Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Play nicely with others! It seems that everywhere I go experts are talking about the benefits of collaboration, sharing and smart partnerships. I’ve recently attended two excellent and very different events: Webstock and an arts marketing workshop with international cultural facilitator Jerry Yoshitomi. However, a key message from both events was the value and importance of collaboration to help build your business or your audience.

One of the most recent examples of a successful collaboration in the cultural and tourism communities is the development of the Manaaki Card. The card is a discount card for tourists that includes a variety of Māori cultural activities, accommodation, arts and other wonderful tourism experiences.

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We don’t mention sport often enough on this blog. Sport is part of this Ministry’s definition of culture, and it’s obvious to say that the cultural life of many New Zealanders includes both sports and arts and other cultural activities. I’ve been enjoying a spot of snowboarding this month, as well as getting to music gigs (looking forward to Minuit this weekend).

Attending a session run by Peter Cox from SPARC at the conference Eventing the Future 2007, I was struck by the similarity of at least some of the issues for sport and the arts - having attended a seminar only weeks ago about the value of the arts and how to communicate it.  

SPARC is doing some heavy duty thinking about the value of sport. There are a couple of drivers:

• the need to provide evidence of return on investment for sports events (across events of all sizes but especially for bigger events)
• the events industry won’t move ahead unless it can be accountable and withstand a high level of scrutiny and audit
• significant competition from Asian countries bidding for events, whose governments may be less concerned with evidence for return on investment.

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I’m at Eventing the Future 2007 in Auckland – the conference run by the New Zealand Association of Event Professionals. Some interesting sessions on day one. Learnings include:

• there’s no recipe to making money from events management
• quality content can be repurposed across a range of marketing channels to get valuable media exposure – content is king
• strategic planning is essential to ensuring the successful growth and development of your event
• research into ticket buying shows that word of mouth is (still) the top way that people find out about events.

Making money

Ably facilitated by Peter Cox from SPARC, a panel discussion of representatives from events management companies kindly shared their business acumen. We heard that:

• The secret to successful business partnerships is working with like-minded people.
• It’s hard to grow a business – to take that step of employing staff to deliver events so you can focus on the business development side.
• Money can be made from events that are low cost to run but that have a high perceived value (so you can charge a good rate).
• Big events are not necessarily the most profitable – small events can become more ‘stable’ (in terms of sponsorship and supplier relationships, for example) a lot easier.
• Recurring events allow you to get efficient systems in place, but it’s not just a matter of the same event, different dates – a recurring event needs ‘new fizz’ every time.
• Developing strong brands is very important – sponsors will want to be associated with the story behind the event.

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The purpose of branding is to add value to your bottom line. A strong brand lets you differentiate your offering from others, it lets you charge a premium for your service, and it builds customer loyalty. Julian Moore, who looks after New Zealand’s brand for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, says his wife is skeptical about the importance of brands. He quipped that next time he was travelling, he’d bring her back some perfume from Poland: aah, the romance of Warsaw. So he’s got a point about the power of country brands!

This blog has been posting about cultural tourism in the last couple of weeks, and while on the subject, it’s worth checking out the country brand index by FutureBrand, a global brand consultancy. They’ve ranked country brands (based on research, expert opinions and relevant statistics):

1. Australia
2. USA
3. Italy
4. France
5. Greece
6. UK
7. Spain
8. New Zealand
9. Maldives
10. India

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I’ve just attended the Maori Tourism Conference in Taupo. What a great vibe at this conference, with plenty of evidence of entrepreneurial activities taking place all around the country. I’ll probably put up a couple of posts on different topics, but first …

Kylie Ruwhiu-Karawana from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) talked about international markets and the opportunities for Maori tourism. Trends in tourism include:

• low-cost airlines are making short regional breaks increasingly popular (meaning travelers are less inclined to make the long haul flight to NZ - however, this development is good for visitors from Australia)
• travelers are looking for experiences, not just destinations
• other markets are now promoting their environment to the global marketplace, using marketing techniques similar to ours – some of these destinations are closer to travelers than we are
• the internet is a great information gathering and booking tool – we have to become more web savvy to compete with other markets using this channel.

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