Signing Off

And so, I have come to the end of my journey, it has been a very enjoyable experience following these two events. It has taught me a lot about the marketing & communications industry and I hope the same for you. There shall be a report that follows on from this, keep an eye out. I have to say though out of all of this the highlight has been travelling to Wembley to see the mighty Liverpool lift The Carling!!!

Enjoy... :)

The main sponsor

Since registering for Hotelympia I have received e-mails from their main sponsor Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine. The first one that I received was quite simply offering me and anyone else who has registered to Hotelympia a 50% discounted subscription to the magazine, which is a fantastic opportunity especially for anyone that runs a business within that sector of the industry. It would bring the price down from £165 to £82, a huge saving considering you will receive 51 issues throughout the year.

Just a week later I received another e-mail about recruitment within the industry. At a first glance I presumed it was for jobseekers however once I read the e-mail in full I realised it was tailored towards employers looking to recruit professionals in the hospitality and catering sector. It boasts that the Caterer & Hotelkeeper job site has over 44,000 hits per month and therefore would be a great place to start looking for future employees. This is just another perk of signing up to the Hotelympia trade show as I would imagine businesses are not only there to potentially gain B2B relationships but also to scout any new talented young professionals involved in the industry. This is another example of an excellent way of getting everyone involved with the event and therefore making them feel part of the experience.

Unfortunately I am unable to compare this type of service or marketing with the Carling Cup final as they do not have anything similar, although for the type of event that the Cup final is I feel it would be a waste time as the only perks they can really offer are apparently free beer and razors! Haha

On that note ill leave you with a beautiful picture of Jay Rayner on the cover of Caterer & Hotelkeeper...

Cup Final Constraint

Sponsorship is a difficult one to make a comparison with due to the League Cup and its history. As I mentioned at the start of this blog the League Cup was the first major English Sporting competition to gain a Sponsor and therefore sees one major sponsor dominate the entire competition, I’m not entirely sure how much Carling or Molson Coors (the owners of the brewery where Carling is made) have paid in the past but, it is believed that the current three year deal is worth around £20 million. http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/football-league-eyes-new-league-cup-sponsor/3030460.article

Although it seems a lot of money, believe me in today’s footballing terms it’s far from it, especially over a period of three seasons. Two years ago Cristiano Ronaldo was sold by Manchester United to Real Madrid for a staggering £80 million and only just over a year ago Fernando Torres was sold for £50 million from the Mighty Liverpool to Chelsea. This is slightly different to the type of sponsorship that comes with Hotelympia though as Carling get to actually put their name to something, The Carling Cup. This will automatically make the brand instantly recognisable especially within the demographic they are clearly aiming for, men aged 25-34 are one and a half times more likely to drink Carling and when you cross reference that with the same age group that watch football the numbers come up the same. https://www.kmrsoftware.net/netquestuni2/default.aspx

There is a clear link between the two ‘activities’. To be honest all you have to do is work in a pub as I do and you can see this happening before your eyes, males come in and specifically ask for a Carling because they associate it with the sport they love so much even though it tastes like a cold sparkling pint of Evian.

However more to the point Carling or Molson Coors I believe have done a fantastic job of Sponsoring the Cup and have really exposed themselves further into a market that they already existed in. People will now continue to drink the brand for years to come because I believe they have anchored the brand into target market brains for years to come.

Sponsorship is not a donation!

Sponsors and sponsorships are a way for a company to connect themselves or to establish a relationship to a specific market segment and to make their particular brand identifiable within these markets. On the other hand on a much larger scale some businesses will invest millions of pounds into sponsorship deals whereby they are the sole provider of their particular service at an event or chain of events. For example at this year’s 2012 Olympics in London McDonalds have made a sponsorship deal to be the only fast food outlet within certain areas around the Olympic Stadium and other Olympic sites, however farfetched it may sound to put The Olympics and McDonalds in the same market sector!

It is always important to remember that ‘sponsorship is business expenditure, not a donation. You have to go about it in a business-like way’. (Eastwood, 1999)

So when you look at the sponsors for Hotelympia it is clear that they have a direct link with the hospitality and catering industry and therefore are sponsoring the event to either gain business to business (B2B) relationships or to raise awareness of their particular brand. Here is a full list of the sponsors involved in Hotelympia…

The main ‘Media Sponsors’ as they call it are Caterer & Hotelkeeper Magazine, who have incidentally sent me a few e-mails which I will go into in a later post.

I have taken these shots straight from www.Hotelympia.com so all their sponsors have their logo or brand image on the site as well as a short description of what the companies’ role is within the industry. I think this is a fantastic way of letting people know who you are as a company, like brand recognition once businesses or consumers have seen it on the website it will be in the back of their mind so that at the show they are more likely to approach your stall.

Stay tuned for more on sponsorships…

RED ALERT!!!

Add yellow, blue and green to that and you get Google alerts. I have to say that the Google alerts system is very good however I would urge anyone that is thinking about using the service to choose a weekly service rather than daily! My inbox has been peppered with emails and to be honest although entirely my fault it is rather annoying. To demonstrate this to you here’s a little snap shot of approximately 10% of all the alerts I have received…

Putting this annoyance to one side they are actually very helpful. Firstly is I just concentrate on the Carling cup, there are a considerable amount more of these than for Hotelympia. I believe this is due to the incredible popularity of football in this country. There is a total attendance in excess of 39million at regulated football matches per year. Granted there will be some return visitors i.e. season ticket holders, but that is just under two thirds of the UK’s population. A pretty substantial figure! This table is actually to show the amount of arrests made a football matches but it does show the amount of attendees at football games throughout the country and breaks it down a little more…

However the news that Google alerts are picking up for the football is totally different to the type of news for being displayed for Hotelympia. For the ‘bigger’ matches in football the Carling cup final being one of them, there are so many pre match interviews with various players, managers and pundits that hit the news every day. This is without the constantly changing environment in football such as injuries, media speculation or potential punishments due to players getting sent off. Combine all this with the popularity of the sport and it’s inevitable to get so many links through Google alerts.

