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

Chapter 10

Future Forces and Trends in Event Marketing

“When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

John M. Richardson, international development scholar (Born 1938)

When you have completed this chapter, you will be able to

• Identify and utilize patterns of event marketing development from previous eras, and identify present and future opportunities for growth,
• Understand the major dynamic forces in consumer culture that will most affect event marketers,
• Anticipate the evolution of today's young consumers and the changing definition and roles of events in their lives,
• Consider the life cycle of events through time via the lens of trends and cycles, and
• Predict the future influences upon events and event marketing.

The Event Marketing Trajectory

How does the way things were done in the past influence the way they will be done in the present and the future? Looking back to the dawn of planned events, we have seen that they began inclusively, bound to everyday life, expressions of identity. They bound people to a common purpose or worldview, or were instigated by those in control to organize the populace. In a sense, they have not changed in their function, but have expanded in their diversity and have in the consumer society adopted consumption roles.

Event marketing development in one aspect has been about the development of communication techniques, wherein the message has ...