Overview of the Special Event
There is a space of about 1500 square feet outside the Stamford Residences and this will be used for selling casual apparels to the middle class. The retailing event will target young people between the ages of 21 years and 35 years, who are evidently thrilled by designer and casual clothes. The event will showcase both women and men’s clothes at the two week retail pop-up stores.
Sellers, designers, advertisers and other business people will use the open space to display and sell their clothes. The whole concept is to ensure that customers access exclusive wear at a discounted cost. It is hoped that this strategy will be effective in making the sales as well as advertising the old apartments that needs to be refurbished into modern houses (Barrows 421).
The Stamford Residences are located in central Australia and offer a range of exquisite services that are in line with the theme of casualness. The services offered by Stamford Residences include an Opera House, Botanical Gardens, theatres and a range of very fine restaurants. The residences offer 164sqm of floor in each of the room which also offers spacious living rooms.
The Theme of the Event
The theme of the event will be ‘casual is a look’. This is uniquely designed to exploit the retail concept and exhibition of the casual clothes. The designers and seller will display the clothes on racks in the open spaces while others will bring in their minivans with their products. It will be an event similar to what is called a ‘flea market’. There will be a lot of established brands on display including Giordano and Denim, among others.
The spaces will be designed in a similar fashion to that found on shopping mall or a supermarket. Chains, tables, the floor and chairs will be painted and decorated to display the ambience of carefree living (Belasco & Scranton 519; Siskind 56). The event will showcase new music artists to capture the attention of the media.
Since the event aims at using the media a lot to market the event, there are a number of images generated in this regard. The image below has is one of the images developed for use in the media campaigns and will appear next to the event them of ‘casual is a look’. The image is also proposed to be the event logo.
Marketing objectives
The developers of the property plans to conduct an exhibition of the apartments that will be refurbished and then marketed to potential clients. A cocktail shall also be conducted in the evening at the apartments. The attendants will be given a guided tour around the facility.
Explanation of the Theme – Marketing Objectives
The design of the apartments will be in such a manner as to offer the best quality service to the occupants (Belasco & Scranton 521). The potential future benefits of the occupants like a long-term a playground, ample parking, IT centre and an entertainment spot shall all be put into consideration.
The demand is anticipated to be very good and will increase faster after the facility has been refurbished. This is because the apartments had previously been ignored and now they need a facelift. These apartments are set to help support the projected demand for picnic, Information technology, and entertainment in Meridian.
The pop-up retail event will be held on the facility for two weeks to facilitate the sale of casual clothes. The apartments shall also be advertised on billboards. This will enable the participants to get a firsthand feel of what they are likely to experience when they rent one of the apartments after the refurbishment. Essentially, they will have access to a number of important services all under the same property (Weinreich 27).
At this event, the owners will have the chance to explain all the facilities and their benefits. To start with, the residents will have ample parking space, and an entertainment spot (Weinreich 27).
They will also have a chance to use the playground and the gym facility for exercise and fitness. There are also picnic shelters and these will transform the place into an ideal home for relaxing and refreshing following a long and tiresome week at the workplace.
How the Event will promote the Apartments for Refurbishment
The event will showcase designer T-shirts and pairs of hard worn jeans of different colours. There will be music inspired T-shirts, as well. These T-shirts will also have the apartments advertised on them. There will be billboards and posters at the venue, all of them trying to promote the refurbishment of the old apartments (Hall et al 39; Scott 34).
This special event is set mainly to create awareness of the new project of refurbishing the apartments. The money accruing from this project will then flow to the developers and into the bank accounts of the owners. This event shall enable for the attainment of publicity in a number of ways including the use of media, and exhibition (Schlentrich 45).
This event needs a novel concept that will not only attract that right audience but turn the audience into prospective clients. Doing a pre-event advertising is essential in creating event hype. Other than using media, it is important to use word of mouth advertising. This will be achieved by informing relatives and friends about the events and encouraging them to also tell other people that they know.
This will generate more interest and commitment than the general media adverts. The second part of the idea wil involves organising a promotion for participants. Such a promotion will involve prices and attractive rewards for attendants who show commitment (O’Guinn et al 481). These rewards will involve discounted offers for clients who make commitment within a short time.
Furthermore, clients will be given an opportunity to decide o how the particular units they buy will be remodelled. This will give them a sense of ownership and impress create an impression that those clients are actually building their own home (Diversified Business Communication 5).
