The Essay Explores The Impact Of Sponsorship Events On Consumer Brand Equity Behavior. (70 Characters)

Impact of Sponsorship Events in Consumer Based Brand Equity Behaviour:

How Fit Connects Service Brand Sponsors with Consumers' Passion for Sponsored Events.

Host population perceptions of the social impacts of sport tourism events in transition countries.

Impact of Event on Attendee's Purchase Intention.

International Journal of Contyemporary Hospitality Management.

Organising the London Marathon 2017

Humans are social animal and they involve in many social activities. Prior to the industrial revolution these activities were deeply connected with the festivals and other kind of historical celebrations. But after the industrial revolution these festivals and historical celebrations transformed into events organised for specific purposes (Gitz, 2007).  Changed culture is also one of the main reasons to transform these festival celebrations into the modern origin of events (NIBS, 2014).

This marathon was 26 miles and 385 yards long. This event was one of the big events organised by me. In this report I will discuss about all the management theories I applied to make the event successful. At the same time this report contains my personal experience about organising such type of big events (Huseyin, et al., 2018).

This paper explains the general systematic orientation about the management process of International events. And also explains my personal experience while organising such an International event. I had organised “London Marathon 2017” in this category and I had shared all my experiences during this mega event management. This was one of the biggest events I had organised till date so it was a completely different experience for me and I learnt a lot of new things during this event.

While planning a special kind of event it is essential to know the objective of event. Complete understanding of the purpose of an event makes it easy to select some criteria of management like theme and other aspects of the event. Objective of an event has a wide variety. Some of these objectives of events in our society are to change some misconception of society, to present some kind of social issue, to introduce something new at the bigger stage etc. Sometimes this objective can be related to some organization like launching some kind of new product, to some market excitement, to polish the market image of the organisation. Apart from these the objective may be fund raising, celebration of milestones achieved by the organisation (Arcodia & Reid, 2018).

In the modern era event management is one of the most preferring careers among the youth. In this field there is not requirement of any big investment as well as it provides independence flexibility in the field. It is a process of managing a professional and focused event, specified for some particular audience (Arcodia & Reid, 2018).

Today event management is one of the most significant tools for marketing and advertising as well. In general event management involves wedding, seminars, product launch etc. This may involve some new product launching, to introduce any change in the organisation, to promote awareness about some product of company.

Managerial Tasks in Event Management

Complete process of event management involves organisation process. In the current situation, event management is one of the important sectors evolving with increasing opportunities over the years. Event management is not only about managing events but it includes financial also. Financial management of an event is the way to handle all the challenges related to budget, sponsorship etc. It requires a lot of experience to handle all these challenges. In case of international events budget is one of the important necessity to make the event successful as these events require a lot of standardised arrangements (Blade, et al., 2012).

According to the importance of an event it demands for the event manager of same level. To make an event successful the manager must be able to bring together people management and task management. Manager has to make sure that every team member understands the task completely. In event management there are some spot generated challenges which are unpredictable and they require an instant solution that is depends on deep knowledge of the alternatives and processes. Therefore, decision making in the most required skill of an event manager (Hal , 2018).

Event industry includes different segments like social events, cultural, sports event, corporate event, and festivals. Regardless of these different sectors event industry can be classified on the basis of type of event and the size of event as following (Gitz, 2007).

The event I have worked for is kind of mega event. In London marathon participants are from around the world and this makes the event kind of mega size. As the event was of mega size it took a lot of time to plan the whole event in a systematic way.

Event management is a process in which different type of tasks to be completed in an organised way to make the event successful. In this process the manager of the event has to perform some tasks like making arrangements for the different requirements of the event (Blade, et al., 2012). There are many steps to follow in this process and some of them are as following

• Create a plan and mark your objective and goals
• Set a budget
• Arrange some sponsorship
• Set the date
• Staffing or human resource.
• Market your event

All the above discussed steps are some of the basic steps to manage an event and these are the tasks to be completed by the event manage.

