Events for marketing have become increasingly important in recent years, as businesses strive to create more personal and memorable experiences for their customers. While virtual communication has become ubiquitous, it lacks the face-to-face interaction and experiential qualities that events offer. In this article, we’ll explore the eclectic value-creation potential of events for marketing, and why they should be an essential part of any successful marketing campaign.
Many interviewees have highlighted the importance of events for marketing, contrasting the virtual nature of online communication with the physicality of events. Events offer a unique opportunity for customers to experience a brand in a physical way, which can create a lasting impression that online interactions often lack. As a result, events represent potentially valuable brand-consumer encounters or experiences, central to facilitating value co-creation by allowing consumers to construct relevant meanings around a brand.
Event marketing is a powerful tool for demonstrating value in use, particularly in the context of remote consumer transactions. Events offer brands an opportunity to demonstrate what their products and services are like in a physical way, allowing customers to experience them as a fantastic event that they’ll really enjoy. Such events not only afford brands the opportunity of engaging and retaining customers, but also create a sense of “brand envy” among non-customers, which can drive acquisition.
Events also facilitate interaction, dialogue and networking between stakeholders, driving brand affinity. They act as a catalyst for a series of tangential interactions, setting up opportunities for wider consumer learning and value co-creation. Furthermore, the creative potential offered by events provides opportunities for innovative event design and execution, pushing the boundaries and providing unique experiences for customers.
However, the full value-creation potential of events is often underutilized due to a strategically inept execution that fails to understand the reciprocal basis of the exchange. The dominant principle of event design must be to understand the reciprocal basis of the exchange and build the event design from that bedrock. Given the importance of “sharing the experience,” the event design must reflect both the organization’s and the attendees’ objectives.
Therefore, the success of events for marketing depends on insightful and purposive design and activation of the event space. The setting and design of the event act as a resource integrator, creating an agora for the potential of resources to be actualized. Applying the thinking of Ballantyne and Varey, the marketing event provides a space to facilitate communication between all network participants to co-create value through trust, learning, and adaptation.
In conclusion, events for marketing offer a pliable form that can be deliberately and creatively designed to leverage a range of marketing outcomes within a single event or event strategy. The potential of events for achieving objectives associated with relationship building and value co-creation is significant. With the growing acknowledgement of events as a strategic tool for value co-creation, organizations that can deliver the most innovative and memorable events will be the ones that are most likely to achieve success in their marketing campaigns.
Blog article based on the research of Philip Crowther & Leah Donlan (2011) Value-creation space: The role ofevents in a service-dominant marketing paradigm, Journal of Marketing Management, 27:13-14,1444-1463, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2011.626786To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2011.626786