Buzz Gets Louder

Marketers spent an estimated $166 billion on event marketing in 2004, up a healthy 9% for the year.

Total 2004 spending wasn’t the 15% to 20% jump that agencies had expected. But signs are strong that marketers are committed to events: Companies earmarked an average 25% of their 2005 budgets for event marketing, up from 10.7% last year, according to PROMO’s survey of event marketing executives.

The big buzz in 2004 was pop-up retail and a boom in guerilla marketing.

Pop-up stores — short-term storefronts long on p.r. and promotion value — peppered U.S. cities (but especially Manhattan) as non-retail brands such as Delta Airlines and eBay “sampled” their brands, and mainstream retailers including Target Stores and JCPenney showcased special collections far from their own aisles (November PROMO).

Street teams are everywhere as more marketers adopt guerilla marketing — part of a shift away from pricey tour vehicles to more face-to-face interaction.

“It seems like 2004 was the official year the 60-second spot died,” says Linda Bennett, senior director of buzz marketing at Yahoo. “Moving forward, I think we’re going to see a new type of marketing budget, with non-traditional marketing included in ‘traditional’ marketing programs.”

The trick, as buzz marketing gets more commonplace (and corporate), is to keep the edge. That’s easier with some audiences: Pepsi-Cola Co.’s Mountain Dew funds indy skateboard filmers, then hosts screening parties at a homemade Brooklyn skate park that’s off the mainstream map. Mirrorball, New York City, handles.

Unilever’s AXE brand hosted “dark parties” for young men in 24 markets, invitation-only parties held in the pitch dark. Men entered an online or in-store sweeps to snag an invitation. Meanwhile, AXE recruited student “Ambassadors” by cruising laundromats near college campuses, tossing a black thong with the come-on “Do you want to be an AXE Ambassador?” into the dryers of likely candidates. GMR Marketing, New Berlin, WI, handled both.

Yahoo Personals’ “Billboard Dating” campaign (PROMO’s top PRO Award winner for 2004) let Julie Koehnen surf, then date Yahoo Personals members atop an L.A. billboard. The three-day campaign wooed 6.4 million unique visitors to the site during first-quarter 2004 (up 44%); subscriptions jumped 199% and profile creation zoomed 250%.

Most brands measure event results by sales volume (cited by 68% in PROMO’s event marketing survey) and purchase intent (43%). But they measure ROI by headcount (cited by 51%) and same-day sales (46%) — a disconnect brands need to address.

Watch for more hybrid off- and online campaigns as brands close the loop with attendees.

“Our watchwords are ‘before, during and after’,” says U.S. Concepts President Brad Bryen. “We use database mining and outreach to recruit the right consumers to events, then use tools at events to drive consumers back to Web sites later.”

One growing bugaboo for event marketing agencies is clients’ demands for a flashy recap DVD. Some agency execs feel pressured to spend as much as $20,000 on a recap that brand managers can show off to their bosses. Others pooh-pooh the notion of absorbing the cost: “If it’s personal motivation for the brand manager, he’ll find the money to pay for a recap DVD,” one agency president said.