For my field trip assignment, I have chosen the 2009 Beer Festival Asia as my choice. The Beer Festival Asia 09 attracted 14000 people from all over the world. These beer enthusiasts descended here to the taste over 100 different kinds of beers and ales. It was held at the Singapore Flyer under large tents packed with other entertainment like live performances and games.
For comparison of the marketing strategies, I have decided to select the popular Oktoberfest held annually in Munich, Germany during late September and early October. This enormous fest is also celebrated in many other parts of the world making it the biggest beer festival in the world.
The marketing strategies that I am going to use for comparison are Product, Place, Programming, People, Partnership, Promotion, Packaging and Distribution and lastly Price.
1.Singapore Asia Beer Fest VS. Germany Oktoberfest
1.1 Product
The products marketing strategy includes both tangible and non tangible products. These include the beers, ales, food and also services like entertainment and games.
From my research I have come to realize that the products in Asia Beer Fest and Oktoberfest are quite different. The Asia Beer Fest is a very small festival as compared to the Oktoberfest so naturally their products would differ greatly to suit the needs of the different scaled festivals.
In the Asia Beer Fest, the core products are the different variety of beers that cannot be found usually. With the other products being small variety of food items and for services like the entertainment, all they have are a few live bands and couple of small games like pool and pinball Machines. Therefore, the only reason people attend the beer fest is to taste beers.
On the other hand, at the Oktoberfest, the core product is the wonderful festival atmosphere and also the tradition behind the Oktoberfest. There is also a wide variety of beer and also lots of different exotic foods to sample. For the services like entertainment, there have a huge number of different bands playing a wide range of music is each of the many tents. There are also lots of fun and thrilling rides for people to enjoy. Every now and then, there are small beer competitions for the customers to compete in. Beer may be the main attraction but there are still lots of people who go down just for the music or the rides or simply just to enjoy the atmosphere of the festival.
Therefore, you can now see that there is quite a great difference between these two festivals although both a circled around beers and ales one caters to larger crowd with a wider variety of products whereas the other just focus on one main product.
1.2 Place
The place includes things like the location and setting. The location for both are quite different, although they both are located in a big open space with in which tents are set up to hold the festival, the Asia Beer Fest is at an F1 track near popular attractions while Oktoberfest is held in a big park called “Theresenwiese”
The Asia Beer Fest consisted of two small plain tents. One for tickets and food and the other for beer and entertainment on the other hand, for Oktoberfest, they have 14 large tents. Each tent has a specific name and also boasts their personalized activities and attractions. Therefore people know where to go for a specific competition or attraction.
The atmosphere for both are definitely different, yes they both may be very relaxing with catchy music playing in the background but with so much more exiting things to do and see, the Oktoberfest definitely creates a whole different level of atmosphere for one to experience.
Hence, the place is quite different as you don’t just go to any tent and buy a drink but instead you a given a wide variety of choices with each their own activities, entertainment and most importantly beers.
I feel that the place is very important as it will play a big role in creating the right atmosphere for the whole festival.
1.3 Programming
Programming includes the elements of style and also the quality. The basic elements are the same, open spaces with tents. Each stall is decorated quite nicely and they each have their own theme with waitresses dressing to match their stalls’ theme.
The difference is that the Oktoberfest has much more programmes like costume parades and other cultural performances.
The quality of both of festivals is also quite different. The Asia Beer Fest is very plain, it is just an open air tent where people sit on typical school canteen benches and drink beer. The exterior has does not have much decorations as well and this will not be able to bring out a good atmosphere.
The Oktoberfest has beautifully decorated tents. The tents look like old English cottage houses and each tent always follows a standard theme. The interior is no different, nice comfortable chairs and tables decorated with table cloths. Even the walls inside are decorated to suit the theme. Most of the tents are closed as well and fully air-conditioned.
I feel this plays an extremely big part in terms of attracting customers. Naturally an event that has a great atmosphere due to the themes and decorations will be perceived one of a high standard. People are therefore willing to spend their money as they know they will have a good time and their money would not be gone to waste.
Programming is very important as people might get bored if they just sit there for hours drinking beer. These programmes have to therefore keep the customers entertained and hence have to be properly done.
1.4 People
People consist of the “cast” audience and hosts. The cast are mainly the people providing the service. The audience is the people buying the services and products and host is usually the country or city that the event is located at.
The cast and host play huge roles as marketing strategies to attract customers. At the Asia Beer Fest in Singapore, most of the cast were doing quite a good job which was similar to that at the Oktoberfest. The stalls at both locations provided excellent service and mascots were also walking around to aid you in pouring the beer or just for some photo-taking.
