Diving into the world of Event Management
The last part of our ADandPRLab curriculum and our experience in Advertising and Public Relations consisted of four sessions with the help of Sustainability, Communication and Marketing Expert, Athena Fradelou. The module was focused on Event Management.
During these sessions, we became familiar with all the stages and challenges of organizing and communicating an event, whether that would be an online or a real-life event, figuring out the right target group, adjusting an event’s format and character on its subject and cause, building a communication strategy and taking care of all its prosecution details.
The case of our final assignment was to organise an event, focusing on digital events but leaving the option open for real-life ones, in order to promote the city of Athens as an appealing tourist destination throughout the whole year, that can offer a unique and holistic experience to all types of visitors, in order to keep those who travel to Greece from visiting the widely known greek islands right away, while barely spending any of their time in Athens, thus using it simply as a pathway to the islands.
Our event’s goal was to point out six main pillars and the way a variety of activities and experiences in Athens can fall into those categories and, finally, how they can promote them. The pillars were: Modern Civilization and Culture, WIne and Gastronomy, History and Tradition, Shopping, Sustainability and the Natural Environment.
By conducting a SWOT analysis, we understood how to create an event fit for promoting Athens. Through this method, we clarified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats Athens has as a European city with a significant number of population, as well as a very touristic area.
We chose to define our target group with a specific audience: people who are interested in traveling or are related to the tourism field. Specifically, our aim is travel & lifestyle influencers, worldwide travel agents, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and people who promote alternative types of tourism.
To be more specific about the audience we are addressing, we decided to make 4 persona profiles who represent our target group:
Emma, 25 years old, Brazilian, Travel Influencer: She is a full-time YouTube Creator with 150.000 subscribers worldwide and currently searching for her next destination, where she will film her videos. Emma travels to different European capitals and, as a result, she wants to provide her subscribers with tips on how to discover the best options in different cities. Lastly, Athens has been on her bucket list for years.
Andy, 32 years old, Spanish, Founder of a travel agency in Spain: He wants to learn more things about the Athenian civilization and facilities, and aims to add Athens to his travel agency’s destinations. He wants to meet entrepreneurs for future cooperation, so he is going to discover the best places in Athens for his clients.
Anna, 22 years old, French: She is always on the look for local products and environmentally friendly options for her travels. Her passions are wine, nature and the sea. She really wants to visit Athens, but she is not a fan of touristic places, therefore, she is always looking for alternative options.
Kevin, 40 years old, Turkish: He is an employee in UNWTO who wants to inform his clients about new sightseeing & tourist attractions. Also, he is looking for modern art options, such as museums and galleries. He works in the art department of UNWTO and his desire is to promote Athens and its artistic venues.
We created this event in order to promote Athens as a top destination for a many-day stay, suitable for the night and for the whole year, not just the summertime. Our desire is to help people who work in touristic fields to reinforce their businesses and achieve their goals. Through our event, Athens will be highlighted as a city with a wide range of sightseeing spots, which caters to everyone’s taste.
After much thought and discussion we decided that the ideal date for our event is September 25th, 2021. Our Main venue was Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, for accommodating our speakers, and our online venue for broadcasting worldwide was Event Technology Platform for Virtual, Hybrid, and Online Experiences | Hopin. Throughout the event, 15-minute long pre-recorded videos will be displayed, presenting our destinations of choice, which our presenters will visit and which are related to the promoted fields. The pre-recorded videos will be followed by specialists’ speeches in each category.
We named our event “Wander-ful Athens” and our tagline is “the road to discover Athens”. We created a map of Athens, in which we recommend a path for our tourists to follow, so that they can visit Athens’s hidden gems. Our path begins from Technopolis and our last destination is the sea, specifically Marina Flisvou. We suggest Greek local businesses that our audience can visit in different parts of the city, selected by us. We recommend some fields for which Athens is famous and some places in these fields which tourists must definitely visit, such as:
Wine & Gastronomy:
Oinoscent Wine Bar, Heteroclito, Brettos, Thanasis, Dioskouroi, Nisos, Upupa Epos, Ermou 18, Marina’s paragka, Dionysos
History-Tradition:
Dionisiou Aeropagitou Street, Ancient Agora of Athens, Thiseio
Shopping:
Ermou Shopping Street, 1001 yefsis, Attica City Link, Yoleni’s Greek Gastronomy Center
Sustainability:
Plastikourgeio, we4all
Natural Environment:
National Garden, Zappeion, Flisvos
Modern civilisation & culture:
Museum of Modern Art, Technopolis, National Gallery, Planetarium
Continuing our event’s design, we decided those who will be the main hosts and those who will present each of the six categories.
