FESTIVALS AND EVENTS MANAGEMENT
INDIVIDUAL FIELD TRIP ASSIGNMENT
-SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2008
Objective
To identify how the various components of the event marketing mix had been adopted in the Singapore Biennale 2008 and evaluate how effective these component had been used to contribute toward the success of the event as well as considering the role of this event to Singapore and its value to the tourism economy.
Methodology of research
Method used for this research is on-site observation, online research and staffs' feedbacks.
Background of event
Singapore Biennale 2008 is a showcase of contemporary visual artworks done by renowned artists worldwide. It is actually a world-class event and this was the second time that it is held in Singapore, the first one being held on 2006. This whole exhibition of around two months from 11 September to 16 November 2008 is located at a few different places such as City Hall area and South Beach. Singapore Biennale 2008 highlights Singapore’s prominence as an international visual arts hub, which not only providing new opportunities for Singapore artists, curators and arts businesses, but also as a key enabler of exchange and collaborations for the global arts community. The theme of this year's exhibition is Wonder, which would definitely leave us in awe about the wonder of this exhibition. With the official opening done by Senior Minister, Goh Chok Tong, Singapore is ready to embark on a journey of this iconic contemporary art event in Singapore. This event include art exhibitions, public talk, workshops, and even an amazing race organized for students.
Marketing mix
Marketing mix used by the organizers of this event are product, place, partnership, promotion, programming, people, packaging&distribution and price.
1.Product mix
The product elements involved in this event include the art works exhibited, services provided by the tour guides and staffs and many other activities to support this event. They showcase a wide variety of art works featuring 50 renowned international and local artists. All the art works are very impressive and interesting. For example, one of the showcase by Zadok Ben-David entitled 'Blackfield' was really creative and pretty. When you walk into the room where it was exhibited, all you can see was a big 'field of flowers' that are black in color. However, if you walk to the other end of the room and turn around, what you will see is a field of colorful and mesmerizing flowers! They had covered a wide range of contemporary art works that would allow art lovers to enjoy the exhibitions and serve as an eye-opener to those people who are not so familiar with contemporary art.
Other than this, the Biennale also have a small section that is called Kids Biennale. Singapore Biennale has worked together with children from various schools, teaching and guiding them about different art concepts inspired by the story Alice in Wonderland through different activities organized. Some of the best works and special projects would then be showcased at the exhibition itself. This concept is good as it allows the children to participate and be involved in a different kind of experience and at the same time boosting their self-confidence if their artwork is exhibited.
Tours are also available during the event for people who prefer a guided tour around the exhibition with professional explanations with regards to the art works. The organizers made a good decision in making the tour available in English and Chinese as this are the two most spoken languages in Singapore. The self guided tour which makes use of MP3 is also an interesting concept as although some people may want to learn more about the art works, they may prefer to move at their own speed and enjoy the exhibition themselves. The tour guides and staffs there are also very friendly and have a good product knowledge. They are all very helpful able to answer most of the questions that you post to them.
All these products are one of the main elements that attracts visitors to the event. Therefore with its good product mix, it has helped to contribute to the success of the event. In addition to this, they may also want to sell some souvenirs of the event as tourist may be interested in buying souvenirs as a memoir to this event. Other than to increase the range of products offered to the visitors, it can also help to generate additional revenue for the event.
2. Place mix
Place mix refers to the location or setting of the event as well as the ambiance of the event. This event takes place in a few different venue, such as the South Beach Development area, City Hall and the Singapore Flyer. All of these places are conveniently located and could be easily accessed by the public. However, as the venue are rather spread out, it may take some effort and time for visitors to travel from one venue to the other venue of the exhibition. One suggestion to improve on this problem may be to provide shuttle bus from one venue to another to help increase the accessibility for the visitors.
The ambiance of the event in my perception is quiet and peaceful. I feel that the Old Parliament house is the right place to exhibit all the artworks as the building itself is already some sort of interesting artwork. In a way, both the art works and the building mixes very well and has enhanced the exhibition as the ambiance is a very important point that is needed. This type of ambiance is necessary for art exhibition as people would want to have a quiet time to enjoy and admire the art pieces . At some point of time however, there are kids running around the exhibitions and caused disruption to the serenity of the place. Therefore, this may be a point for the staffs to take note of and try to keep the noise level down so as to ensure that the right atmosphere is there for visitors to enjoy the exhibition.
