Everyones going to be there

1
Everyones going to be there

• Marketing Events in a Post-Secondary Environment
• Presented by Drew Dudley
• Coordinator of Campus Life and Leadership
  Development

2
The three objectives of marketing your event

• MAKE PEOPLE TALK ABOUT YOUR EVENT.
• Make people want to go to your event.
• Make people aware your event is taking place.

3
Which need to be in place to begin marketing?

• Name of the event
• Type of event
• Location of the event
• Agenda/schedule for the event
• Ticket prices for the event

4
AnswerNone of them.
5
An idea.
6
Who should polish your idea?

• The Principals
• People you like, people you trust, people you
  have worked with before.
• These will be the people who are the driving
  force behind making sure the event happens. They
  will be the ones doing the majority of the work.
• Usually a pretty small group.

7
Who should polish your idea?

• The Principals
• Who is our audience?
• What are our motivations to do this?
• What purpose is this going to serve?
• How do we think the event should be structured?
  (a VERY rough outline of what kind of event is
  it, where will it be held, what are we going to
  do to make it interesting and fun?)
• Is there a need for this event?/Is there a demand
  for this event?
• DONT LIE TO YOURSELF ABOUT THE ANSWERS.

8
Who should polish your idea?

• The Audience
• People who are examples of the people you hope
  will come to the event.
• These groups should be very small (3-4 at the
  most)
• Make sure some of them do not hold official
  leadership positions.
• You must be genuine, you must listen, and you
  must be willing to adjust your original
  conceptions.

9
Who should polish your idea?

• People of Influence
• Opinion leaders on campus.
• Who they are differs from campus-to-campus.
• Which ones are going to be important to you
  differs from event-to-event.
• Can be members of student government, captains of
  teams, executives of clubs and residences.
• Important to recognize that people need not have
  a title to be a person of influence, and that not
  all people with a title are well-liked and
  influential.

10
Who should polish your idea?

• People of Influence
• There are two strategies to employ
• Identify what communications networks already
  exist on the campus, and bring into the fold the
  people that control them.
• Identify the real leaders on campus, and get
  their buy in.

11
Why bother getting this input?

• The more perspectives applied to anything, the
  stronger the end result is Many hands make
  light workbut many minds make great work.
• To create psychic ownership
• Well.you could always do X, Y and Z..and you
  could add X, Y, and Z, and you could ask X, Y and
  Z to do X, Y, and Z.

12
Why bother getting this input?

• The more perspectives applied to anything, the
  stronger the end result is Many hands make
  light workbut many minds make great work.
• To create psychic ownership
• Well.we could always do X, Y and Z..and we
  could add X, Y, and Z, and we could ask X, Y and
  Z to do X, Y, and Z.

13
What you want to occur

• Generic Student 1 walking down hallsees
  poster/banner/goat with sign on it. Turns to
  friend and says
• Hey, have you heard about this thing?
• You want Generic student 2 to respond with the
  greatest lie in all of student social life. All
  of your marketing needs to be aimed at having
  this line spoken

14
(No Transcript)
15
Yeah.I hear that EVERYONE is going.
16
Is there a need?Is there a demand?
17
There IS a need.There IS a demand.

• Focus of your materials
• WHAT the event is
• Polish Session Message
• Youre making things the way they SHOULD be.

18
There ISNT a need.There IS a demand.

• Focus of your materials
• WHAT the event is
• Polish Session Message
• FINALLY someone is going to step up and give
  everyone what they want.

19
There IS a need.There ISNT a demand.

• Focus of your materials
• Two stages of materials
• First stage what, why and possibly
  finally.
• Second stage what
• Polish Session Message
• Dont you think

20
There ISNT a need.There ISNT a demand.

• Focus of your materials
• Explaining the concept.
• Polish Session Message
• Wouldnt it be cool if.

21
Critical Pieces of a Successful Marketing Campaign

• Adequate lead time
• Solicitation of ideas from a large and
  strategically selected group of people
• Get symbolic on their a!
• Hit em in waves
• Shape up a bit! - Avoid always advertising with
  the eight by eleven
• Embrace diversity from tabletalkers to stamps,
  surprise screens to random goats fight poster
  domination!
• When you do post, be peculiar.

22
Consistent, Small, Weekly Events

• Brand the repetitive events
• First wave marketing should be on the brand, not
  the content of the events
• Establish central marketing spots for the brand.
• Market the content as you would any event, but
  ensure the brand is present
• Recruit teams for promotion, and if possible,
  planning

23
Every piece of marketing, no matter what it is,
should remind the viewer of another different
piece of marketing, and the overall campaign must
succeed in creating enough viral knowledge
about the event that your marketing materials
remind the viewer of conversations theyve had
about the event. Your job is to make the
conversations happen!
24
Important to remember

• As a result of this process you will have to deal
  with people who did not do as much work as you
  did taking more credit than they deserve when an
  event is successful.
• You have to learn to both deal with this and
  embrace it. Allowing people to do this makes it
  more likely theyll jump on board with your next
  event.

25
Important to remember

• If youre in event planning to get popular or to
  get creditdont bother. Theres too much work
  to make it worthwhile.
• Remember, the most important thing is a
  successful event that serves a purpose. Do not
  get caught up in whos going to get credit.
• When problems arise, focus on solving them, NOT
  what caused them. Do that afterwards.

26
Important to remember

• What you work on, and how you work on it, may be
  having an enormous influence on someone without
  you knowing it. Remember that when you cant
  remember why you got yourself into this.
• Its all going to be okay in the end.if its not
  okay..its not the end.