MUMBAI: International surveys show that events are being increasingly used as highly effective brand building and selling tools. Only they need to be used in synergy and as part of the complete marketing mix. That was the key message that came through the Event Management
Development Institute (EMDI) Best Practices Seminar, which kicked off today at the Hyatt in Mumbai.
This first of its kind seminar which started off with a small quorum addresses an issue vital to most marketers today How to use events better and measuring the success of your events. The first day of this three 3 day summit focussed on Orientation and Overview of Exhibit Marketing.
The first speaker of the day, Markettech Inc founder Marc L G Goldberg, focused on the role of tradeshows and events in the marketing mix. He said that the trade shows and special events are integrated marketing communications tools which offer a face to face medium with the end consumer. Studies show that a large percentage of visitors to a trade show actually end up buying a particular product or service compared to when approached via a direct mailer or a sales call. An important point that he stressed on for smaller advertisers / companies was that "You cant outspend them, You have to out think them!"
The next speaker George P Johnson Event Marketing Ltd general manager Rasheed Sait gave a perspective on the Indian market. He said that clients did value events and used it as a strong support medium. However event companies out here lacked knowledge of the clients business and competition. That's why they were perceived more as event managers and not marketing / event partners. The Indian IT, Automobiles and Fashion industries were sectors which had effectively used events to grow their brands.
Marketech Inc president Mim Goldberg is a world renknowned expert exhibit staff training. She gave a lot of valuable inputs on how to effectively communicate with the consumer at a
particular trade show / exhibit.
This was also followed by an interesting session on Designing - the most powerful tool. Many interesting samples and case studies were presented in the latter half of the day.
Overall, the seminar was a great learning experience and the next two days promise a lot more opportunity for learning. Thankfully, the international speakers had a great real world understanding of the international marketing and events business. The highlight of the day was the interactivity between the speakers and the audience and the summit went beyond just marketing jargon and actually was useful!
The summit is being organised by EMDI in association with CNBC as television partners and indiantelevision.com as online media partners.