This was a mega athletics event. It was “London Marathon 2017” which I was going to manage one of my biggest events to work for. London marathon is one of the biggest athletics events all over the world. In this event athletes from different countries around the world participate and create some new records. This mega event was comprised of five different races in following two categories

• Elite Races.
• Wheelchair Races.

Selection of an Event Date

Since manager is the responsible person for the event so it is his duty to create an effective master plan for the execution of event. As the planning is one of the most important tasks of management, it takes a lot of time to make an effective plan for the event. All the activities will be according to this plan. While planning for the “London Marathon 2017” there was so many challenges regarding the route of marathon, getting a variety of permissions from the authorities, selection of technology and timing partners etc. and I came up with the best available route. We decided to begin the race at three separate points near Blackheath and finish in the Mall.

According to the type of event, manager has to set a budget suitable for the requirements of the event. While preparing a budget, manager has to take care of all the necessities required for each and every task of the event (Ocansey & Enahoro, 2014).

For this event I prepare a required budget to full fill all the essential requirements of the event. In this process I made a budget to spend a total of 635000$ for the event.

The required budget made by the manager has to be arranged from different sources. For mega size of events this budget is so big that organisations individually are not capable to bear all the expenses so manager has to contact different organisations and full fill the financial requirement of event with the contribution of multiple organisations or companies (Lacey & Angeline, 2013).

In the process arranging sponsorships companies make a deal regarding some advertising or promotion of their products during the event. This kind of deals attracts companies to provide sponsorships (Tomalieh, 2016).

Getting sponsorships was one of the most difficult tasks for me, as sponsorship is the basic need of any event and without this organising an event is quite difficult. So I reach out for sponsorships to many companies and finally after a lot of efforts I got some sponsorship for the event. In this process I got my title sponsorship of “Virgin Money” and other sponsorships I got were as following

• Abbott as Medical Partner.
• Lucozade Sports as Energy Drink Partner.
• Tata Consultancy Services.
• Audible as Sound Partner.
• Holiday as Hotel Partner.
• Tag Heuer as Timing Partner.
• London Pride.
• BBC Sports as Media Partner

Other official suppliers as:

• com.
• Running Imp.
• South-eastern.

From all the sponsors and partners for this event, somehow I manage to get a total of 1000000$ as sponsorship price for the event (appendix 1).

Selection of a perfect date is the first step of an event management. While planning an event, selection of date is way more than that of the availability of venue. All the arrangement planning depends on the date of event. Therefore, while selecting a date for event manager must be aware about all the important factors which can affect the objective of event (Ljudevit, et al., 2012).

Human Resource Management

Main objective of this event management was to make the event successful with maximum number of participants from different countries around the world. Therefore, I had to select a date such that there should be no more international athletic events during this mega marathon in London. So at last after a lot of research and consultancy with different athletics organising committees I decided to organise this event on 23^rd April 2017. During this time there was no other international event of this kind so it was a favourable timing for my event to be successful (Vargo & Lusch, 2004).

The realization of London Marathon 2017 event successfully, there was a requirement for adequate, skilled, well-qualified human resources to accomplish objective of the event. London Marathon 2017 consisted of

This is an activity of creating a theme, displaying is to the people to promote the event. The main motive of an event is to make more people aware about the objective, issue, or the product for which this event is organised. Therefore, proper advertising of the event is essential to make an event successful and it has to be done in a very creative or effective way (Gurung & Bikash, 2013).

For the marketing of this mega event I started working on this particular task from the beginning of the execution. To make my event successful in wanted to promote my event as much as I could. I discuss all the strategies to promote this mega event and after a long discussion we came up with some rally creative an attractive media ventures. At the time we finalise the theme and our promotion venture they started working on it. Since the success of an event also depends on the awareness about the event among the people so this was one of the most important tasks to make the event successful (Vargo & Lusch, 2004).