The host on the other hand is quite different in terms of quality. Most people would rather go to a European country like Germany rather than come to Singapore. Simply because the stereotype is European countries have better standards and have more prestige as compared to Asian countries like Singapore.
Having a location in which people want to visit is an additional plus point, customers can kill two birds with one stone as they get to experience the festival and at the same time visit a country that they want to. Unlike Singapore, people usually would not come all the way down here just for a three day festival as the country itself does not have as much activities for tourists as compared to Munich in Germany.
1.5 Partnerships
Partnerships consist of joint marketing and stakeholders. Both festivals have collaborated with many large names to make the event successful.
Asia beer fest and Oktoberfest both partnered with hotels, credit card companies, radio stations, popular magazines and so much more. This benefits both the festivals and the other companies. Festivals gain coverage and get more popular when advertised with these big names. Simultaneously, these names get to be advertised as well at these large events where thousands of people are present.
Having right partners are important as they can benefit you a lot. Like for example choosing partners like Power 98 FM can get the festival great coverage as it is a popular radio station that lots of people tune in to.
1.6 Promotions
Promotions include advertising, sales promotions and event image. The promotions at both festivals differ greatly.
Advertising is not done much for the Asia Beer Fest, very little coverage on television or on the radio. Only just a week or two before the event did I first see beer fest posters and only during the event I heard some media coverage on the radio. I felt the advertising was really poor for the Asia beer fest.
Sales promotions were only done with the admission fee. They had student prices and early bird discounts. Also they had quite a huge discount for Citi bank credit card members. But due to the poor advertising, no one really knew about the discounts. The response was so bad that till the first day of the event, there were still “early” bird discounts. Singapore also did not really get celebrities to help promote the festival.
The Asia Beer Fest event image is also not that great. Being very new to the industry it has yet to meet the standards of other beer festivals in the world or even in Asia. As there are so many different beer festivals around the world, it is hard for the Asia Beer Fest to generate a respectable image.
At the Oktoberfest, advertising is done worldwide. Millions of people have at least heard of the festival if not experienced it first hand. Big news channels cover the festival ever year. Besides that, even airline companies and hotels advertise the festival. Basically, it has tons of coverage around the world and it is already so popular that word of mouth can create awareness of the festival.
For promotions, from what I know, using celebrities has been banned as of 2006 due to some big problem that was created by Paris Hilton. The festival itself also does not need a lot of promotions as it is so popular that people are willing to pay a little more to enjoy and be part of the festival.
This leads me to the image of the event. Already present for more than a century, it is no wonder that the image is so prestige. The image has already been made since a long time and it is easily said to be the number one beer festival in the whole world.
1.7 Packaging and distribution
Packaging usually contains collaborations with another brand to sell both items as a package at a cheaper price. Both festivals do this quite similarly collaborating with hotels to provide a package for the large amount of tourists.
Beer Fest Asia teamed up with Grand park hotel to sell packages of tickets and hotel rooms to customers arriving from overseas. We in Singapore do not get these privileges. Only those flying in get to buy a tour package which includes hotel stay with the Asia beer fest tickets. Grand Park hotel is located at city hall and it is quite near the venue and hence it more convenient for these tourists.
At Oktoberfest, they have collaborated with Montree Hotels Munich. They also offer attractive package prices for hotels and Oktoberfest tickets together.
I feel packaging is always a good marketing strategy as it allows customers to get more for less. This will make both the customer and the seller happy.
1.8 Price
Price includes the admission fee, the packages offered and the merchandise that is available for purchase. The prices, packages and merchandise great differ between the two festivals.
At the Asia Beer Festival, admission fees are priced very cheap. This is because, the festival lacks image and prestige and therefore, prices have to be attractive in order to attract and gain customers. The price ranges from $10 to $78 per day.
There are also packages offered for Asia Beer Fest, for example you can purchase group tickets with a minimum of 20 people. Also you can buy a package where it is $80 for three days and lastly you can buy a $50 ticket which includes a free drink.
Merchandises were also being sold, but they were very limited. On sale were just a few apparels and plastic foot long beer mugs.
At Oktoberfest, tickets are highly priced. This is due to the fact that it is already a very well known festival that attracts millions of people annually. The ticket price ranges from $199 - $285 which is more than five times that of Asia Beer Fest.
They also offer a wider range of merchandises ranging from apparel to posters to snow globes and also each year they have a special mug that has that particular years’ poster on it.
I feel that price play an important part when the festival is not so popularized but when it has gain significant amount of regular goers, the price importance tends to drop. This is because once people enjoy the festival and they know that it has certain standards. They would not mind paying more for the enjoyment.
2. The best practices
The whole festival might not have been of a very high standard but I can still say it was quite a success. Being still quite fresh to the industry they still manage to attract over 14000 visitors to the festival. I feel that this was made possible by a number of factors but mainly due to proper marketing strategies.
