge number and variety of tweets that Cisco have posted it is hard to conclude what the vast majority’s purpose. It is fair to say though that most are aimed at gaining attention and keeping interest in the event.

Facebook

The other main way that we see Cisco Live marketing its event is via possibly the most popular social media site, Facebook. On the ‘Cisco Live Europe’ page they only have 1,294 likes, with only 34 people talking about them? For me this seems a very low number for an event who say they attract over 4000 people.

One reason I think for this could be purely the fact that Cisco is aimed business to business, as far as their potential customers go Facebook would not be the ideal medium to contact them. This I think could be due to the fact that Facebook is seen more as a ‘Leisure’ activity rather than a professional platform.

On the other hand most people’s initial reaction would say that Twitter is also a leisure activity. But for a company with 3,194 followers of their page it turns very quickly into a extremely effective way of instantly communicating with them, incorporating multimedia such as text, video and image.

Here's just one of the many examples of incorporated multimedia:

Hopefully this has given you a brief insight into Cisco Live’s main marketing too the general public, next up I will be having a look into Rallye Sunseekers Marketing and PR!

Here are some useful links to the reports and data used in this post:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2007/twitter-users-cell-phone-2011-demographics

http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219701

Target Markets

Hello again, for this second post I’m going to identify the target markets of both events, and talk about how they effect each events individual marketing communications. I will then compare the two, suggesting both similarities and differences.

I think before I go into who the target markets are, it is important to give some academic basis on why they are so important, so here we go……

In my opinion Bowden et al explain why segmenting and targeting the event market is important very well. They explain that: ‘Most events do not appeal to everybody, so it is essential to identify those consumer segments whose needs most closely match the event experience.’ (Bowden et al, p390, 2001)

From the basis that their needs most closely match the event experience, we can assume that they are more likely to want to participate than someone who’s needs do not match the event.

When segmenting the market Bowden et al explain that the market segments chosen should be:

• Measurable
• Substantial enough in size to be worth targeting
• Accessible by normal marketing communication channels
• Actionable by the event organiser, given the marketing budget and other resources.

 Now that we have a basis on which to talk about Target Markets, I think we should look into those of my chosen events.

Firstly The Rallye Sunseeker:

According to Mintel data 2% of adults aged 16+ watch rally live at the course, with 28% of them watching it on TV. Contrary to popular belief the split of Male and Female viewing is also quite close, with 34% of Males watching it on TV in the last 12 Months and 21% of Females. From this we can come to the conclusion that when marketing the Rallye Sunseeker they will be aiming towards both Males and Females, potentially even family’s. From the Rallye Sunseeker’s website we can see that Bournemouth University research has shown over 60% ABC1 audiences, reflecting the relatively wealthy population of the south.

Through Rallye Sunseeker’s website it is hard to get a feel for who they are targeting other than just ‘Rally Fans’, one particular marketing effort does help give a idea though.

rallyesunseeker ‘Vote for Miss Rallye Sunseeker 2012, Go to the facebook page http://t.co/c6o99Oos and vote for your favorite model!’

This Tweet posted today is part of an on going campaign for ‘Miss Rallye Sunseeker 2012’ . It provides a link to the Rallye’s Facebook page and encourages fans to vote for their favourite model. One would assume this marketing is aimed at a predominantly Male audience, probably of the 18-35 ‘Facebook’ Generation.

With a relatively unsuccessful attempt to pinpoint the exact target market of the Rallye Suneeker I feel it may be slightly easier to pinpoint that of Cisco Live, lets see….

Cisco Live is predominantly aimed at Business people interested in purchasing hardware or software products, although it is mainly technology based these days every industry is in need of technology so therefore all sectors are involved. Here are the figures of attendees by industry from 2011:

Due to the enormity of the Cisco company the Cicso live event attracts audiences from all over Europe, even the world. Their data shows that in 2011 the top 3 attendee nationalities were: United Kingdom 23%, Germany 11% and France 6%. This is something to take into account that Cisco live are looking to market their event to a international audience, therefore their channels of communication are likely to be different from that of the Rallye Sunseeker who are only looking on a national level.

A key point to take into account when looking into Cisco Live’s target market is that it is marketed at business’s as a whole rather than individuals. Attendance records also show 34% of companies in 2011 had 10,000+ employees, these are major business’s that need to be marketed to in a different way than the general public.

What’s the difference?

Now finally we come to talk about the difference between the two event’s target audience’s and what it will mean to their marketing plans. The main difference between the two events is that one is aimed toward members of the public for a leisure activity and the other is aimed toward professional businessmen. Rallye Sunseeker will be using conventional means of advertising to their target markets such as flyers, Internet campaigns (Facebook, Twitter etc) and advertisements in relevant magazines. On the other hand Cisco Live are much more likely to take a direct approach, they will be emailing or personally contacting large companies they know have attended and purchased in the past. They would also invite business clients and any associates they may have. Basically speaking a very ‘Word of mouth’ style of Marketing. That said they will also utilise more mass methods of marketing, such as their website, Twitter, Facebook and possibly promotional posters/flyers.

In the coming weeks I will be posting more informal bulletins of the marketing I see in relation to my events, I will then evaluate it briefly. Along with this I will continue my series of detailed posts on such area’s as Sponsorship, Advertising and Sales promotions.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope this enormous post has not been a daunting wall of text, but more an insight into what is in my opinion one of the most crucial parts of an events marketing plan, after all if you do not know who you are aiming your event towards it is very hard to contact them. I promise there will be more pictures and less text next time!

Next up, Website Design…..