Event hospitality – 7 key aspects
People come to a sporting event and are drawn in to the pageantry and drama by the stadium branding. If you are providing them with hospitality you are an integral part of that experience and have a duty continue the experience when they move from stadium to dining table.
Imagine the feeling of anti-climax if you were to walk out of an Olympic Stadium after watching the 100m finals, into (cheeky) Nandos for your lunch!
You have to rise to the occasion to ensure your client is as excited about the experience at lunch as they are about the experience during the game. Each feeds the other. It should be one seamless jaw dropping event.
2019, in Britain alone, has already offered sponsors a sumptuous feast - Formula 1 at Silverstone, Six Nations Rugby, Snooker World Championships, the FA CUP, The British Summer of Tennis, Cricket World Cup, (Ashes 😬), Netball World Cup… the list goes on and corporate hospitality opportunities are the icing on the cake. All of these events allow sponsors to promote their brand to a global audience and equally enable customers and prospects to have an experience to remember.
Coming away from an event can often leave you with a warm feeling about the host company – possibly enhanced by the amount of courtesy champers! But can brand owners hope to send guests away with any more memorable marketing messages?
Having worked with MasterCard on events as far back as 2006 at the FIFA World Cup in Germany, I witnessed early on the importance of engaging with the audience in a refined manner in order to convey a lasting and meaningful brand message or ethos.
At the Euro 2004 Tournament in Portugal, the then Vice-president of sponsorship at MasterCard Patrick Simeons commented:
'We won't bother our guests with specific product presentations during the event, because it would be too much of a distraction, but we will make sure our sales force has "privileged moments" with our key contacts,' says Simeons. 'We could talk to them through the traditional channels, but that is much more complex. This allows us to demonstrate that the relationship is working and to bring our customers together in an environment where they can network with us and each other.'
This kind of thinking led me to a few observations of my own:
1. Don’t be Overwhelmed
Brand communication is not a stroll in the park - sporting events do carry the risk of dominating your product. You can invite lots of people, but the event in itself is all-encompassing. Do you get anything more out of it as a guest, beyond hospitality? The bigger the event, the bigger the cachet.
2. Be Realistic
Most companies engaging in corporate sponsorship at big sporting events are realistic about their objectives. Companies know it gives them an opportunity to get closer to key contacts and interact with them in nice surroundings. But it's difficult when you're sitting down over lunch at Silverstone to push your latest product, especially with the roar from the track!
3. Why Are Doing This Event?
Lots of companies do corporate hospitality because they think they should. The biggest mistake a company can make is to do it because that's what it has always done, or because a senior member of the company has an interest in the sport in question. That's a waste of time. The first questions to ask yourself are what your audience is and why you are doing this event. Invites can often find themselves in the hands of the wrong people, such as the friends and family of the chairman, or people with no interest in the event. When they decline the invitation, it is passed on to a replacement and the strategy is diluted. Companies must get close enough to their clients to ascertain their interests and If account managers are doing their job properly, they should be able to feed this information up and let that dictate which events they are invited to.
4. The Motivation
As Ardi Kolah wrote in her report ‘Maximising the Value of Hospitality’, 'hospitality is not about having a nice day out'. 'The motivation is business, in terms of customer relationship management,' he says. 'It's about seeing the whites of your customers' eyes and having a personal experience through a shared passion for sport.'
5. Identify Your Objective
Understand the importance of matrix plotting the features and benefits of different sports against various CRM objectives. Something like a major golf tournament is not great for networking because you have to spend so much time being quiet, but with horse-racing, you have a whole afternoon, with the actual races only taking up 10 or 15 minutes. That's a lot of free time to get closer to your key contacts.
6. Focus
Focusing on a single message helps. Decide which one thing you want your guests to take away from the event and stick to it in as many ways as you can. If you're taking guests to a big football match, with a meal before the game, put something on the table that associates your brand or the product you are trying to promote, with that event.
7. Event Extension
The keys to effective corporate hospitality are targeting prior to the event, subtle communication during it and follow-up after it. You get companies spending thousands flying someone to a big match, putting them up in a nice hotel and wining and dining them, but they don't follow it up and a year down the line, the guest will forget who took them there.
At Junction we have over ten years of experience working in Hospitality Event Branding for brands such as F1, FIFA, LTA, MasterCard and the ATP. If you found this article interesting and would like to learn more about how we can add extra value to your event or brand, feel free to call me on +44 (0)20 7404 6766 or email paul@junctiondesign.co.uk
Paul Emery
Owner, Junction Design