In.Tech: A journey to the Event world

Speeches, expos, workshops, meetings. The world of events is becoming more and more popular, as it is a great opportunity for advertising, networking and most importantly learning and communicating. Nowadays events of any kind are being conducted throughout each year but technological events tend to have the biggest response in the global market, as technology is a field that concerns deeply every developed country. MWC (Mobile World Congress) is an annual technological event dedicated primarily to the mobile communications industry and it attracts around 100.000 people each year. Although we are all informed about such events and are fascinated by them, how many of us actually know what it takes to organize and conduct an event?

This is where the real challenge started for our team in the context of our Ad&PrLab Class called “Event Management” where we were assigned to create an event equal to MWC here in Greece. Even though it was just a project and there would not be an actual event in the end, everything else had to be as realistic and precise as it would be in reality. And on top of that none of us had the slightest knowledge of event management. So, how did our team follow through? How did we get to our final product? Let’s look through our journey from the very start. The very first thing we had to do was to name our event. After hours of brainstorming we ended up with the name In.Tech (International Technology Convention) and we managed to create our logo as well.

5W’s & Budget estimation

We continued by defining the 5Ws (why, what, when, where, who) of the event we would create. First, we figured out that the “why” of In.tech event was the emergence of new trends in the worldwide market and at the same time the networking of Greek technological market with the global market. The purpose was also to attract interest and educate the public, and especially young people, on innovative technology issues, and thus developing and spreading an innovative spirit. Moving on to the “what”, In.tech is an international event on innovative technologies which is going to last for four days. The event will highlight the newest trends and innovations in the field of technology through speeches, workshops and an expo. Conference’s agenda contains inspirational key-note speakers from the business market, technology field, professors and doctors, device manufacturers and startupers from all around the world. Then we figured out the “when”, and decided that the event would be conducted from 19 to 22 March of 2021, from 10 am to 7 pm. The reason for choosing these dates is because of the pleasant weather that Greece has during spring, which is sunny but not too warm, allowing visitors to enjoy the experience of the convention without weather restrictions. Additionally, March is a good month for this international event as there is no religious celebration in Greece nor in other countries and religions. The “where” of the event we decided to be Athens Metropolitan Expo, which is near Athens international airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” in Spata, Attiki. It is very easy to be accessed by all means of public transport (metro, suburban and bus), while also it’s only 3 minutes from the airport, the metro, and the suburban stations with direct connection capability. Besides, it is the biggest and most modern exhibition center in Greece, according to the European standards. Finally, the “who”, meaning the target audience of in.tech convention, are business owners, professors and doctors, device manufacturers, online equipment providers, the press, innovators and start-ups, or anyone else who has an interest in learning more about mobile technology.

Moving on to the budget of this huge international event we calculated the expenses that we needed to make and then also we made an estimation of how much the income would be. The expenses were calculated in about 940,000€, and the income we expect to earn is about 1,982,000€.

Sponshorships & sponshorship packages

Every event needs sponsors. Especially IN.TECH being such a huge event needs the best. Sponsorship is the key to powerful marketing. Sponsors are suitable for brand visibility and targeted marketing. In our case, which IN.TECH is brand new needs to built its industry cred. Having sponsorships from established companies in your field is the best kind of testimonial. It shows they support what you’re doing which really helps influence people to register. To make the event happen we communicated to a range of companies that would help to this effort.

The biggest sponsors of IN.TECH. Among them is COSMOTE
which will provide us with the internet to cover the event, as well as AEGEAN, which will offer small discount on airline tickets and will ensure the safe removal of speakers from other countries to participate in the event. By the way, in order to achieve the best respond, we send to COSMOTE an e-mail to make a deal. We proceeded with the sponsorship packages, which are divided into 6 categories depending on certain privileges and benefits offered to its beneficiaries. They are divided in some categories. They are: premium, platinum, golden, silver, bronze and expo and start from 5.000 t0 100.000. Indicatively, privileges and benefits include social media advertising time, during the event as well as the provision of some free tickets.

