Marketing Events After the Virus is Gone: The Good News in the Bad News

By Dave Bullard

Our festivals, fairs and events are consumer products. They are choices that people make to attend or not, to sponsor or not. COVID-19 has changed the lives of the people our events serve. We live differently now and when this is over, we will think differently about the choices we make. People make decisions within the context of the times. Our events exist within the context of the times as well. Almost overnight, the context has changed.

As recently as December, the outlook was strong. The American economy had just completed its 10th full year of expansion, the longest such stretch in our history. By the end of 2019, unemployment was so low that many decent jobs went unfilled. Ultra-low interest rates fueled business expansion. The good times for the middle and upper classes papered over the growing gap between those who have and those who have not.

These were generally boom times for the entertainment industry, as they were for most industries. It was almost enough to make one forget the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the worst downturn of our economy since the Depression. At the height of the Great Recession, the largest number of people who filed a first-time claim for unemployment in a month was 655,000. In the last month, more than 22 million people have filed their first claims for unemployment – an unprecedented full-stop of much of the American economy as most states ordered people to shelter and work at home in order to starve the virus of new hosts to infect and kill.

The impact on the leisure industry has been profound and destructive. Restaurants, bars, and movie theaters are closed. Some will never reopen. Cruise ships are in port and resort towns look like it’s the off-season. Every day, another major festival announces either its postponement or cancellation and those that take place later in the year are waiting nervously to see how long mass gathering bans will remain in place.

This will not last forever. Our events will have their moments in the sun again soon. While we hope that COVID-19 becomes a bad memory, the changes in consumer behavior caused by the virus are likely to remain.

Dataessential, a research firm tied to the food and beverage industry, has been surveying consumers weekly. The survey asked people whether, once all restrictions are lifted, they would feel very comfortable, somewhat comfortable or not comfortable at all in a range of situations from attending parties and shopping to using mass transit and going to crowded bars. Attending events with large crowd finished ninth out of ten scenarios, with 70% saying they would not be comfortable at all. Gallup finds that 78% of Americans are avoiding public places and even more are avoiding small gatherings. The headline on the story about Gallup’s research says these changes have been “cemented into American life.” Seton Hall University’s Seton Hall Sports Poll finds that nearly three-quarters of Americans and 60% of sports fans will stay away from live sporting event crowds until a vaccine for Coronavirus is developed.

These are profoundly worrisome findings for those of us in the festivals and events business. It seems likely that Americans will react to the Coronavirus in a manner similar to the way people reacted during the Great Depression. Adults of that age were changed by their experiences – they became famous for hiding their money in coffee cans and under mattresses because the Depression made them mistrustful of banks. For many, it was a habit that persisted until they died.

These findings are likely to be reasonably true as the lockdown ends, with the effect fading with time as people feel more comfortable and let this time recede into memory. IFEA’s own survey results conducted by Enigma Research, reported recently, show about three quarters of those surveyed are looking forward to being able to go to big events again. However, that leaves 25% who may not attend. Even assuming that that number reduces by half, a 10-15% reduction in attendance in 2021 will pose a serious challenge for festivals and events.

As marketers, we’re going to have to raise our games quickly.

Research tells us the simpler parts of our new reality: Attendees will want to know, well in advance, that our events take their health more seriously than before. More handwashing stations, more hand sanitizing dispensers – these are the very basics of post-Coronavirus life. But what about your vendors? Food handling will be a point of concern. Does your event offer carnival rides and games? Those are high-touch surfaces that may be difficult to clean after every ride. Creating, publicizing, posting and enforcing new rules about sanitation may help to ease eventgoers’ minds. Offer your customers an easy way to let you know about problems they encounter. Better that they tell you than everyone on Facebook. You can’t just tell them you’re safe. You will have to show them.

Next, we need to consider the financial condition of our customers. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs without warning when The Great Lockdown began. Retail sales took their sharpest fall ever. Polls show most people believe the United States is in a recession. If the virus outbreak stopped completely tomorrow, millions of people will still be digging out from the financial distress this has caused when your event takes place. People will need to be reassured that they can afford to attend your event.

The word “free” remains the all-time champ of powerful marketing words. Employ it liberally, stressing the many things someone can do for free at your events. Consider creating a kind of bargain guide to your event, highlighting things people can do or food they can buy that are low cost. Research we commissioned for the Great New York State Fair showed price sensitivity is highest among the very group we most want to reach – families with young children. It makes sense. Kids want to ride the rides, eat all the food, buy a balloon or a souvenir. Show potential eventgoers that they can still come to your event if they’re on a tight budget from this recession.

