Event proposal final

MARK 5820 Event Management & Marketing Group Event Proposal Of Starbucks’ Online Campaign “Share Your Moments With Starcups” Table of Contents Contents Page List of tables and figures…………………………………………………………………..2 Executive summaries ……………………………………………………………………..3 Event objectives …………………………………………………………………………..4 Event management and marketing theories ……………………………………………....4 Recommendations ………………………………………………………………..……….8 Implementations ………………………………………………………………………....10 References……………………………………………………………………………..…13 Appendixes………………………………………………………………………………14 List of Tables and Figures Tables and Figures Page Table 1. Implementation Steps………………………………………………………......11 Table 2. Stakeholders’ analysis………………………………………………………….12 Figure 1. Starbucks drinkware website………………………………………………….14 Figure 2. Brand equity pyramid…………………………………………………………14 Figure 3. Starbucks’ stores distribution…………………………………………………15 Figure 4. examples of selected pictures…………………………………………………15 Executive summaries Starbucks has its very special marketing strategies in China compared with its strategies in other countries. Like Haagen-Dazs, Starbucks gives its brand more connotations by adding more intangible values. The brand became a symbol that indicates high quality of life. In this proposal, we recommend an event, called “Share Your Moment With Starcups”, which use social media as a carrier to promote company’s side products, (drinkware products) (Figure 1). This event perfectly matches company’s strategies in China in order to further enrich the brand contents and also improve customers loyalty by providing a chance for consumers to interact with the brand or with other consumers online since the social media had became a powerful marketing tool for business nowadays. Event Objectives For Starbucks, it is crucial to enhance the brand equity (Figure 1) in this stage since the brand already had a worldwide reputation, regular consumer bases and consumer loyalty. The brand should put more efforts on maintain and stabilize the relationship between brand and consumers. The objectives of the event is: Increase brand awareness Improve the consumer loyalty among the existing basis Activate the inactivate consumers Boost sales Enrich the brand content Discussion of the relevant theories to event management and marketing Event concept The theme is the most important component of an event that can clearly differentiate itself from other events. It is one of the most creative activities in event management to identify and develop a particular event theme. Theme may relate to a particular aspect of history, culture, spot, film, song, exotic location or style of food. The theme will be expressed well in appealing to all the senses. Appealing to the senses of taste, smell, tough, sound and sight can take the audience into a new world created by the event theme. Every aspect of this event should be consistent with the event theme to make the audience further involved in the environment. Reinforce a theme with the entertainment and choice of performer is the most effective way of creating and reinforcing particular type of theme (Wrathall &Gee 2013). E-marketing in social networks Electronic marketing is a mainstream and integrated part of any event marketing communication activities. The Internet and social networks can be an effective and economical tool to make an event. The Internet is increasingly used as advertising medium for events and also a means to gather market information through online research mechanisms (Bernoff & Li 2008). Because of the increasing ease and scope of communication in social media, word of mouth is more important than ever associated with consumer behavior. Word of mouth is mainly to share experience and risk, and peers’ endorsement of an event is the ultimate measure of its worth (C.A. Preston 2012). Expensive advertising in stating advantages of an event is weak in comparison to people’s talking about events with each other. While the Internet, with its access to chat spaces and social networks, allows information to spread like a virus. Due to the rise of social networking, advertising and word of mouth have become interrelated in e-marketing terms (C.A. Preston 2012). The intercommunication with words, pictures and videos in social networks has actually visualized the effect of word of mouse, which make the benefit more sensible and pervasive to audience. STP Strategy A sound marketing strategy helps the company to allocate its limited resources on areas providing the greatest opportunity. Key elements of marketing strategy are: market segmentation, targeting the appropriate market segment, positioning the product within the target market, and developing a value proposition for the target market (Wrathall &Gee 2013). • Segmentation Market segmentation is to separate the targeting specific parts of the market which will yield optimum results. It also involves narrowing the target area by identifying customer groups with interests and potential interests. Anther important role of segmentation is to recognize those market segments with most significant demographic or market characteristics (Wrathall &Gee 2013). • Targeting Targeting is to select those segments based on rules like, size, growth, and profitability of segments and capability of the company. It involves tailoring all aspects of the marketing of events to the marketing segment. • Positioning Positioning involves identifying customer needs the event may fulfill. Therefore, the event promoter should be well informed with the market niche for this event and the unique qualities appealing targeted audiences. • value proposition A customer value proposition is the sum of total benefits that the event company promises that a customer will derive from attending this event. There are two types of value propositions: price-based and value-based. The host company needs to be able to identify, anticipate and understand customer needs, because the value proposition is developed by analyzing all of these benefits and customer needs. Advertising and timing The type of advertising for this event should be consistent with the target audience, such as the choice of local media based on the geographic segmentation. Timing for advertisements varies depending on the nature and situation of events. Some advertisements should conduct in advance to inform audience to make appropriate plans for this event, while for some other events, advertising just before they start will be most effective (Wrathall &Gee 2013).. Stakeholders People and organizations that are affected by the event are known as stakeholders. The satisfaction of key stakeholders is the most important consideration in judging the success of an event. Otherwise, an amazing event in the view of audiences may be a disaster seen by sponsors due to negative and damaging publicity effects (Wrathall &Gee 2013).. Recommendations The Starbucks stores in China give consumers more high-class senses than a coffee shop’s very nature which is a place people can have decent coffee and tea or meet friends having a good afternoon time. By adding values (provide warm service, high standard shop decoration, comfortable atmosphere building etc), Starbucks itself became a symbol of a representative of the high quality of life. Starbucks has variety of products, not only the coffee and tea products, but also coffee machines and drinkware which including coffee, teacups and water bottles. In Starbucks’ stores, the drinkware section is always placed in a conspicuous location next to the counter, so customers may purchase drinkware products while they waiting in the queue. The company releases new designs that contain different contemporary elements including festival elements (Christmas Theme), season elements (Cherry flowers) etc. every 2 months. And stores in different cities have their own special designed city theme cups that are very popular. The logo on Starbucks’ drinkware products is always placed in a very eye catching spot which the brand can be easily recognized and differentiated from other cups. Even though Starbucks’ drinkware products are more expensive than the products from the same category but still a lot of people want to have their own Starbucks cups since the connotations that the brand gives to the products have far exceeded the products’ actual function. The new event could more focus on side products rather than just focus on coffee and tea products since the company have and always spent lot of efforts on promotion their main products. The Starbucks brand now is not only just selling coffee and tea but also cultivate its own culture. Social media presence is important in generating awareness of an event. By actively using social media outlets such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc., awareness can be raised to a worldwide community. Utilising the social networks to hold online campaign have two advantages: first, the event holding team can gain instant feedbacks information from audiences. Since most platforms have making comments, sharing to friends and preference click rate system, it is able to clearly show the involvement and attitudes of audiences towards this event. Additionally, the scalability and precise targeting can be achieved through online advertising. For events like community and organization culture festivals, the market segment is defined primarily by the geographic location. There is clear geographic and demographic information portfolio of online audience in social media, which make it more concisely to target audience. And the economical and convenient way of advertising on social media, make it possible to access large amounts of audience for this event. However, based on the nature of information dissemination way in social networks, bad comments of this event can also replicate themselves form host to host in an imitative process as virus-like spread. Therefore, the role of event marketer in this process is to set the ball rolling and to provide general guidance to the broad directions in which event information spreads (C.A. Preston 2012). Social media is also the place for people to share their lives with friends and to gain view points of being discussed focus among friends. Trying to cater the interests of customers, we use photo post online competition campaign to help customers create opportunities to become viewing focus. It is also try to match such kind of self-fulfilment feeling of audiences by setting the reward of this competition as the representative of the new products released by Starbucks. Being a star to represent Starbucks is so cool thing can be discussed among audiences. Implementations What? (Event content) The “Share Your Moment With Starcups” (SYMS) event is an online campaign that will hold by the Starbucks China Company. The event is about letting consumers take their own photos with Starbucks drinkware products and email those pictures to event marketing team. And event-marketing team will select pictures that consistent or match brand images then post them on Starbucks official social media website page (e.g. Renren, Weibo and Weixin). Implementation Steps Table 1 Step 1 Inform Starbucks members by sending them emails regarding to the event concept and content. Encourage them to get involved by telling them the reward. At the same time post the event on social media website page and post posters in stores. Step 2 Selecting pictures which match up with brand essence. Figure 4 Step 3 Post selected pictures online so that consumers or social media users (people who have already subscribed Starbucks’ through social media may not be their members) can give comments. At the same time, keep sending emails to members updating the event fair. Encourage celebrities and professional baristas to participate in the event to expand the influence. Step 4 Select a winner and post it on the website. Step 5 Print out the poster posted in stores. When? (Time) September to December (3 months) The reason that choosing the last quarter of the year is because considering coffee and tea are mostly hot drinks and the majority of the drinkware products are coffee and teacups. It is also important to avoid the big festivals in China for example spring festivals since people are spend more time to stay with their family or go out traveling. Who? (Stakeholders) Considering that each stakeholder will have different objectives, needs and interests: Table 2 For company It is a very good opportunity for company to know more about the consumer insights. Gathering new ideas and concepts from consumers may give hints to product development department and marketing department to track consumers’ interests (where and how they use Starbucks drinkware products). It is also a move that makes Starbucks become a part of people’s daily lives. For employees It is a good way to let employees get more involved in the process of consumer communications and build good relationships with consumers in order to increase sales. For sponsors The social media could also be the sponsors for this event. It is a good co-branding opportunities to enhance the brand equity. For celebrities Get more exposure. More topic to communicate with their fans. For consumers It is also a good chance for consumers to express their ideas and own thoughts towards their favorite brand. Consumers can also get benefits from this event by getting the reward. Where? (Media and Stores) Starbucks’ official website page on Weibo (Chinese Twitter), Renren (Chiese Facebook) and Weixin (Chinese Whatsapp). Keep updating the event news all the time. The event is going to cover 306 stores and across 19 cities in east China. Any Reward? The event team will select a winner whose picture can be a good representative of brand image or can add new meaning to brand essence. As the winner, can be rewarded to be the representative of the new products released next quarter. Winner’s picture will be printed out and posted on the drinkware section in stores. References Bernoff, J. and Li, C. 2008, Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 49 No.3, pp 36- 42 Brand equity management and tracking, viewed 30 April 2014, <http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/business-solutions/brand-equity.html> Beyond-brics, viewed 1 May 2014, <http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/12/06/starbucks-we-love-china/> Preston, C.A. and Hoyle, L.H., 2012, Event Marketing: How to successfully promote events, festivals, conventions and expositions, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, chp5, p111-136 Starbucks Corporation 2013, Drinkwair, viewed 1 May 2014, <http://www.starbucksstore.com/drinkware/drinkware,default,sc.html> Wrathall, J. and Gee, A., 2013, Event Management: theory and practice, McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd, North Ride, Chp4&5, p.98. Appendixes Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figures 4 15