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Selling out a mass participation event is always a challenge for any event organiser as, all too often, on limited budgets, many events find that some sections of their target market are not being engaged with.

And even if an event is full, organisers face the challenge of how to keep participants engaged so that they come back year after year.

With the continued huge growth of the mass participation sports event sector this becomes even more challenging.

In this growing running events market, even in Singapore, the figures are astounding. With the city averaging three to four events per week, how does one event stand out from another and why do some struggle to fill while others sell out in the early bird phase?

Josh Black, Chief Executive of GroupM’s Content Division across the Asia Pacific region, sheds some light of his experiences on the pain that many mass participation event organisers share on participant engagement.

Black believes that the most common mistake events make when creating content is that most of their content revolves around selling the event or promoting the sponsors.

As a result, most content generated falls into ‘interruption media’* that most consumers are trying to avoid these days.

Black feels strongly that brands and events need to find smarter ways to integrate their product or message meaningfully into the narrative, explaining “you need to become part of the story, not the advertisement continually interrupting it.”

In addition, Black believes that the biggest opportunity that mass participation events miss is their post-event content.

The minute most competitors walk off-site, they never hear from the event again. These people are the biggest potential repeat customers so events need to figure out ways to nurture, build and grow that relationship on a year round basis.

However, when done right, a target community will be invested in an event’s story.

As examples, Black cites Nike’s campaign around their ‘Women’ and ‘Run the Town’ events, that build a hyped up community; Gatorade’s subtle advertising pieces such as Inside Endurance surrounding their Marathon and Ironman properties; and even how Pizza Hut worked around The Walking Dead TV format where they focused on enriching the audience experience by producing and showing additional back-story content on a webisode platform instead of integrating their product into the show.

Today, the average content a typical person is exposed to is ever increasing and mass participation events need to start looking at ways they can get in front of their target audience without making them feel that they are being advertised to.

Josh Black will be presenting on Keeping Participants Engaged Through Content at the upcoming Mass Participation Asia Conference 2015.

Click here to view details for the Conference in the Australasian Leisure Management industry Calendar.
With thanks to Chris Robb, Chief Executive, Spectrum Worldwide.

Top image: Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon.

*Interruption media/marketing refers to any marketing activity that ‘interrupts’ a viewer’s attention.

Essentially, the aim of this type of marketing is to capture attention with the hope that a message gets through to the recipient and is interesting enough for them to want to learn more about the product or service.

Some of the common forms of interruption marketing include television and radio advertisements, e-mail spam, direct mail and Telemarketing.

15th October 2015 - SINGAPORE CONFERENCE TO ADDRESS MASS SPORT AND RECREATION PARTICIPATION ACROSS ASIA

13th October 2015 - SPORT INCLUDED IN UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT GOALS

29th December 2014 - STANDARD CHARTERED MARATHON SINGAPORE ATTRACTS MORE THAN 53,000 PARTICIPANTS

23rd July 2013 - SPECTRUM WORLDWIDE EVENTS NAMED STRATEGIC PARTNER FOR STANDARD CHARTERED MARATHON SINGAPORE

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