While deciding venue for an event there are some challenges related to some facility requirements according to the type of event (Akwensivie, et al., 2014). Since this was an athletic mega event we require so many safety facilities for the athletes taking part in the organisation. It was a 26.4 miles long marathon so need to provide the essential requirements of athletes like providing energy drinks, providing an instant medical team for any medical issue during the marathon. To minimise the chances of any unfortunate incident to happen we make some planning to make the route safe for the athletes. In this process, we decided to diverse the traffic to finalised route with the permission of city authorities. Then to provide some energy drinks we mark some food points at intervals on the way of marathon route. Then we provide a medical individuals at each mark point with some first aid kits and a special medical team was also available the venue of the marathon for to provide complete medical help on the spot. All this arrangement was essential for the safety of athletes and this type of facilities encourage the athletes to take part more often (Huseyin, et al., 2018).

Advertising and Promotion

London Marathon 2017 was a successful event for me and this mega event come up some really exciting results at the end of event. All the winners in different categories of this marathon are listed in appendix 2

Conclusion

This paper focused on providing a general idea about International Event Management and also aims to share my personal experience about organising such type of international events. Managing “London Marathon 2017” was one best experience of my career. I got so much to learn during this event. As this was one of the biggest event organised by me so I had so many challenges during the event which I was experiencing for the first time in my career. Before this I had not managed such a mega event and it was a successful event so I got recognition all around the world for my work. This recognition helped me a lot to boost my career all over the world.

References

Akwensivie, D., Narteh, B. & Iden, W., 2014. The Impact of Sponsorship Events in Consumer Based Brand Equity Behaviour: Evidence from the Mobile Telecommunication Industry in Ghana. European Journal of Business and Management, 6(10), pp. 107-120.

Amoako, G., Dartey-Baah, D. & Kweise, J., 2012. The Effect of Sponsorship on Marketing Communication Performance: A Case Study of Airtel in Ghana. African Journal of Marketing Management, 4(2), pp. 65-79.

Arcodia, C. & Reid, S., 2018. Goals and Objectives of Event Management Association. Journal of Convention and Exhibition Management, 5(1), pp. 57-75.

Blade, C., Kennel, I. J., Abson, E. & Wilde, N., 2012. Event Management: An Introduction. Oxon: Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group.

Fapohunda, T. M., 2013. Towards Effective Team Building in the Workplace. International Journal of Education and Research, 1(4), pp. 1-12.

Gitz, 2007. Event Studies: Theory. Researche and Policy for Planned Events.

Gurung & Bikash, 2013. Marketing in Event Management. University of applied science, pp. 1-40.

Hal , J. W., 2018. Event management: Frion the classroom to the real world- a case study. Journal of Research.

Huseyin, K., Argan, M. T. & Argan, M., 2018. Special Event Management and Event Marketing; A Case Study of TKBL all Star 2011 Turkey. Journal of Management ana Marketing Research, pp. 1-11.

Lacey, R. & Angeline, G. C., 2013. How Fit Connects Service Brand Sponsors with Consumers' Passion for Sponsored Events.. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 14(3), pp. 212-228.

Ljudevit, P., Lidija, P. & Liljana, C., 2012. Emerld artical: Host population perceptions of the social impacts of sport tourism events in transition countries:Evifdence from Croatia. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 3(3), pp. 236-256.

Marathon, V. M. L., 2017. Vergin Money London Marathon. [Online]
Available at: https://results-2017.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com/2017/
[Accessed 24 March 2018].

NIBS, 2014. The Annual International NIBS Conference in Lahti, Finland.. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/82944/EVENT%20MANAGEMENT%20-%20official%20version.pdf?sequence=1

Ocansey, E. & Enahoro, J., 2014. Comparative study of the International Financial Reporting Standard implementation in Ghana and Nigeria. Europian Scientific Journal, 10(13), pp. 529-546.

Raybould, M. & Wikins, H., 2005. Over Qualified and Under Experienced: Turning Graduates into Hospitality Managers. International Journal of Contyemporary Hospitality Management, 17(3), pp. 203-216.

Tomalieh, E. F., 2016. The Impact of Event on Attendee's Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Brand Image. International Journal of Business and Management , 11(8), pp. 162-175.

Vargo, S. L. & Lusch, R. F., 2004. Evolving to a new dominant for marketing.. Journal of Marketing., Volume 68, pp. 1-17.