Specifically:
Our main hosts
Danai Barka: Actress and Television Presenter
Philippos Ioannou (known as Fipster): YouTube Creator
Modern Culture
Maria Mavropoulou: Contemporary Visual Artist / Photographer
History & Tradition
Ted Papakostas: Archeologist
Wine & Gastronomy
Leonidas Koutsopoulos: Chef and Restaurant Owner
Yiannis Karakasis: Expert in the Wine Industry
Shopping
Elena Galifa: Fashion & Lifestyle Influencer
Eftihis Bletsas: Travel Influencer & Television Host
Sustainability
Eftichia Prantalou: Environmental Ambassador & Volunteer
Environment
Nikos Petrou: Director of the Hellenic Society for Protection of Nature
When it comes to the date of our event, as we’ve already mentioned, it will take place on Saturday, September 25th, specifically, at 11:00 UTC, until 15:30 UTC. You can see below analytically our full program
We then move on to a very vital part of our event that allows us to implement our ideas. It is none other than our sponsors.
Our Communication & Product Sponsors
Our Communication Plan
In order to be able to communicate all the information we thought would be vital for our event’s success and to build engagement with our audience, we decided to start our campaign two months prior to the event.
Our channels would be the Website we created specifically for the event and our Instagram account, while we decided to also create a Facebook Event for “Wander-ful Athens”.
Our Website includes details about our Event’s suggested destinations, information about the Event’s schedules, our very important presenters, speakers and sponsors. Of course, it also includes details on our ticket sale and a link to the webpage our Event will be broadcasted on. Lastly, we provide the visitors with links to our social media accounts. You can find our website here: https://wander-ful.carrd.co
The content we decided to create on Instagram consists of four types of posts, which will be:
- Teaser videos that will build up to the beginning of our campaign and grow the audience’s anticipation
- Posts that will contain important information about the event
- Collaboration posts with our communication sponsors and some influencers that will help us promote the main idea of the event
- Some clues and hints about the event, presented in a Q&A format
Our content will be posted in the following order:
First of all, we will be posting our event’s logo and the first two teaser videos. Then, we will release the event’s poster and the last teaser video, before we announce the two hosts of “Wander-ful Athens”. Then we will create and upload a set of posts for each of the pillars the event is referring to: one post for the location chosen to represent each one of them, and one for the speaker who will be covering each topic on the event day.
Next, we will announce the venue where the event will take place, as well as the ticket sales. In order to advertize our in-kind sponsors, who will be providing us with all the products in our goody bags, we will upload a post and do a collaboration with some influencers, who will create some unboxing videos of our goody bags.
Before the event, we will also include some posts (at least 3) with content from our communication sponsorships, on our Instagram page. The Q&A posts will be uploaded during the final days before the event and will have the style of an advent calendar that counts down to the event day, while we will also post a reminder for the day before.
After the prosecution of the event, we will upload some “thank you” posts, addressing our attendees, venue and sponsors and run a giveaway for some goody bags, for those who didn’t have the chance to attend.
For our logo and posters, we wanted to come up with creative ideas. Through Mrs. Fradelou’s constructive feedback, we were able to continuously improve our work, and, finally, bring our logo and posters to life in an inventive and technically proficient way.
Along with our logo and posters, we created some mock-ups for our Instagram posts, Teaser Video and Facebook Event.
Our video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ldoeO5cIG8KZGTRbk2tYwyR9uPW6lCbj/view?usp=sharing
Overall, this has been a, though hectic, very constructive module, filled with tons of new learnings for us. Its hectic pace was as challenging for Mrs. Fradelou, who was required to share her knowledge and useful advice with us in this small amount of time, as was for us, who, nevertheless, learned to work in an even better way, driven by our organized team effort and our motivation and strong spirits. Mrs. Fradelou definitely kept up with the pace, as her detailed and important instructions surely lent us a hand in our effort and gave us clear directions for our project. All this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the professor in charge of our Lab, Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou. We are thankful for this opportunity and appreciative of the learnings we have gained on Event Management!