Partnerships

We chose to make partnerships so that the entire city of Athens is involved. (some of them) Athens Metro being one of the most used public transport means in Athens, its presence on our conference is more than necessary. Athens metro will help us advertise the event by providing us space for advertising posters both in the platform area, as well as inside the wagons.
GSRT (General Secretariat of Research and Technology) It is the most
reliable source for information and advice in the department of technology.
Greek Higher Education Institutes such as National Technical University of Athens (School Of Electrical & Computer Engineering), Athens University of Economics and Business (Department of Informatics), University of Peiraius (Department of Informatics), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Department of Informatics and Telecommunications), University of West Attica (Department of Informatics and Computer Engineering). Undergraduate and post-graduate students, professors and doctors are invited to attend or help as volunteers. Ministry of Culture and Sports Will help us properly promote greek culture and its contribution and connection with technology through our event. The city of Athens will help us by providing us with special transportation (city buses) that will enable people to come in Metropolitan Expo through different places of Athens, as well as providing us with community workers. On the one hand, Cosmote will have the rovision of Wi-Fi and telecommunication support and on the other hand Vodafone will offer phone charging spots. We are also partering with Athens International Airport to keep reserved seats in first class for the invited speakers and with Sofitel Athens Airport Hotel to offer us with
special discounts on suites, for the speakers to stay. Beat App is going to arrange taxis to be around the expo and the airport as well to make
guests’ transportation easier. Last but not least, ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) will broadcast the event for advertising purposes and Elpedison will provide the event with generators in order to minimize the possibilities
of power dysfunctions.

Swot Analysis

First of all, event’s strengths are location and date. Their choice is propriate for event’s conduct as ‘Athens Metropolitan Expo’ is 3 minutes far from airport using public transportation. Its significant to refer that there is no other feast day going on the same time. In order to connect the entire city, we choose partners like ‘Cosmote’ or ‘Vodafone‘ and contemporaneously achieve the lowest cost and the best image. Apropos our agenda, we have invited great names, innovators, CEO’s and much more consequential faces that
have a great power on the entire technological community. On the other hand, lack of experience may be comprised as weaknesses, for the reason that it’s the first time such an influential event is coordinated. The excess number of workers and volunteers requires supervision and training in a higher lever that normal in order to be everything as needed. The cost and the time this project requires is higher than usual. The wealth of potential investors, in mobile community has as result the accumulation of competition and the creation of conflicts. The opportunities given by this experience is the tourism growth. Thanks to the web, social media and target’s group approaching, the promotion of our event could be ever better with lower expenses. By featuring eco-friendly elements, we contribute to the environment reinforcement, enchanting our credibility and therefore attract more clients. Threats that occur is the high risk by future sponsors due to Greece crises escape. Political intentions couldn’t be missing as our country face territorial threats from the neighbors. We must always be up to date for our clients change of preferences and align with market innovations, amplifying our
exposure with new ideas.

Marketing mix & 9Ps

After the SWOT analysis, we proceeded to create the Marketing Mix
and the analysis of the 9Ps, which we thought would help us get to
know and better organize our event. Marketing Mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market. The 4Ps make up a typical marketing mix — Price, Product, Promotion and Place. However, nowadays, the marketing mix increasingly includes several other Ps like Packaging, Positioning, People and even Politics as vital mix elements. So, we guaranteed our Ps and we concluded to
9Ps. More specifically, the Marketing Mix includes: Product, Price,
Profit, Place, Promotion, Partnerships, Purchase Options, Personnel
and Process.

In each category we have recorded everything included in it. Let’s
start with the Product. In this first category we recorded all our moves
from the name of our conference to our actions after the event is over. The Product therefore includes: In.Tech Convention, Pre-event media promotions, Website, Social Media Pages, Sponsorship Packages, Event-day speeches, Workshops, Expo, Food & Beverage, buffet, Gift Bags and Post-event party. The second category concerns Price. Prices included tickets and sponsorship packages. Tickets were classified into three categories
and their prices ranged based on the services and privileges offered
by each category. The categories are Expo Pass, Silver Pass (expo
& workshops or expo & speeches) and Golden Pass (expo &
workshops & speeches) and are divided by day. There is also a
discount for students but also for those who choose to buy it online.
We have also calculated Profit and we intend to make a profit from
our sponsorships and strategic partnerships, as well as our low-cost
promotional plan.

