MEGA CARNIVAL 2008

2008-11-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Mega Carnival, an annual event being held in Singapore, has taken place from 20 - 23 November 2008. Organised by MegaXpress Communications Pte Ltd, it took place in Singapore Expo Hall 6.

I happen to chance upon this event while checking out the events calendar on the Singapore Expo website (http://www.singaporeexpo.com.sg/) and decided to pay a visit to this event due to its free admission and the vast event timings, 10am to 10pm.

Thus, I made a trip down after class on 20th November. Once I arrived, I realised that it is an indonesian tradeshow. It was to promote the indonesian culture to Singapore through their various products available and the foods they sell. Malay was the primary language in the event. Despite the disparity in language, I managed to make the necessary observations for this report.

Marketing Mix

The various marketing mix which I will be featuring for this event will be the main 8Ps - place, product, price, people, promotion, partnership, programming and packaging.

Place
This factor will be focusing on the location, atmosphere and other features of the destination.
As mentioned, the Mega Carnival was being situated at the Singapore Expo Hall. It was rather a good idea because of the huge halls available. Thus, despite having several numbers of booths, there was enough walking space for the guests at the event. This enabled the guests to be able to visit the booths at ease, without having to block the walking path.

In terms of atmosphere, I thought it was not being hyped up to the maximum so as to draw the guests’ attention fully. Once I entered, I heard Indonesian cultural music being played around the hall but the booth vendors were not really communicating with the guests and the atmosphere generally was quite bland.

For the planning of the positions of the booths, it was observed to be well planned. The booths have been grouped accordingly. There was a corner for all the food and beverage booths, while the kids play corner was situated beside. This allows the parents to eat while checking on their children at the play area. This gives one advantage because their parents tend to get tired after exploring the retail booths and they can relax while the more restless children can enjoy without disturbing their parents.

Besides, I can see that the sponsors’ booths were located at better areas. For example, King’s Ice cream stall was an island booth situated in the middle of all the F&B booths. This enabled greater exposure to the potential customers than the other stalls.

Product
A product is a set of tangible goods and intangible leisure experiences designed to satisfy the needs of the event market. It is usually what the guests perceive as experience.

When applied to this carnival, the tangible goods would be the retail, F&B and kids booths. The retail stalls included clothing, souvenirs, CDs and ornaments. They were all relevant to the Indonesian culture. This made the consumers feel very absorbed into the Indonesian atmosphere.

Examples of relevance:
· The fashion style of most stalls was the traditional Malay costumes and more conservative looking clothes.
· Souvenirs were mostly from woodcarvings and handmade items, a common type of gifts amongst Indonesians.
· The CDs sold in the event were mostly Malay pop singers and scripture readings.
· The F&B booths largely sold Indonesian dishes like the Gado Gado, Gudek(raw jackfruit prepared in a special Javanese style) and Karedok.

In terms of intangible experiences, they were quite negative. I thought that the event organiser did not plan careful enough to position the booths whereby I will be able to walk through and experience all the tangible products available. There were several times that I felt lost while walking through the event because I was unsure if I visited this booth before. Maybe they should have a sitemap for the public so as to guide us along.

People
This includes the customers as well as the casts.

From my observations, I realise their target market will be the families and Malays as the main group. From what I mentioned in the earlier point, it is shown that most of their products were labelled in Malay language and I had to ask the vendors before knowing what the names meant.

Besides, most of the vendors or known as casts, were Indonesians and had difficulty in speaking English. While I was trying to communicate with them, most of them just keep looking at me with confused faces. This caused lots of miscommunication between the host and guest. I think that this reflects rather badly on the whole event as they had difficulty in promoting the products and providing good service. Besides, I noticed there were a handful of Caucasians present at the event too. They kept trying to communicate through hand signs.

There were other casts like the emcees who made the entire event livelier with their shows during intervals. Although they conversed in Malay, it must have been an interesting show because the people around me seem to be laughing and enjoying the stage event which will be discussed further in the programming aspect.

Price
Judging from the free admission fee, it has an objective to promote Indonesian products and culture to the local public.

However, the prices of the items were jacked up a little more than usual. For example, the drinks were sold at $2 when the vending machines outside the expo hall are selling at $1.60.

For the retail booths, I believe the prices were more expensive because they were all imported goods. To me, I think most of their pricings were appropriate to their target market because adults tend to have higher spending power.

However, they lose out in the fact that the vendors could not upsell their products further and certain higher priced goods will have more difficulty to be sold.

Promotion
Promotion is advertising the event through various delivery channels which form an important factor in the marketing mix.

For this carnival, I thought the organisers did well in this aspect. I got to know about it through the Singapore Expo Hall events calendar. However, from the interview with one of the visitors, they got to know about it through the radio 94.2fm(a Malay radio station). There were advertisements on the magazine, Wedding@lifestyle. This shows that the organisers were specific in their target market and used various channels to reach out to them.

However, as I was walking to hall 6, there were no banners or directional boards that will lure me towards the event. I was even suspecting if there was any event going on. This was probably the main reason why the crowd was not heavy and the atmosphere being blander than usual tradeshows.

To me, I think they can spend more effort in this aspect as it will be a major factor in deciding the success of the whole event. From the sponsors, I can see familiar brands like King’s Ice Cream. Probably the event organisers could have tapped on the popularity of the sponsors to promote this whole carnival. This solution will also be cost free as they do not have to invest in large advertising fees.