3. Partnership mix
Singapore Biennale 2008 has gotten many different companies as their sponsors, some of the main sponsors are Urban Redevelopment Authority(URA), Marina Bay Development, Jet Airways, NOL, City Developments Limited, ELAD Group and Dubai World.
During this event, Singapore Biennale also work together with Singapore Flyer for one of their exhibition entitled 'Sky Duet'. This is a partnership that I feel is rather successful as it kind of promotes both the Biennale and Singapore Flyer to the public. If somebody comes to Biennale to view the artworks, he/she may be compelled to view the 'Sky Duet' as well as it is a very interesting concept that allows people to view the artwork from a different type of view. Vice versa, people who went to take the Singapore Flyer may saw the promotion and view the 'Sky Duet', and if they find it interesting, they may be attracted to go to the Biennale to view the other artworks. This may be a benefit for both the companies, however, they need to lower their prices and package it in such a way that will make it more attractive to the customer's eyes.
Another important sponsor of this event would be Singapore Tourism Board(STB). However, I felt that Singapore Tourism Board has not been active in helping to market this event to the tourists. There is only simple information regarding Singapore Biennale posted in their website. I personally think that this is such a waste as I believe that the STB's website would be a good platform for the event to market their product overseas as tourists would often check the official tourism website of the country that they are visiting to obtain more information for their holiday trip. In this way, Singapore Biennale has not been very effective in using their partnership mix as they should have been more proactive in asking STB to help to advertise their event in the website. Actually, I feel that I could not really see any sign of sponsorship in the event itself. By saying this, I mean that the sponsors should also take a more active role in supporting the event itself. For example, as I have mentioned above, the Singapore Tourism Board should take a more active role in promoting this event.
4. Promotion mix
Promotion mix, or what some may call communication mix, is referring to how a company market their product to the customers through advertising, public relations, campaigns, sales promotion, etc. The company had been advertising through many different medias, such as Internet ( its own website and blog), posters, magazines, etc. Its website has been a good promotion tool as it contains many details such as what is happening in the event, the programs, the venues, packages availability, visitors information and many other informations. All these information are necessary to promote the event as people would usually try to find out about the event first before visiting it, therefore a good website would be a good tool that can allow potential visitors to know more about the event itself.
Singapore Biennale has also been working together with the Singapore Flyer for this particular exhibition entitled 'Sky Duet'. A joint effort has been done to promote this event. There are also other promotions such as 30 % discounts for Passion card holders and 20% discounts for McCafe customers.
However as I had mentioned above in the partnership mix, Singapore Biennale has not been really effective in promoting their event as they had missed out on one of the most important and most visited website by the tourists as a platform to market their event overseas. They should engage Singapore Tourism Board to promote the event better in the website.
5. Programming mix
In order to make this whole event more meaningful and successful, several programs are introduced to the participants such as the Encounters, Kids Biennale, and Biennale Race.
The Encounters is actually a series of public platforms where guests speakers would be invited to share more about contemporary arts as well as a feedback mechanism for Singapore Biennale as it is being organized. This would help to educate the public more about contemporary arts and at the same time creating awareness of it. Kids Biennale is a workshop for children to learn more about artworks and ways to do it and also a place for them to discover their talents in this field of work. Excellent artworks done by the children would also be showcased at a small section of the exhibition. Biennale race is a fringe event targeted at youths. They would need to complete tasks around the exhibition areas and be tested on their teamwork and creativity.
All the programs are specially designed to help the public understand more about contemporary art. However I felt that they emphasized too much on students and children and do not have enough activities that are targeted at the adults. They should have created more activities for them for example an amazing race.
