Event Marketing...Visual Marketing's Best Friend!

One of the fastest growing wings of the marketing field is event marketing. Companies are seeing the value in things like PR events, trade shows, mobile marketing tours, and other types of public promotional events where consumers can be exposed to a brand or product through and experience. These types of events are extremely important to your visual marketing decision-making, as an important part of the event is the take-away. Our homepage has a graphic showing environmental impressions + takeaway impressions = $$$. What does this mean?

An environmental impression is the experience a consumer has at an event where the logo or product makes an impression on their subconscious. This could be a billboard or banner, a staff tee shirt, or a product sampling, among other things. Basically it is all the various ways a consumer experiences the product/brand while at an event experience. All of these impressions are making a mark on that consumer, and hopefully influencing their purchase decision at some point in the future. When you can follow up these environmental impressions with a strong takeaway impression, you make the likelihood of purchase that much greater.

The takeaway impression is the giveaway a consumer gets when they leave the event. It could be a tee shirt, water bottle, or just about anything else under the sun. What is important though, is first, that it is desirable to the recipient, and most importantly, that is has a logical connection to the event. If your event is centered around sports, than you should do some sort of sports giveaway, but something that is different and memorable, or extremely useful to the demographic you are targeting.

Each time the consumer uses the product, they are taken back to the event, and all those impressions become stronger. The stronger and more "front-of-mind" the impressions are, the more likely you are to induce purchase at some point. The moral here is to use your events to your advantage, and think about how to manage your promotions so they coincide with the same goals and missions of the event being planned. These two marketing initiatives should be thought about simultaneously, not in their own respective vacuums.