Partnership

Partnerships in marketing are a common sight for joint marketing so as to achieve certain goals that cannot be obtained solely. They also include sponsorships.

For this particular event, the various sponsors include The Donut Empire, CNI, King’s Ice Cream and Kaki Kaki. To cover up for their lack of promotions to other groups of locals, I thought these sponsors could have helped them further to bring this event to a higher level. Due to their sponsorship, they got ideal spots among the booths as mentioned earlier in the report. However, from interviews with the vendors, they did not get free booths despite being sponsors. They had to pay for the exhibit space and I think this information reflects quite badly on the event. This will discourage companies to sponsor them as minimum benefits were given to them.

They had a partnership with Uncle Ringo, a famous kids entertainment group. It was a clever move to clinch a partnership with them as their target market is the families. Thus, the event planners have gone to the extent to thinking of catering to the kids. Examples of children entertainment are the pirate ship, a mini go-kart course and the huge inflated slide. Below are some pictures of it.

Programming
This is one aspect in the marketing mix that will enhance the entire event, bringing it to a different leisure level. A set of programmes are usually planned in any event as a major entertainment purpose.

In this exhibit, there was a stage for programmes. They consisted of -
o Kroncong, a band of people using guitars and ukuleles as the main musical instruments.
o Indonesian cultural dances
o Lucky draws for the visitors of the event, and there were prizes like carpets or vouchers related to the exhibit.
o Interesting interaction between the emcees and the guests.

It was a successful attempt as people were drawn towards the stage area. Once a larger crowd formed, the emcee highlighted on the various products available in the event. I thought this was one good marketing effort to be taken note of.

Besides, they made use of the lucky draws to create awareness of the available products. As a visitor, I was quite absorbed into the performances, only finding a pity that I didn’t really understand what was going on during the funny interactions.

Packaging and distribution
Packaging and distribution is putting together the different types of service sectors like entertainment, food and beverage, transport and attractions in the vicinity to gain attractiveness for the event.

When applied to this carnival, there was not much packaging schemes carried out other than the limited vouchers given during the lucky draws. It was probably due to the scale of target market being smaller and very specific thus they decided not to adopt this method of marketing. Besides, it was a free admission event so packages were not as applicable.

However, I think that if they actually included several packaging schemes like offering discount cards since it is an annual event. This will also promote loyal customers too. Not only, maybe they can offer shuttle buses from certain bus interchanges like Tampines and Bedok to expo hall 6. This will further appeal to the public because they do not have to change the MRT from Tanah Merah station.

Tourism Roles

There will be two sides of tourism roles for this event, one for the Indonesian tourism and Singapore tourism for the other.

The Indonesian tourism will tend to benefit from this event. This is because it is venturing out of the country and creating awareness for its own culture. From this Indonesian tradeshow, I got a further understanding of their culture through the music and dance presented in the programmes. Not only, they expressed how their traditional dressing was like.
From here, I got a better insight of Indonesia as a country. This will serve as a factor to pull people to their country for a visit because this event merely provides a peep at what this vast country consist of.

This event also created business opportunities for the Indonesians as they brought their business overseas. Besides, there would be chances to be spotted and maybe clinch business deals while being here. This will then boost the economy back in Indonesia. Above all, a bilateral relation has surfaced.

For the Singapore tourism, we will gain in tourism receipts and boost in the economy. Moreover, it can be treated as an educational opportunity for the locals to understand other’s culture. This is in-lined with Singapore’s major emphasis on racial harmony.

While these Indonesian vendors were here to set up booths in this event, they could go around exploring the country as tourists. Although it is not their primary reason to come over for leisure, they could go around and obtain leisure experience. While doing so, they increase visitor spending. These then create images of Singapore and word of mouth might spread to Indonesia. If positive, it will lead to further inflation of tourist influx in future.

Conclusion

I personally enjoyed this Mega Carnival as it was the first time I attended something different. After entering the place, it seemed like I was thrown to a foreign land. However, as I moved around, I realised how interesting it is to be in a cross cultural place.

Despite how much I enjoyed, the marketing mix being used in this event is not strong enough and there were several loopholes that required attention from the event planner. Examples of aspects they neglected were the language barrier imposed between the vendors and the customers, price, packaging and distribution. Suggestions from me were covered in the above.
Nonetheless, the certainty of their target market and the ways of promotion were well done. This is because they did not have trouble having too many target markets and the specification led to the ideal delivery channels. This brought a success to reaching out to their target group, evident from the majority of Malay families present.

T o conclude, I believe that this event could be enlarged and made more successful. The Singapore Tourism Board should support this carnival to a great extent because of the promotion of cross cultural experience. I think they will succeed and make it big one day if they improve more on the various factors.

I truly hope to see this event grow in time to come.

Finally................evidence that I was there at Mega Carnival.(:

References:
http://www.megaxpress.com/
http://www.megaxpress.com/wedding_lifestyle.php
http://www.singaporeexpo.com.sg/
http://tualobang.blogspot.com/2008/11/mega-carnival-2008sin-expo-20-23-nov.html

FESTIVALS AND EVENTS MANAGEMENT

MEGA CARNIVAL 2008