Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod - Essay Example

Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod The Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod is a very important music festival that takes place every year in Llangollen, North Wales in the second week of July. This music festival, unlike the others, arranges competitions for young singers and performers from all around the world to show their talents. Performers usually include dancers and singers from all around the world. They are invited to take part in 20 or more high value competitions in concerts that take place every evening. The colorful and best competitors share the stage and perform with professional artists including dancers and singers. This event continues for 6 days where over five thousand instrumentalists, dancers and singers from around 50 countries perform and compete before audiences of more than 50,000 (Pruett and McGuirk, 2004). This musical festival commenced in 1947 and since then has been considered the most inspirational and cultural festival. Each year, with over 4000 participants from around the world perform at this international pavilion in unique combination of singing and dancing competition, hence promoting peace and friendship. The event also has the prestigious Choir of the World that declares the best choir of the event (Pruett and McGuirk, 2004). After the World War II, many leaders from around the world considered music as the instrument to heal the effect of War and give people something to cheer. Harold Tudor who was an officer of the British Council in 1945 proposed the idea of converting Welsh National Eisteddfod into international choral festival. But as the Welsh National was rebuilding its own organization, they did not seem to agree with the idea. Tudor amended his proposal and considered this international festival as an independent event which found much support from the local Welsh people. Initially, concerns were raised about how the event would be financed, where the event will be arranged and who would come or anyone would come at all? Financial help of local people and British Council’s help in finding the choirs from Europe helped arrange the first event pretty successfully (Pruett and McGuirk, 2004). Numerous famous artists performed at Llangollen which included Red Army Ensemble, Luciano Pavarotti, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Julian Lloyed Webber. The Sunday Evening Gala concert, which is the final event, features performers like Bryn Terfel, Katherine Jenkins, Kiri Te Kanawa, Montserrat Caballe and James Galway. In year 2009, performances by Sir Willard White, Barbara Dickson, Natasha Marsh and Blake were given. In addition to this, Orchestra of Welsh National Opera performed the spectacular James Bond 007 (Pruett and McGuirk, 2004). PR Campaign and Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod Public relation is very important for any business or event. Without spreading the word and creating goodwill, the business or event would be lost in this globally competitive world. It is a process through which maximum communication can be managed and maintained with the public and the organization. Public relations are required to build the rapport with customers, employees, general public, voters and investors. Public relation includes corporate communication, media relations, analyst relations, internal communication, investor relations and labor relations. A balance and agreement in all these dimensions will make the business and event a success (Gregory, 2004). Earlier, due to absence of internet, the PR campaign used to be limited and a hard thing to do. The word of mouth and few posters were used to spread the word. In the modern technological revolution with the Internet, PR building has become easier, fast and very lucrative. Llangollen Eisteddfod is an international platform that welcomes performers from all around the world. It would not only require the local public relations campaign but global representation and connection to increase the number of participants and audiences. Eisteddfod music and dance festivals has developed a website to access the event and other details. They are using the social media tools and websites as well to reach the audiences but still are in need of larger audiences and participants. If about 50,000 people have been appearing on the platform with 4,000 participants, the number cannot be considered large enough. An event where professional artists perform along with the new talent, more participants and audiences must register and attend. To increase the access and build a strong PR and goodwill, Eisteddfod must set the following objectives: Start the PR campaign at least three months before the event has to take place. This will help in creating public awareness of this musical festival. The objective should be to reach maximum number of participants without any prejudice, race or sex discrimination. This will also develop goodwill of peace and friendship. The festival council must reach out for no less than 200,000 audiences and around 25,000-30,000 participants of the competition. The organizing committee needs to gain sponsorship for promotion, expansion and funding of the festival and competitions (Patten, 2008). These objectives must be kept in mind to proceed with the actual PR campaign, using all the possible tools of advertising and marketing along with social media interaction. The PR campaign for Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod should be designed in the following way: Public relations campaign: Target audience: A PR campaign without a specific target audience would fail no matter how much you invest in it. Eisteddfod must determine the target audience clearly in order to reach out for them. The primary target audience of Eisteddfod are the young generations aged from 12-35 that are full of spirit and active. The younger generation is considerably more passionate and approachable. They are active users of the Internet and always hunting for opportunities