The venue of our event will be at the Metropolitan Expo but of course
our website will also run. So Place gives me the opportunity to move
on to Promotion’s P. As a World Congress, we rely on social media
and public relations. Therefore, the notification of even us will be
done through Social Media Campaign (Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube, Twitter) but also through Twitter Hashtags without
forgetting of course the Newsletters that will be sent to the mails. On
the other hand, another way to promote our conference is the classic
and traditional way through Print Advertisement (Poster and Leaflet).
Another powerful way to promote is Promotion by Sponsors on their
websites & social media pages and Promotion by Event Speakers on
their social media pages. Last but not least is the press release. The
next part of Marketing Mix is ​​Partnerships where a Big list of strategic
partnerships that will lower the event’s costs and enhance its
marketing efforts. We have included Purchase Options where we offer Online
Registration, Offline Registration on touch-points and Online
Sponsorship entry to facilitate participants and make the process
enjoyable. A conference of this scope could only be personalized and
addressed to a specific audience, giving the required attention to it
but also working with notable partners to achieve the best result. So
we included Personnel where Technology experts from the academic
field (Professors, Doctors, Students) will voluntarily offer us guidance
for event planning, Volunteers sent from our partners will help with
the event set-up and customer service and of-course Employees .
Last but not least the Process. The last piece of the Marketing Mix
puzzle is Process, which starts with Online Booking, continues in
Customer Service and QR Code Scanning, a code that makes it
easier for you to scan and participate in the Event day, which will be
provided by the members of our team and the process will be
completed after the end of the conference with Online post-event and
review.

Marketing Channels

The promotion of the event was important for the reputation and success of In.Tech. For this reason, one of the very first steps was to define the appropriate marketing channels that would gradually facilitate the dissemination of the event in the greek and global market. All the marketing means followed a common aesthetic with blue and its different shades being the dominant colors, aiming at indicating something futuristic, technological and pleasing to the eyes.

We started by creating a website which would play a vital role in the disclosure of the event and would allow our audience firstly to buy tickets online and view and download In.Tech’s agenda and secondly to view the speakers of the event and find links for In.Tech’s social media pages. WEBSITE

Social media would also help In.Tech interact and get in touch with its audience and for this reason we created accounts in different platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, in which users would be able to like, comment, interact and view information, photos, videos and livestreams, prior or after the event. We did not neglect to create a special hashtag #in.tech21 which would motivate Twitter users to include it in their tweets and comments, making this way In.Tech get on the trending topics.

Facebook account Link & Facebook event Link ,Instagram, Twitter, YouTube

When it comes to the TV and RADIO channels that would broadcast the event, we chose one Greek and two Global channels. In detail, we decided to partner with ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation), CNN and BBC since they are the biggest media channels that resonate with the audience. As for the Press we chose Kathimerini to advertise In.Tech through its website and ads. In.Tech’s poster will be appearing on the website, social media posts as well as paid ads. Additionally, In.Tech’s leaflet will contain the event program, the biggest sponsors and other additional information. We did not neglect to create newsletters that will be attached to the emails sent to our audience. Three press releases were created as well to announce the event and were scheduled to be published a few months before the event. However, a Marketing plan would not be complete without a Publicity plan as well as other creative ideas for gift bags.

Crisis Management & Online Event

When the pandemic (Covid19) began to spread in Europe, we had no choice but to act quickly in order to deal with the crisis as effectively as possible.
IN.TECH is supposed to be the first international technology event in
Greece, which corresponds to the Mobile World Congress and aims to
highlight new market trends internationally. Therefore cancellation was
not an option, since stakes were too high. Instead, we decided to go
digital and make the best out of it, offering our participants a unique
virtual experience.

Our first concern was to deal with the event cancellation regarding our
deposits, sponsors, partners, speakers and visitors. Once everyone was
informed that the event would take place online we took care of the
technical issues. We partially offered a refund to visitors for
cancellations, but we did our best to ensure that they would prefer to
attend IN.TECH anyway. In order to do achieve our goal we focused on
increasing engagement by adding a virtual expo with a 360o view,
workshops in breakout sessions and networking via their profile, which
gives them access to their personal chatting room. This is how we managed to plan our virtual event without making a lot of changes to our agenda, so that both visitors and sponsors are satisfied. Last but not least, we made all the necessary adjustments to our sponsorship packages and reduced ticket prices by 20%, as Virtual Conventions cannot offer exactly the same experience to the audience as the original physical.

This is where this journey on the event world had to end. It was more than just a taste of event management, as it was an experience of event management, fast decision making, strategic thinking and crisis management at the same time. We learned how extremely difficult and detailed an event plan is, but also how gratifying it is to see our efforts come to life in the final product. It was definitely one of the most challenging projects we were ever assigned to do, but the result rewarded us all!

Special thanks to Ms. Athena Fradelou and Ms. Betty Tsakarestou for their guidance!

By The Challengers

Violetta Ioanna Makri Georgia Staikou Christina Bolanou Evelina Karatziou Eugenia Skouteri Kyriaki Kyriakoggona