To Theme or Brand an Event, That is the Question

Welcome to the Experiential Event Marketing blog for California’s most strategically biased event planning, event marketing, sponsorship sales, exhibit sales, and event marketing agency, serving Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and all 50 United States. Partner with a client centric B2B Market Agency that puts skin in the game… from strategic Telemarketing Services to Experiential Event Marketing.

This week’s topic came by way of a Meetings and Conventions magazine (M&C). I was gratefully enjoying my lunch on Monday along with my March issue of M&C.  And there it was: an article on theming events. The article stated that 39% of the survey respondents agreed that theming an event enhanced an event greatly, with 40% saying somewhat and 16% stating not significantly.  This immediately provoked my strategically biased disposition:  how about the importance of branding an event?

Instead of coming up with a different theme each year, how about branding our event from the onset?  Great branded events already realize this.  You’ve probably attended an annual event that’s been going on for years that bears a title-branded name, but not necessarily a theme.  For example, the technology industry is famous for annual conferences such as the Oracle Open World, Cisco’s Networkers, and Microsoft’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), etc.

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When we create an annual event, we should name (brand) it well from the beginning.  Ideally it should include an event brand promise (tagline).  An event brand promise should be relative to the benefits we’re promising to attendees each year.  For instance, we executed an event targeted towards medical professionals.  “A Better Practice, A Better Life” was the tagline.  Can you guess the benefit of our event?  Our promise was to assist clinicians in their quest to maintain excellence as well as profitability in their practices.

Once you’ve gained the trust of your target audience and attendees, the only thing we really need to theme is relative content each year. It should be content that our attendees have come to trust and see as relative to their business needs. Usually a great branded event along with a great venue brand working together will more than adequately suffice to create a strong emotional tie with your attendees.  This emotional tie will keep them coming back every year because they’ve come to trust in the world-class experience we consistently deliver. Learn first hand what an elite Telemarketing Services team can bring to your B2B Lead Generation goals.

Stay tuned for future relevant Event Marketing, Exhibit Sales and Sponsorship Sales content.  We at SalesFish Event Marketing & Sales thank you for joining us in our commitment to unwavering strategic event planning, marketing and execution.

The Importance of Qualitative Research

Welcome to the B2B Sales Strategy blog for California’s most strategically biased marketing and advertising agency, serving Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County San Diego and all 50 United States. Partner with a client centric B2B Market Agency that puts skin in the game… from strategic Telemarketing Services to Experiential Event Marketing.

In our last discussion we spoke about the importance of an organization discovering their brand promise. Today we talk about the importance of qualitative research relating to discovering a true and believable brand promise. Let’s start by stating the obvious and not so obvious:  the pathway and foundation to any disciplined strategy, whether it’s a football game or marketing strategy, is research!  It’s also the most fundamental and often overlooked principal in marketing.

Top tier brands know the importance of research and go great lengths to understand the minds and behaviors of their target markets.  In fact, they spend millions of dollars on everything from retina scans to see how our eyes react to a certain color, to Metaphor Elicitation (how we process objects), to CAT Scans to see how our minds react to certain images.  Do you think Coca Cola came up with their pretty red cans by accident?  No.  They invested an obscene amount of money to absolutely KNOW that we pick their red can over any other on the grocery store shelf.

Since our marketing objective is to succeed, we seek to understand the minds, emotions, needs, wants and problems in need of solving from our target market.  How do we do this?  We talk to them.  Recent studies from Harvard Business Review show that a handful of qualitative (personal) surveys are far more valuable than quantitative (check boxes).  When we connect with someone one-on-one personally we’re apt to obtain unbiased answers unlike a focus group setting.  Focus groups can easily be biased by others sitting in a room.  But don’t get me wrong.  Focus groups are of great value depending on their format and who’s running the exercise.  The focus of our articles will aim specifically at executing qualitative one-on-one personal interviews.

Stay tuned!  Our next post we discuss creating a quality survey instrument to capture your target market’s needs and wants.  We at SalesFish Brand Marketing & Sales thank you for joining us in the commitment to unwavering strategic marketing.