to showcase their talents. Llangollen Eisteddfod can target schools, universities, colleges and other dance and singing schools to reach the target audience and performers. By having the specific niche, the expenses incurred will be less, as the irrelevant targeting is only going to add to the cost. The target audience and performers are based on the following profile: Location: Schools, universities, colleges, art schools, dancing and singing schools all in Europe, Asia, America and South Africa. Gender: Male and female Interest: In case of performers, exclusivity, talent, spirit and energy is required. In case of audiences, tourists and music enthusiasts will be more interested. Education level: The competitors must have education till primary school and beyond. Campaign strategy 3 main strategies for PR campaign will do wonders for Llangollen. These strategies will help in achieving the above mentioned objectives. The PR campaign will use the push strategy that basically uses the marketing principles. With right publicity tools and events, the performers and audience will participate in this musical festival. The three strategies to follow are: 1) Create an online community through which Llangollen can reach out and connect with the interested participants and audience. 2) Road show exhibition would be a unique idea to grab the attention. 3) This musical festival will arrange events for charity in order to serve the humanitarian causes as well. This will help in building a strong PR and goodwill. Campaign tactics: Online community-Interactive Media 1) Official website of Llangollen: The business tactics have completely revolutionized with the advent of the Internet. The Internet especially has played a major role in connecting the world with few clicks. It has provided a platform to communicate across borders and people. Llangollen musical festival has maintained a website that details almost all the relevant information. The need is to keep the website rigorously updated and informed throughout the 3 months campaign with the latest updates regarding the festival, current news, e-newsletters, community activities, current donations, videos, pictures, and by maintaining a separate blog. People always look out for new and informative information (Ries and Ries, 2004). The blog must be updated on regular basis in the three months tenure with all possible news and events along with ongoing statistics showing the number of participants and audience. The website should offer free registration to provide the members with secure web surfing with the help of user name and password. This will help the members to easily track the progress of the events and stay in touch with the news. This will also allow the communication and participation from people on one platform. The website will have the discussion section as well where people would be able to share comments, information and suggestions. 2) Social media tools: Twitter Twitter is a very helpful social platform to communicate with people. The automatic feed and relevant audience finder options available in Twitter make it possible to target the particular niche in no time and free of cost. The hash tag option available on Twitter helps in targeting the very specific audience. There are Twitter clients that help the auto update session as well for keeping the traffic ongoing. The blog links can be shared on Twitter from time to time to increase the traffic. Facebook Who doesn’t know about Facebook and its lucrative results in marketing? Facebook account and Facebook fan page has become the biggest source of sharing the public opinion, suggestions and recommendations. Llangollen has the Facebook fan page where the administration can question the public over festival pattern. Llangollen can add more to this music festival by asking for public opinion. Designing a festival as per the demands of the audience and participants will help develop a very strong PR and goodwill. Blogs Llangollen music festival needs to maintain a very regular blog along with videos, pictures and the latest news. The blog can also provide information regarding the restaurants, hotels and other recreational spots in Wales. The more the content, the more the traffic and more will be the awareness of this music festival. 3) Media mix strategies: Magazine and Newspaper Magazines and newspaper will be used for advertisement. Both the broadsheets and tabloid will be used. Tabloid will be very helpful in schools, colleges and universities. These are also given to students in order to increase the reading habit as well. The advertisement will help informing the public about the existence of this music festival. In the three months time, the advertisement will be published after every 4 days. The advertisement in the magazines will depend on the frequency of its publication along with where and how they are distributed. The magazine has a greater advantage over newspaper as the customer actually chooses it and pays for it. In comparison to newspaper, magazines are permanent. The magazine publication will be once in two weeks to keep the readers updated. Broadcast Media Research has shown that radio is a continuous background medium in most people’s life and they prefer listening to a radio while multitasking. Llangollen will have a weekly segment of half an hour or an hour on the radio where the festival will be discussed along with competitions. As charity will be made part of the festival, the motive for it will be discussed along with mentioning the names of the charities for building confidence among the people. Road show exhibition: Llangollen can use the road show exhibition depending on the budget and accessibility to show the trailer of the music festival and educate people about the competitions that would take place in this festival. A team of ten or fifteen people can be developed to visit schools, universities and colleges globally (wherever feasible) to spread the word. Effectiveness of PR campaign: To measure the online campaign effectiveness, software will be installed