Out of the 8 marketing strategies, I feel that price, partnership and people were the best ones.
Firstly, the price was made affordable to cater to a wide range of people. The marketers knew that their festival is quite new and hence not a very grand one and therefore they needed to set the price to one that is affordable by almost anyone to maximize revenue.
Therefore, they set admission prices to as low as $10 for students and senior citizens and even for adults who purchase their tickets early they can go in from as low as $20. Normal priced tickets were at $30 and the rest were tickets with other services included and therefore were priced higher.
I feel this was a very good way to gain revenue and at the same time gain popularity as the prices were cheap, people would not mind just trying to see if the festival was good or not.
Next, partnerships I can clearly say they were able to gain partnerships with big names. Some examples are Citi Bank Credit card, FHM magazines, Singapore Flyer and Timbre music.
By having partnerships, it is a good marketing strategy to save cost and hence getting more revenue as profits. By having partnerships, Asia Beer Fest could also collaborate their tickets with other items and sell them as packages. This will all add to the revenue of the whole event.
Lastly, the people strategy which includes the host, the cast and the customers themselves were also great. The host which is our country was smart enough to even have a beer festival. They saw that this was popular amongst the European countries and hence they brought a similar event to Asia. This is good way to earn both local and tourism revenues. Next the cast did a very good job in mending their stalls and promoting their beers to the customers. They were all very polite and they always willing to chat with patrons making them feel more welcomed to the event. I feel this is very important as the customers are the biggest part of the people strategy. The customers were very sporting in trying all the different beers and also standing up to cheer the band performances.
Therefore, I feel that although all of the marketing strategies were used quite well, the price, partnership and people strategies were used to its full potential in generating revenue from this festival.
3. Stakeholders in the event
Stakeholders are people, organizations or companies that have something to gain from the overall event. Most of the time it is in the monetary form but it could also be other things like advertising.
Stake holders consist of the Host organization, host community, sponsors, media, co-workers and participants.
Firstly, for the Asia Beer Fest, the host organization is Ublues group. They are the main organization responsible for this whole major event.
Next, the host community, the Australian Trade Union is part of the host community together with the Singapore exhibition and convention bureau.
Following that are the sponsors. There are a lot of sponsors for the event, just to name some are Citi Bank credit card which is official credit card for the event, Time out Singapore magazine which was the official magazine for the event and Absolute Vodka which was the official spirit for the event.
Next we have the media, Power 98 Fm broadcasted about the event constantly through the event dates and also Razor TV from strait times also was present to do a story.
Next, the co-workers which were the people involve in mending the stalls, the people who set up the equipments, the security guards and the waitresses who were working at the stalls. This group of people played an important role in
making the event successful as there were the frontline of the event the ones who actually come in contact with the customers.
Lastly, the participants, these are all the beer enthusiasts and the customers who came to sample the beers and enjoy the whole festival.
4. Main purpose of the festival
I am certain the main purpose of the whole festival is to generate income for Singapore. Not only directly from the event but from other areas like airlines, hotels and food and beverage outlets. I am quite sure that Singapore was successful in gaining lots of tourism receipts and also profits from the locals who attended the event.
Although that was the main purpose of the event, there are other secondary purposes like to provide an area to try out lots of beers that are usually not found in Singapore. This can also be a place to find out which beers are well liked amongst the people and hence they may be able to start selling those brands of beer locally.
5. Tourism Benefits
Just by hosting this event, Singapore has gained lots of tourism benefits. Not directly from the event only but also from other avenues. Like airlines companies and hotels.
Tourist coming here will most likely not come all the way here just to attend the beer fest and hence they can do other recreational activities. Like maybe visit the zoo or bird park or just hop on the Singapore flyer.
Besides that, transport revenue will also be increased as the tourist will be using public transport. Shopping will also increase the revenue of Singapore. Wives who come with their husbands may not be interested in the beer fest but rather spend their money on shopping.
Lastly, food and beverage are also necessity to the tourists. Many tourists will indulge in the restaurants and local food that Singapore has to offer. Some might even just go to food and beverage outlets to hang out and relax the afternoons away.
Finally, I would like say I have come to understand the concepts more by doing this project, it was also one of the most fun projects I have done as I actually get to go and experience the festival first hand and write about it.
Here are some photos from the festival.
6. REFERENCES
http://www.beerfestasia.com/index.php
http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/
http://images.google.com.sg/images?hl=en&um=1&q=beer+fest+asia+2009&sa=N&start=0&ndsp=20
http://images.google.com.sg/images?hl=en&um=1&q=oktoberfest+2008&sa=N&start=20&ndsp=20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_festival
