Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote Events, Festivals, Conventions, and Expositions

to the right desk. The message should be targeted as pre-

cisely as possible to the party most interested. For example,

if your message is:

■Finance: financial editor/finance desk

■Sports/recreation: sports editor

■Fashions: style section, fashion editor

■Business: business editor/consumer news

■Food: food section editor

■Entertainment: entertainment section/reviewers

In other words, the more specifically the target may be sighted,

the more enhanced will be the chance that the communication

will be greeted by a receptive media representative. With this in

mind, your allies and supporters in the market locale (discussed

in item 1 above) may help you in making the right contact at

the right time. Ask for and get permission to use their names as

references.

1. Send a personal letter, perhaps with a press release, to the
   proper media contacts, illustrating the mission and the mes-
   sage of the corporate event, and alert them that you will be
   calling to offer additional information and answer ques-
   tions. This further creates awareness and is a considerate
   business practice. A “cold call” often is not an effective
   method of establishing a relationship with media represen-
   tatives unless your message is truly “hot” and of commu-
   nity interest. If the message is sufficiently compelling, the
   marketer will often get an uninitiated phone call from the
   news editor or a reporter assigned to follow up on the story.


2. Maintain the contacts after the coverage. If the event is re-
   ported on the local newscast, or coverage has appeared in
   the print media, or local merchants and franchisees have
   distributed materials and posted signage in their windows,
   let them know the importance of this to the corporation.
   While they may not be marketing targets at future events,
   they probably know people who are. They may well become
   additional allies in the effort to key media players and max-
   imize new relationships.

The marketer will be practicing the impersonal disciplines of

the profession, such as analyzing the costs of urban/suburban cov-

erage, the validity of discounts and coupons, and return on in-

146 Chapter 6 Marketing Corporate Meetings, Products, Services, and Events