If done well, events can be a marketer’s dream. At a well-planned and executed event, consumers get to touch the brand, play with it, test drive it, and ideally take steps to own it.
Or…they may come to see the brand component as intrusive, inappropriate, even annoying, and the event then undermines the consumer’s connection to the brand.
Marketers now dominate malls, county fairs, street fairs, even local concerts on small town greens. Live events, many of which include entertainment and hands-on product interaction, have become de riguer in most integrated promotional campaigns. But do events actually get consumers to buy products? Do they prompt a search for products in the time after the event? Should they be applied across all product categories? How much impact does sponsorship have on brand loyalty and purchasing behavior? Researchers have drilled into these and other questions in recent months, and they shared their findings with PROMO.
In September/October 2003, IMI International interviewed 1,749 consumers via telephone and the Internet to learn more about the impact of event and experiential marketing on consumers’ attitudes and behavior. Additional information was also gathered during the spring and summer of 2003 via its PromoTrack studies.
IMI found that in the 12 months leading up to the survey, 77% of Americans had purchased a product after “experiencing it,” “sampling it” or “trying it.” But they were hardly a homogenous group (see sidebar).
Apart from whether or not they went out of their way to “try out” products at events, the survey pool overwhelmingly selected experiences and events as the marketing method that most often prompts them to make a purchase decision. And IMI has found the pattern repeating in other locales. “The high rating given to event marketing as a purchase driver by consumers in the U.S. was echoed later in 2003 in studies across Canada and Australia — showing almost identical results,” says Don Mayo, managing director of Toronto-based IMI.
Around the same time IMI was conducting its study this past autumn, Sponsorship Research International (SRi) was running a research program for event marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide. Several of the findings were similar to those of IMI. For example, event marketing is much more powerful with young adults (with over 60% saying it influences their buying behavior) and female audiences (over 43%), with a pull that exceeds that of advertising and direct mail. And yet, SRi found that the various disciplines are most effective when they are integrated into an overarching campaign. “Advertising and direct response vehicles feed response to event marketing,” says Laura Shuler, executive VP- U.S. operations for New York City-based Jack Morton. “This is a situation where one plus one plus one equals five.”
Even with all disciplines in alignment, certain locations and product categories will demonstrate better results. According to SRi, malls, in-store events and fairs and public events were the most effective venues for an experiential marketing program, especially among those consumers aged 18-37 and among women. Regardless of age, men indicated sporting events as the places where their attention could best be grabbed — significantly more so than females (no surprise there).
Focusing on sports events, in its study, IMI asked consumers if brand sponsorship at regional events affected their purchasing “a lot,” “a little” or “not at all.” African Americans (at 68%) and Hispanics (58%) said they were particularly influenced by event sponsorships — if they attended. “To have an impact on purchasing, you have to intercept the consumer,” Mayo says.
IMI also found that sponsors of regional events, such as local team games, had a significantly greater payback in the form of favorable consumer opinion than national sponsorships. According to its findings, only one in eight consumers said they were influenced by a national sponsorship. “The impact on purchasing is greatest at the point closest to the consumer decision,” Mayo says.
And what products play best in event settings? Anything new, including products the consumers had heard of but never tried (which harks back to the integration with advertising and direct mail). Food and beverages were winners across all demographics in the SRi study. Guys enjoyed “test drives” with more complex products: computer products, cell phones — and cars. Women tended to give high marks to sampling events with clothing, household and personal care products.
Get close
One of the more surprising findings was the distaste some consumers have for the large “cattle-call” events that may typify the discipline. All the SRi respondents indicated a strong preference for smaller events of one to 25 people, and females said they were far less likely to attend a mob-scene event with more than 100 attendees. (The Gen Y select was significantly more open to larger scale events of 25 to 50 people.)
“We need to weigh intimacy against the economies of scale of large events,” Shuler says, “It’s time to question the effectiveness of merely cycling people through.” Consumers develop greater affinity for the brand when they can speak with representatives and ask questions.
Giving consumers time to find the connection is key. “To be successful, any marketing initiative must offer consumers something that is relevant and compelling, and must be effectively communicated to consumers generating awareness, comprehension, and the potential for purchasing,” Mayo says.
Winning that time can be a challenge. The mere existence of an event is not enough to influence brand loyalty — marketers have to get folks in the seats. Publicity surrounding an event may raise awareness, but not influence buying behavior. Nearly 90% of those polled by SRi said that actually participating in a live event for a brand would make them more open to the product’s ads in the future.
Consumers said they were willing to spend, on average, at most 14 minutes participating in an experiential event, although women were more willing to spend time in malls, stores and concerts, and men would stretch their time limits for programs at sporting events.
“This research confirms for us that pure sampling is less effective than a multi-dimensional setting that incorporates entertainment with touching the product,” Shuler says. “The two should be integrated, not merely adjacent.”
Are you experienced?
| By Gender: 85% of Females; 69% of Males | |
| By Age: 76% of those aged 13-24; 77% of 25-34; 84% of 35-59 | |
| By Ethnicity: 79% of Caucasians; 67% of African Americans; 59% of Hispanics | |
| By Household Income: 81% under $40k; 79% $40k-79k; 87% $80-$99k; 87% $100k+ | |
| By Number of People in Household: 78% of those with one person; 81% two persons; 85% 3 persons+ | |
| Source: IMI International PromoTrack | |
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