Sweden Rock and Peace & Love festivals are held in Sweden every year, but the former is more successful than the latter. Differences between the two festivals from an event-marketing point of view exist. Bankruptcy halted the event for the Peace & Love festival, and its organizers concluded that there would be no festival. Nevertheless, Sweden Rock has never filed for bankruptcy and has shown continued success in Sweden’s festival industry. Nonetheless, event marketing plays an important role in ensuring that such activities are successful.
According to Marketo Inc (n.d), event marketing illustrates the process of building up a themed show and presentation to advance an item, service, cause, or company through face-to-face engagements with the clients. Events can happen online or offline and can be accommodated, facilitated, or sponsored. The advancement of these activities can happen through different inbound or outbound marketing strategies such as the ones applied by Sweden Rock. Sweden Rock uses event marketing because, in the present buyer-empowered realm, marketers have to grab every chance to build connections, produce goodwill, and win the trust of forthcoming clients. Peace & Love only sets a pitch while assessing solutions or settling on their choices. Events offer an exceptional opportunity for Sweden Rock to communicate with brands to get a firsthand idea of an organization’s focus, viewpoint, and identity. Event marketing should be an indispensable component of the demand generation mix, and a key combination of online and offline events are vital to the main concerns of Sweden Rock and Peace & Love festivals.
Events should be memorable to create influence, which relies on one’s objectives. On that note, Sweden Rock makes their events more than just an arranged commercial for their brand unlike the Peace & Love festival. Sweden Rock can make an enduring and effective impression about an organization but Peace & Love does not. By enabling individuals to experience and affiliate with one’s organization, service or product while taking an interest in an event, firms connect with prospective buyers.
As Marketo Inc (n.d) explains, there are several reasons to apply event marketing. One key purpose for a business to partake in an event is to set up and establish its brand through awareness. Sweden Rock uses, event marketing to enable it develop and define its identity firsthand. Through events, people obtain the ideal environment to share ideas in the manner to which they want to convey them. Another essential reason Sweden Rock partake in their events is to create leads, especially where there is a target demographic. The right event enables one’s Sweden Rock to connect with various prospects that gain interest in the organization as opposed to Peace & Love.
Equally, Sweden Rock provides an excellent degree of client engagement, with an opportunity for constructive individual interaction that creates loyalty. Every marketer understands that organizations can generate the greatest profits on their marketing money by retaining and advancing the present clients. The challenge is to obtain the attention of the clients despite the daily distractions. During events, Sweden Rock gets the opportunity to up sell clients by acquainting them with new items or services, but Peace & Love has not incorporated much of this. Lastly, the vast majority go to events to interact and be taught. Regardless the event individuals attend, it is crucial to bestow learning so that the audience can appreciate and that makes the organization to stand out like how Sweden Rock has.
Marketo Inc (n.d). explains that there are several ways in which events can outdo expectations. The first one is by setting practical and targeted goals in advance. The return on investment is not something Sweden Rock only considers following the event, they also make arrangements for it from the beginning. Peace & Love only confine their goals to just registration and participation models. The best goals will get into pipeline and income effect, and an organization has to develop a model in advance to comprehend the sensitivities of the event’s return on investment based on several measurements. If they do not do that, they are likely to incur losses, as was the case when Peace & Love hosted an event that was attended by the wrong individuals. The model may demonstrate that the rate of qualified participants has a tendency to be a high pointer of progress and this affectability may just be applicable for physical events, as virtual events are less expensive. The model should equally be utilized to comprehend potential situations, for example, risk. By planning for these, Sweden Rock proactively distinguishes and oversees risks in advance. The best event programs include estimation techniques ahead of time, which way to characterize what, when, and how one will measure in the preliminary planning stage to have a yardstick to work with.
