Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote Events, Festivals, Conventions, and Expositions, Second Edition

PREFACE

“Reject the notion that things should always be done as they have been done before.”

Leonard H. Hoyle, Event Marketing, First Edition (1939–2010)

Allow me to welcome you to the second edition of Event Marketing, which I hope you will find clear, enlightening, and useful. I would like to begin by paying my respects to the late Leonard H. Hoyle for the first edition, which was an inspirational text, and which stressed the special qualities of event marketing. His book was written with passion and enthusiasm. Hoyle's edition focused upon how to promote events. This second edition will be more about how to apply strategic marketing thinking to events. There will be some overlap between the editions, however, as many of the excellent perspectives of Hoyle are as useful and insightful today as they have ever been.

The overarching theme of the book will be that the twenty-first-century events market is becoming overly saturated, like many other consumer markets, and that you need to use strategic marketing thinking to survive. For example, the United Kingdom (population 65 million) has more than 70 different beer festivals running per annum. I can't say that I have visited every one of them, but everyone needs a goal to work toward. In the United States (population nearly 300 million), there are over 2,500 music festivals running in a year, reflecting a diversity of tastes and, importantly for the event marketer, a wide demographic diversity.

Planned events are everywhere and ...