Event marketing, at least right now, seems to be the wave of the future, the newest trend in ways to get products into the hands of people and to help someone (or some business) to do better than their competition in getting their products (and services) into the homes of the people of this great land (and, in some cases, in the homes of other people in other countries!).
Now, this is a pretty big departure from what seems to be the name of the marketing game today, namely the idea of saturation of the message. You see, it seems that the game that most of the big companies are playing is more one of saturation. You basically put your message and your ads out there as much as you can, as hard as you can, to the point that the customer (or, rather, the desired customer) cannot ignore it, to the point that it drives them to your business and they decide to purchase whatever it is that you have to offer. It’s the equivalent, essentially, of going to the trouble of making sure that everything that someone is going to see in a day has your logo on it in some way, urging them to buy more. If you saw the Lego movie (highly recommended), it basically is the way that the ‘Octan’ corporation did its marketing.
Now, a lot of people aren’t super aware of what event marketing is, and rather than outright explain it, as if I was running some sort of marketing class at a college or maybe a conference being held in some hotel conference room, I’m just going to give you some great examples of businesses that have done event marketing right.
1. Starbucks
I have never found a business that is so good at giving people so delicious a drink as Starbucks, and honestly, they also seem to have a good idea of what they’re doing when it comes to event marketing. When I was in college, I went to a small college near a much bigger college, and we would often go to events at the bigger college about eight miles away form our smaller college. While there, we would find things being given out from all sorts of businesses. I got free burritos, free sandwiches, free sodas, free anything you can think of, and all at various events. But no one was there as often as Starbucks.
And really, that makes sense. Yeah, college kids love to have their fast food and their sandwiches and whatnot, but there is nothing that more college kids are using to help them stay awake and get things done as often as they’re using coffee. This was way better for them than a trade show booth at some dusty meeting somewhere.
2. Rockstar Energy Drinks
Going to be continuing with my time in college, but I’ve seen it at all sort of events in college towns since the years that I left the old alma mater behind. You see, college kids are one of the major consumers of things like energy drinks and basically anything that will help you to both stay awake and focus (allegedly, any how. Personally, I never found sugar and caffeine to be all that useful when it came to focus, but that’s just me). Knowing this, Rockstar drinks were free at all sorts of college events, getting kids hooked an pumped, and doing their best to help inspire those kids to buy the drinks later on.
3. Red Bull
Red Bull has, literally, hands down, some of the best trade show exhibit booths that I have ever seen, and they seem to be at any show you go to. However, when they were staring out, they used, you guessed it, event marketing.
They first got big in the southwest, where they would take free (full-sized) samples of Red Bull to various events and, with the help of some very beautiful booth babes, they would give out a lot of free Red Bull. We can pretend otherwise, but the media knows sex sells, and the more gorgeous your people handing out the drinks, the more likely you are to see a lot of people pick it up, and eventually, those people, ideally, will be buying your product.
If you’re looking for a way to make money and to expand the customer base for your product, here are just three businesses that have already done so. Event marketing is a winning idea, when done right, and you can benefit from it too.