Perhaps the hardest part of making the most of a recession economy is how you market your event. The natural tendency when the economy turns sour is to pull back on spending. Decades of research shows that is exactly the opposite of what you should do, if you can. Whether it was Post cereals in the Great Depression, Volkswagen in the recession of 1973-75 or McDonald’s in the recession of 1990- 91, decisions to cut back on advertising cost them market share, which meant lost sales to the increased spending of Kellogg’s, Toyota, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, respectively.

You may not be able to spend more. Budgets are budgets, after all. However, budgets can be optimized. Moving money away from legacy media that is hard or impossible to track and moving it towards less expensive, more flexible digital media that can help you track ticket sales and attendances may help give the impression of a stronger media rollout.

This is the time to think critically about every tool you employ. Are you getting out of it what you’re putting in? Is the high cost of print advertising really helping you? How much TV or radio advertising is enough? (Partnerships and trade sponsorships may make changes in those areas politically impossible.) What is really driving attendance at your event, and how can you make the most of it? How can you make better use of the free and low-cost tools at your disposal, such as social media and email newsletters?

Lastly, this period of time will change not only where you market but how you market. If you accept that this period of stress will produce changes in many people that last at least for a year or two, then it follows that the kinds of messages they will respond to has to change as well.

You’ve already seen it to some extent from those advertisers who have produced “we’re all in this together” ads. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the national automakers have stopped telling you how their cars will make you sexy or powerful and instead have started pitching zero interest rate loans and other deals. Companies that sell the most expensive consumer goods are the first to know that consumers in a recession are price sensitive.

So, what is the benefit we provide? It’s entertainment, right? Performers, vendors, rides and games, music, culture – it’s all entertainment.

Absolutely, completely, 100% wrong.

Think about McDonald’s for a moment. They sell food. But how do they market that food to consumers? Nearly every McDonald’s ad shows groups of people – families with kids, groups of young adults – having the greatest times of their lives while, coincidentally, eating Big Macs. They can’t sell you on the gourmet quality of their food, so they tell you that you can have quality time with friends and family when you buy their fries and McFish sandwiches. In one word: love.

Hey, that’s what we sell, too (with better food)!

The product your event offers and the benefit it provides are not the same thing. Our annual research for the Fair shows that between 92-95% of all fairgoers come with someone else. Our events are things that people do together. It can be as elaborate as family reunions that bring people together from several states to ways to just get the kids out of the house for an afternoon. Nonetheless, the basic appeal of our events is that they bring people together.

This year, those messages need a slight twist. Managers of events with long histories know that people see these events as traditions to be observed. A grandmother told us recently that, decades ago, her mother brought her and her siblings to the Fair one day a year because it was the only “vacation” she could afford as a single parent. She told us that on a day when she was bringing her grandchildren to the Fair, as she had done every year to honor her mother. Ask your participants and you’ll be surprised how many of them have family stories tied to your event, no matter how large or small.

So, tradition is a huge part of a person’s decision to attend an event, but the twist is that, while the event needs to change to meet the new needs of virus-changed attendees, it also needs to project an air of normalcy. People will want to get back to normal, even if it’s a “new normal.”

Cornell University researchers Thomas Gilovich, Amit Kumar, and Lily Jampol, building on decades of research into consumer buying habits, show us that buying things doesn’t make us as happy as buying experiences does. “People’s lives can be enriched by redirecting expenditures from things that provide fleeting joy to those that provide more substantial and lasting contributions to well-being,” they wrote. Across all demographics, people were nearly twice as likely to say they were happy with their purchase of an experience as their purchase of a thing. We’re in the experience business, not the entertainment or culture business. People come, feel something, and leave with a memory. Over time, that memory becomes tradition and normalcy.

Respect the changes in consumer behavior, amplify your benefits, project an air of normalcy with added safety, recognize traditions, provide experiences. That’s a heavy lift, for sure. Here’s the good news: You’re a trusted brand. People made decisions to come to your events. They had to take an action to visit you and that means they are likely to be open to coming again.

Make no mistake – you are going to have to market harder than you’ve had to do recently. A shrunken economy means growth will not come without a fight.

The good news is that our events are positioned to help society recover from this shock and help them cope with the longer-lasting effects of the virus and economic dislocation. Our events bring people together. That’s something we’ll want, and desperately need, as soon as this time of Zoom meetings and face masks is behind us.

About the Author:

Dave Bullard is the Public Relations and Marketing Manager for the Great New York State Fair in Syracuse and a public information officer for the state agriculture department. In his 7 years there, the Fair has grown to 1.3 million attendees to become the largest state fair in the East. He spent most of his life in print, radio, TV and online journalism and has owned a one-man public relations company and a small online news publishing firm. Dave is married to a retired teacher with two grown sons, bangs the drums in a band for excitement and plays poker and sudoku.

www.kaliff.com