It is indispensable to involve a strong theme and be innovative according to Marketo Inc (n.d). Whether one is participating in a virtual or physical event, conveying a strong look and feel generates a consistent brand involvement. With a virtual event, Peace & Love does not consider their appearance, how they portray their collateral and the kind of rivalries they might need to engage. On the other hand, Sweden Rock holds brainstorming meetings to generate new feasible ideas with the group. It also considers all the potential components for instance staffing, uniforms, marketing materials and other security. It is insufficient to just attend an event and Peace & Love should make their event a great success by creating a presence that induces an individual to stop and not simply stroll by. This is through utilizing intuitive approaches as a technique to prompt the interest of the people. Cool swag giveaways are also a good channel to entice people’s interests that Sweden Rock practices.
It is imperative to incorporate different touches in the promotion. When putting so much time and effort into arranging the event, Sweden Rock ensures that they do the promotion correctly. To create the greatest amount of registrants, they require a combination of public relations, emails, social networks and various types of paid promotions to get the greatest return on investment for their cash. By engaging with the audience early and frequently paving the way to the event, Sweden Rock gets a greater audience as the event is at the top of their minds unlike the case of Peace & Love festival. Obtaining the right number of times for email advancements for an event highly depends on the kind of event being promoted. For a bigger tradeshow, Peace & Love should send several emails beginning around a month before the event, and spaced within a week or so to enable individuals to make arrangements.
As Marketo Inc (n.d) explains, it is imperative to divide promotions to target the correct audience. Despite the promotion being used, the division is important to obtaining the right number of people enrolled for the event. Sweden Rock invests in information quality to guarantee that the lists can be reused later on. For division, Sweden Rock concentrates on demographics such as the job title, company, industry, and location. Being dynamic on social media before, during, and after events is equally critical for success. Because events are continuous, people regularly utilize social media to connect with other individuals in a live event through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. Sweden Rock also follows up with participants and non-participants as well as opposed to Peace & Love. Ensuring sufficient event follow-up can set Peace & Love apart from the crowd and make them lingering in the minds of their prospects. It is vital to arrange a follow-up methodology before the event starts through email follow-ups that should be composed and designed, proposals should be chosen, and any other call downs should be arranged.
As The Local Se (2013) explains, Peace & Love is a festival to celebrate the society, diversity, love and peace. Established in 1999, it expects to advance solidarity and respect through music and positions among the most-anticipated events in the nation. The coordinators of Sweden’s well-known Peace & Love music festival filed for bankruptcy, declaring the 2013 festival in Borlänge canceled and let down the fans of main events Depeche Mode and First Aid Kit. The coordinators expressed that they never knew the number of individuals held up, who anticipated purchasing tickets, and who wanted to experience what ought to have been summer’s greatest event. The year’s festival planned for June highlighted a lineup that incorporated Swedish sweethearts First Aid Kit and Håkan Hellström as well as UK synth-rockers Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys. Nonetheless, coordinators chose to terminate the event on what might have been the fourteenth Peace & Love festival when an anticipated ticket deals did not materialize the week after the weekend when Swedes obtain their regularly scheduled paychecks. Therefore, the music festival yearly held in the area of Dalarna was annulled because of poor ticket deals and the coordinators were experiencing serious difficulties with the business viewpoint of the festival.
Since 2007, the festival which had developed to a continuous stable of Sweden’s summer festival music prospect had sold almost 23,000 tickets in May and June 2013. Nonetheless, coordinators clarified that with just 9,000 tickets sold, they were far behind their target since they were not able to pay their working expenses and the nearer the festival comes, the more difficult it gets the chance to revamp and cancel. Coordinator Jesper Heed apologized to music fans who had anticipated, arranged, purchased tickets, and wanted to travel to Borlänge in central Sweden. While coordinators wished that Peace & Love’s spirit of hopefulness and positivity later on would continue, they declined to reveal any particular arrangements to resuscitate the festival in the future (The Local Se, 2013).