6. People mix
People mix refers to how the company manages their human resource as well as how well they relate to the customers with the help from their employees. The first few people that I had encountered during my visit to the Singapore Biennale 2008 were the receptionists who I bought my entrance tickets and obtained the booklet from. All of them were friendly and helpful with definitely a positive attitude and a huge smile. I can see that all of them worked well together and bounded by a good service culture that is incorporated in each and everyone of them. Even the tour guides have all been extremely patient in explaining all the artworks even though no doubt they had been repeating the same old story for the whole day. The staffs there have also good product knowledge in which they were not hesitated to share with us and tried as much as possible to help us in understanding the art works exhibited.
I had actually talked to one of the volunteer there who just happened to be a Temasek Polytechnic student as well. She told us that working there was fun as all the people there are extremely nice to work with and it was cool to be a part of this major event in Singapore.
This shows that even internally, the relationships among the staffs are good and they were also trying to build a good relationship with the participants as well. I believe that for this particular marketing mix, they had been making good use of it to contribute towards the success of the event.
7. Packaging and distribution mix
Some of the packages done by them would be the promotional package with Singapore Flyer at which they bundle both the attraction and event and sell it at a lower price of $31 for adults. You can also bring one of your family members to the event and they can enjoy free entrance to the exhibition. Entrance tickets to the two main exhibitions at City Hall and South Beach Development are also bundled together and are sold at a price of $10.
I think they should also tie up with other art events/venues to do packaging as there are some other popular museums such as Singapore Art Museum which may be a good venue for them to promote this event as well. They can offer entrance ticket at a cheaper price if visitors decided to buy tickets in a bundled package. Therefore, visitors will have an opportunity to learn more about Singapore Biennale if they visit the Singapore Art Museum. With this, it may also be a good promotional tool for the event.
8. Price mix
This event price themselves at a price that is widely affordable to promote the event. Several discounts are also given to different group of people to promote this event. At the first place, the event main focus is to provide more opportunities for artists to showcase their artworks and to promote Singapore as an international art hub, therefore they would need to price themselves at a low price to attract more people to visit th exhibition.
The price mix had been very effective as it has drawn a large number of people to the event and achieve its target to attract more people there.
Tourism role and economic value of event
Singapore Biennale is a world class event that attracts many visitors from many different countries. The target of this event is to present Singapore in a different way to the world by showing that Singapore is an 'open-minded culturally sophisticated city'. People used to think of Singapore only as a major economic hub in its region, now however, Biennale had showed a different side of Singaporeans as a vibrant and creative country as well. This would in turn help Singapore to position itself as the cultural as well as investment hub in the region and help the locals artists to carve out international career. With the success of this current event, I believe that many other art festivals would start to take place in Singapore and the art industry would flourish and rise from here. Planners of this kind of grand art festivals may set their eyes on Singapore as an international platform to showcase different type of arts to the world. This would be Singapore first step in becoming a major hub in this particular field of interest. Investment wise, other countries would view Singapore as an dynamic city which encourages entrepreneurship which thus boost their confidence to either invest in Singapore's companies or work together with them, resulting in a increase in the economy of Singapore.
By attracting visitors from different countries, Biennale has helped to increasing the tourist influx to Singapore as well. As this event would serve as a noble event that connects art and artists from different part of the world, a large number of talented artists are bound to travel to Singapore in order to view this magnificent display of artworks. The increase in number of tourists would in turn help to generate more tourist receipts that would help to boost the economy of Singapore.
Conclusion
Overall, I feel that this event is very successful as it has made full use of many of the marketing mix even though there are still room for improvement. There is no way to plan an event that is hundred percent perfect and used all the marketing mix to its fullest extent as there will always be some unforeseen circumstances happening on the actual event itself. Singapore Biennale 2008 has been very successful in the whole planning of this event as I can see that many of the necessary marketing mix has been used effectively and they have minimize all the unnecessary disruption that may affect the whole event. For example, the product mix that has been used has covered almost all aspects of possible products for all different age groups and target market. The people mix is also very well managed as the staff culture is really impressive and you can really see that all of them are really enjoying working there. Relationship with visitors are also well maintained as all of them are very helpful and friendly.
Singapore Biennale 2008 has also been doing well in positioning itself as a world class platform for international artists to express their talent. For Singapore, this is its one step nearer towards the international stage.
-Wina-
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