Social Media Week kicked off last month and Internet Week Europe 2011 dates have just been announced. Lucy Fisher asks what’s in it for B2B marketers who choose to get involved with themed weeks?
Social Media Week and Apprenticeship Week, both took place last month. Likewise, 12 March 2011 marks British Tourism Week; 9 May 2011 sees Green Office Week; and the dates for Internet Week Europe 2011 have just been released: 7–11 November. But what lies behind such a proliferation of themed weeks, both national and international? And do they present effective marketing opportunities for business brands that choose to get involved?
Those with experience of these types of event agree that themed weeks are only of real value as potential marketing hooks if they promote a worthwhile cause or initiative. If so, they can provide a framework for a marketing angle, help to educate, or tell a story.
For Stella Jones, managing director at B2B Contact Marketing, one such event was Apprenticeship Week 2011, now in its fourth year. Jones says she had been considering hiring apprentices for some time and the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS)’s week-long event seemed the perfect time to do it.
Getting involved during the week’s activities presented an opportunity to shout about B2B Contact Marketing as an employer but Jones stresses that she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t believed that apprenticeships were valuable. “You can’t put your name to something if you don’t genuinely believe in it,” she warns.
B2B marketers should bear in mind too, that it’s not enough simply to find something that has meaning for them personally; the chosen theme must also bear a clear relevance to specific business activities.
“Sometimes the links between organisations and weeks can seem tenuous,” explains Josie Perry, marketing and communications director at government agency, NAS, which hosts Apprenticeship Week to raise both awareness and boost sales.
DIY weeks
B2B marketers hoping to achieve success by launching themed weeks of their own should strive for differentiation and bear in mind that this type of event works best when other businesses or individuals want to get involved. It’s wise to make it as easy as possible for interested parties to do so too.
“Go out and give ideas to potential partners,” advises Perry. “Give them a list of, say, 150 ways they can get involved and tell them to pick one.”
One event that has really ‘snowballed’, in the words of its organiser, is Internet Week Europe. Nick Farnhill, co-chairman of the week, and founder and partner of digital agency Poke, also describes the event, slightly tongue-in-cheek, as ‘Fashion Week for geeks.’
Yet, if that’s the case, there are no shortage of geeks: over 130 separate and independently run events took place at various locations across London over the course of the festival in 2010. Organisers, with help from an executive committee made up of individuals from companies such as the BBC and Google, invited digital companies from across the continent to come and take part in events, as part of a celebration of “all the wonderful and inspiring things connected by the web’s many tentacles.”
Farnhill explains that much of the work was possible because sponsors, such as Yahoo, were supportive of the event, and sponsorship revenue helped enable a team to be set up to work on the event management throughout the year.
Be realistic
The ambitions of brands looking to get involved in themed events need to be tempered with reality, and B2B marketers would be well-advised to keep it simple. Internet Week Europe, for example, was set to host events across numerous European cities, but Farnhill admits that this goal became unrealistic. “The focus was lost,” he says “We wouldn’t rule out holding events in other countries in the future but holding it in London made it easier to organise and meant there was a concentration of events in one place. The buzz wasn’t diluted.”
Farnhill also warns against self-serving or gimmicky events. “The stuff that feels exploitative doesn’t tend to attract any interest. Those events get spotted very quickly.”
The danger is unless the value of the week is clear, you risk inviting cynicism from your target audience. Social Media Week, for example, was described by AdWeek as “less about the people who create social media than it is about those who seek to capitalise on it… more a celebration of the industry’s corporate entourage than of its creative forces.”
It’s important to remain focused on your objectives when getting involved in a themed week. “As with any marketing activity, try to measure success in whatever ways you can,” advises Laura Nolan, business development director at Marketing Options International, “whether that’s through hits to your website, numbers of tweets, or by creating some useful content in the form of a download that you’re able to track.”
Themed weeks can offer an excellent opportunity to build relationships, as well as provide a platform for the promotion of causes, brands, products and services. There are many advantages to organising an event or to piggybacking on an existing event, as long as involvement is approached in the right way.
Case study: Green Office Week
Green Office Week has been running for three years and was originally nothing more than the germ of an idea from a former employee of office products manufacturer Avery Dennison. Later developed by Gregg Corbett, Avery’s marketing director, the week’s original aim was to help people find ways to bring their green habits into the workplace and to promote sales of Avery’s eco-friendly products.
With the help of Avery’s PR agency, Footprint Communications, the office products specialist commissioned some YouGov research that “confirmed the hunch” that office workers weren’t actually apathetic about green issues and that they wanted to do something. Following on from the research, Avery published Green Offices for Dummies, after purchasing a licence from the publisher (Wiley) of the iconic range. Scott Sinclair, PR director at Footprint, explains that the guide was not designed to promote Avery’s products upfront, but rather as a brand awareness exercise and “logical next step” to the research. “The campaign was about trying to create differentiation,” he says.
More layers have been added to the campaign as it has grown, including the cultivation of a community of ‘Green Office Week ambassadors’. “Themed weeks can be a great way of interacting with customers,” says Corbett. “We aimed for 20 ambassadors but got 82. And anything that adds noise and drives participation is a good thing.”