From its modest beginnings in the nineties, the Sweden Rock Festival turned into the greatest business music festival in Sweden in 2007 and 2008. The festival is a niched metal festival and has kept on having almost the same number of attendants comprising of 33,000 people since the 2010 decision to formulate the highest limit for sold tickets. From that point forward, the Peace & Love festival in Borlänge turned into the biggest festival in Sweden for quite a while, until outperformed by the AEG event Sonisphere in 2010. In 2013, the Bråvalla Festival replaced the Peace & Love festival. Bråvalla and Peace & Love were intended for the last weekend in June 2013 but it was unrealistic to run two festivals of a similar magnitude simultaneously in a limited market like Sweden even though obviously, there were other reasons why Peace & Love went bankrupt. The greatest festivals in Sweden turned out to be much bigger in the most recent years, and when Peace & Love crossed the 50,000 guest stamp in 2011, one could contend that Sweden entered another music festival worldview. Peace & Love was the initial festival to break 40,000 guests and also 50,000, and the pattern with festivals with more than 50,000 guests appears to proceed with the Bråvalla Festival in 2013 (Johansson, 2014).
As Tanna (n.d) explains, financial contentions are also normally used to clarify why regions bolster festivals. When asked about the significance of Sweden Rock to the Sölvesborg region, an administration specialist indicated the way the festival pulls in 35,000 guests from more than 50 nations which are good for business. It also expands the visibility of Sölvesborg due to the activities of the foreign journalists. Hässleholm district, home to another festival, claims that it attracts youthful and socially intrigued individuals to relocate there which eventually advances tax income.
There are several event marketing errors to avoid. The first one is going in blind without planning sufficiently. The Peace & Love festival most likely did not set appropriate prospects for the event, including preparing their staff, looking into emails, and conducting their research on the exhibitors before arriving. Events are a major investment, and Sweden Rock guarantees that everybody is proactive and they understand every detail before the actual event. Another slip-up that Peace and Festival most likely made is not knowing the number staff they required. This may include the staff being more than the number of participants. Not only does it lessen efficiency, but it also decreases the measure of physical space that one needs to hold a discussion with their prospects. On the other hand, Sweden Rocks had ample resources to vibrantly represent the organization and connect with the participants.
Peace & Love festival may have presumably overlooked having important discussions with exceptionally feasible prospects. Sweden Rock ensures that every staff member records the key points of every discussion for example on the back of a business card, a sheet of paper that can be stapled to the business card, and iPad scanners that can save discussions directly in the application. This made it simple for them to embed notes into their CRM framework for the necessary follow-up based on their discussions. Peace & Love did not make convenient due dates in 2013 yet tradeshows are costly and the cost of missing markdown due dates bit them in the wallet which hurt the most. Sweden Rock provides the early bird specials for enrollment, shipping, lodgings, A/V, and so forth. If one delays, they may end of paying twofold the cost, and it is imperative to arrange early and make a point to remain on top of all due dates.
The Peace & Love festival was not making endeavors to emerge from the crowd the way Sweden Rock does. It did not matter if Peace & Love had the most attractive event since it did not attract traffic and they could not return to the event in 2013. Sweden Rocks advances its attendance at the event through social networks, contests or games. Different exhibitors and supporters at the event try to associate with the audience and therefore Sweden Rock gives their audiences ample motivation to pursue them.
- Johansson, D. 2014, Music Festivals in Sweden – An Analysis of the Ten Largest Commercial Festivals 2000 – 2013. Available from: https://medarbetare.lnu.se/polopoly_fs/1.98239!Johansson%20D.%20(2014)%20Music%20Festivals%20in%20Sweden.pdf [Accessed 16 January 2016].
- Marketo Inc. n.d, Event Marketing. Available from: www.marketo.com/event-marketing
- Tanna, S n.d, Festival Landscape in Sweden. National Report for Festudy. Available from: http://www.livemusiksverige.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Festival-landscape-in-Sweden-National-report-for-FESTudy.pdf [Accessed 16 January 2016].
- The Local Se 2013, Bankruptcy stops music for Peace & Love festival. Available from: http://www.thelocal.se/20130528/48188 [Accessed 16 January 2016].