to track the regular traffic on daily basis. This will tell the number of people who are visiting the website. In addition to this, new registered members and forum participation will also show the effectiveness. The road show exhibition’s effectiveness can be measured from the accessibility of institutions. Marketing communication functions are weaved in with marketing framework. The generally known promotional elements of marketing are product, place, price and promotion. These are the four foundations that you will ever find in the making of marketing communication (Breakenridge and DeLoughry, 2003). The components of an ideal PR campaign are also extracted by the same number of foundations. This field requires a new customer support for brands by producing attentiveness and encouragement of the product among consumers. We consider the Internet, radio, T.V. and other forms of medium as the best solution for having an ideal PR campaign. Your promotional campaign should not miss any of these aspects listed above and if this rule of marketing advertisement is followed under one go you may not get any negligence in your way. Promotional campaigns are being run around the globe. Whenever there is an activity of a company, a promotional battle is needed, if it is ignored then the name and as well as its work will not be known by the people. Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod is a well known and impressive music festival that takes place every year and a proper PR strategy can help this event in better promotion and response through collaborative PR strategy. As Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod takes place every year, promotional strategy should be planned in a way that gives it maximum exposure, and those efforts of one year can be utilized in the next year too (for example, through blogs). Advertisement: Promotional campaign is constrainedly important for the growth of the company. However, there are number of forms of this activity that could be done according to the product you would like to promote for your company. First, your product should be accelerated by making advertisements. This is probably the best source of promoting anything and a much cheaper way of conveying your message to the consumer. The advertisement affects are best calculated in terms of enriching awareness and switching attitude and thoughts, not making sales. If you are intending to make an advertisement for your products, make sure you have saved enough for making one, because it costs so much in the recent age and this is its biggest inadvisability (Breakenridge and DeLoughry, 2003). Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod should focus on using TV, local radio ads, and local newspapers to gain attention of the local audience. This is one important aspect from local PR point of view. Internet: In the modern era no one can avoid paying attention to Internet marketing when it comes to running a promotional campaign. Internet has become a complete communication channel and this service is being rendered in every part of the world. Have you heard of you tube? You tube is the best source for promoting your videos over the Internet; there are millions of videos uploaded on this website. Users can do several things with this website like, rate a favorite video with stars or comment over them. This is another good way of promoting your products online. With companies such as Amazon.com, CDNow, eBay and other websites that have been selling goods via the Internet to users around the planet, in less than five years of advertisement on the Internet the disbursements will rival those for radio and outdoor (Smith and Zook, 2011). Llangollen International Musical Festival Eisteddfod should plan proper internet marketing campaign and that as discussed should include use of social media, video viral marketing and other methods. Modern PR developers believe strongly in the power of internet marketing. Promotions via Social Networks: Social networking has also embedded itself very firmly in a short span of time in all over the United States and other countries as well. Consumers are taking interest in this scheme and making purchase decisions online. We have seen social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter grabbing millions of users by now and the count exceeds every second. Finally, the web giant Google has also started to participate in such an element of promotional campaign by creating a platform called Google +. Momentarily, Facebook and Twitter are leading the top chart and things are going way too smooth for them. There is hardly any company or a product that does not have its Facebook/Twitter page these days. Advancing your product through a communally active website can bring you a huge amount of traffic on the particular item; some would take interest, while others will go astray (Smith and Zook, 2011). Social networking can be counted as one best element of running a promotional campaign, companies from all over the world offer contests and quizzes on the pages just to get that browbeat amongst the buyers. Being a musical event, it can get a great response from people coming from various nationalities and social backgrounds with the use of social media as a tool. References: Breakenridge, D. and DeLoughry, T.J. (2003) The New PR Toolkit: Strategies for successful Media Relations. FT Press. Gregory, A. (2004) Planning and Managing public relations campaigns: A strategic Approach. 3rd Edition. Kogan Page Publisheers. Patten, D. (2008) How to Market your business: A Practical guide to Advertising, PR, Selling, Direct and Online Marketing. 6th Edition. Kogan Page Publishers. Pruett, J. and McGuirk, M. (2004) The Music festivals guide: For music lovers and Musicians. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. Ries, A., and Ries, L. (2004) The fall of Advertising and the rise of PR. Harper Paperbacks. Smith, P.R. and Zook, Z. (2011) Marketing Communications: Integrating Offline and online with social media. 5th Edition. Kogan Page Publishers. Read More