When compared to the build-up to Hotelympia were the alerts are something like Raymond Blanc OBE gaining a ‘Hall of Fame’ lifetime achievement award or companies that will have a stand at the trade show announcing what latest product they will be unveiling at the event. Below is a screen shot of an email for each on the same day…

Apologise that the latter is a little small I was just try to demonstrate the difference between the two.

Just a short conclusion once again that I can definitely recommend Google alerts they can be very informative and Google does all the hard work so you don't have to. However please think carefully when you click that box as to whether you receive E-mails daily or weekly!

More PR!!

Again as with Hotelympia I’ll look at the website first to find out how they are trying to interact with people.

On the football section of the website there is just general football gossip such as transfer rumours and the latest injury news. However there is a section dedicated to the Carling Cup, once on there I have found that there are many ways in which to get involved. There is a poll which is just simply ‘Who do you think will win the Carling Cup?’ currently 89% say Liverpool which is promising from my point of view! J again like Hotelympia there is a mobile phone app so you can up to date with information on the move. There is also an incentive to sign up to the Carling website as it bares the words ‘sign up today and you could win a year’s supply of Carling’. A great incentive I suppose for people that like Carling, but for the purposes of this blog I bit the bullet and signed up.

Once you’re in, you are then invited to enter more competitions and when you click on the link you are faced with at this moment in time 6 different ones to choose from with what Carling describe as ‘cool prize’s’… 

I believe I’m right in thinking that at this moment in time, having secured a place in the Carling cup final this site is tailored towards Liverpool fans… I don’t think they need much encouragement when it comes to sharpening their razors.

‘Sign up today and win a year’s supply of Carling and somewhere to sharpen your razor blades!’

Excellent marketing skills from the Carling team, they really got to understand their target audience’s needs and catered for them in great detail!

I joke of course, couldn’t resist! Haha

So back to public relations… just like Hotelympia there is a link for people to ‘like’ the Carling Facebook page, however unlike Hotelympia this is Carlings only interaction with the social media community. Although the Facebook page has over 73,000 ‘likes’ what harm would it do to set up a twitter account, it wouldn’t cost any money and can only help by gaining more interest. I feel they have missed a trick here.

As far as public relations go that is about it for the carling website. To briefly conclude I believe that Hotelympia have done a fantastic job in involving the public through social media, apps and videos via youtube.com and that they have connected to their intended audience very well in making them aware and doing a good job in influencing peoples decisions to go to Hotelympia. Carling have done far less in terms of PR however a great deal more on the promotional side in the form of competitions, personally I am yet to be convinced by their techniques however I do feel my perception may change once I look a little more into the target markets.  

PR What is it? And how is it used?

In short PR or public relations is a way of attempting to communicate or influence the general public and their opinions, if done correctly can create an incredible amount of success for the business, product or event being publicised.

However this is just my interpretation of it so here is a definition taken from The London School of Public Relations, 

“The discipline which looks after the reputation - with the aim of earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” (The London school of public relations, 2010)

So where is this being demonstrated in the run up to Hotelympia?

Well firstly on the homepage of their website there are multiple opportunities for the public to get involved… social media strikes your eye first with links to Facebook, twitter and Flickr (which is a photo streaming website for those of you that don’t know). There are also links to LinkedIn and Youtube where there are 42 videos about and arrange of different activities going on at the event.

In case you didn’t know what LinkedIn is (as I had no idea) here is a description taken directly from their website,

“LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 120 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.”

I have chosen not to sign up to the website due to the fact I feel it will not benefit this blog or me personally at this time, but feel free to check it out for yourselves. http://www.linkedin.com/

I think that twitter has had a huge impact towards the PR of the event especially when compared to Facebook, the Hotelympia Facebook page has 333 ‘likes’ to twitters 2628 followers. There is also a substantial difference between the activity on the two pages, only 33 people have talked about the event on Facebook in comparison to 625 tweets and countless ‘@Hotelympia's’. This can only have helped the visitors and the exhibitors to interact with others that are planning on attending the exhibition.

The homepage also has a link to the Hotelympia app! I think this is fantastic not only have they tapped into the social media network but also the smart phone community. Unfortunately due to financial reasons (being a student) I am currently the owner of what is known as a brick in the phone industry and therefore could not download the app to see what at all about. #notbitteratall

When I typed Hotelympia into Google this is what came up,

As you can see there are many related websites to the exhibition with the main website at the very top. When scrolling down you will find the majority of their sponsor’s websites, a field which I will talk about at a later date. This is not surprising as it is a very specific name and I think a very good name at that! Not only for the originality but it also suggests that the exhibition is the ‘best of the best’ or ‘at the top of its game’ with the Olympian connection.

And so concludes the PR analysis of Hotelympia stay tuned to find out how the Carling Cup promote their final!

http://www.pr-school-london.com/index.php?page=what-is-pr