The event shall be a grand opening for many more similar projects. A few stunts will also be displayed to catch the attention of the media and enhance the coverage of the event (Schlentrich 45: O’Guinn et al 481). The planners have bought a number of huts and invited a magician who will ‘pull out a rabbit from a hut!’. It is expected that this will cause a public frenzy.
The Media Plan
The event will be covered by a local television channel and radio stations. It will also feature in some of the newspapers (Gregory & Wiechmann 10). Event owners have finalised negotiations with newspaper editors to run a specific event headline that reads, ‘there will be A Rabbit Pulled out Of the Apartments- Snowball Fight a Guarantee’. This is expected to generate curiosity from the target audience.
The other stunts that will be covered include a media related action (Getz 518). The event will be decorated by billboards promoting domestic electronic gadgets, movies, a TV channel, and the main entertainment and media houses in the region. This will revive the feelings of the clients have better entertainment while away from home (Hoyle 129).
They will also tend to get attached to the product being marketed thanks to the ambience inspired by the media coverage (O’Guinn et al 481). Since the event targets young people who have a sense of fashion, using such forms of media especially the TV station will strategically project the event to the target audience who makes a majority of those who come into contact with the forms of media identified above.
Because the theme of the event is ‘casual is a look’ the images generated for sue in the media will also project this message. The event is intended to influence prospective buyers of the apartment to adopt a casual style of living. The apartments will combine luxury and the freedom of the spacious natural environment to create the necessary casual style of living.
As such, the image below is one of the proposed images that will be used to decorate the event. The image background is a virgin natural flora which portrays a sense of freedom; the concept is further enhanced by the lady on the foreground who also portrays every sense of casualness and freedom.
Event delivery
The concept developed here is the use of a cocktail event to create awareness of the new and modern apartments with the necessary social amenities ranging from entertainment (Allen 69), communication, physical fitness and romantic picnics (Levy & Marion 94). There are a number of players involved in the planning of the event.
The media house owners, the proprietors and owners of the business, the general public and the owners of the neighbouring properties (Allen 69) who are also expected to attend the event. The guest of honour shall be a politician (the name still remains anonymous until he confirms attendance) who is also expected to contribute to the success of the day since politicians ‘pull’ people.
Works Cited
Allen, Judy. The Executive’s Guide to Corporate Events & Business Entertaining. Mississauga, John Wiley and Sons, 2007, p. 69. Print.
Barrows, Clayton. Food and Beverage Management, SAGE Handbook of Hospitality Management, London, SAGE, 2008. p. 421-442. Print.
Belasco Warren and Scranton Philip. Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. New York, Routledge, 2002. Print.
Diversified Business Communication. Exhibitor Marketing Giude. n.d., p 5. Web.
Getz, David. Event Design and Management, SAGE Handbook of Hospitality Management, London, SAGE. 2008. 518-39. Print.
Gregory James and Wiechmann Jack. Marketing Corporate Image: The Company as Your Number One Product, Chicago, NTC Business Books, 1999. p. 10. Print.
Hall, Martin., Sharples, Evan., Cambourne, Brian., and Macionis, N. Wine and Food Tourism around the World: Development Management and Markets. Oxford, Butterworth, 2002. Print.
Hoyle, Leonard. Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote Events, Festivals, Conventions and Expositions, West Sussex John Wiley and Sons, p. 129. Print.
Levy, Barbara and Marion, Barbara. Successful Special Events: Planning, Hosting, and Evaluating, Sudbury, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2004. p. 94. Print.
O’Guinn, Thomas., Allen, Chris & Semenik, Richard. Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, New York, Cengage learning, 2004, p. 481. Print.
O’Toole, William and Mikolaitis, Phyllis., Corporate Event Project Management, West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p. 18. Print.
Schlentrich, Udo. The MICE Industry: Meetings Incentive, Conventions and Exhibilities, SAGE Handbook of Hospitality Management, London, SAGE, London, 2008. 400-420. Print.
Scott, David Meerman. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers. Hoboken, NJ: john Wiley, 2010. Print.
Siskind, Barry. Powerful Exhibit Marketing: The Complete Guide to Successful Trade Shows Conferences, and Consumer Shows. West Sussex John Wiley and Sons. 2007. Print.
Weinreich, Nedra Kline. Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-By-Step Guide, SAGE, London, 2002. p. 27. Print.