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RECOMMENDATIONS

Create a Sponsorship Proposal

A short lead time meant that sponsors or donors needed to be sourced quickly, however this resulted in a lack of a detailed sponsorship proposal being sent out to companies and brands. With academics stressing the importance of creating a strong package for sponsors (Skinner and Rukavina, 2002), it is recommended that Radiation Events construct a proposal outlining benefits, target markets, the event background and research in order to successfully use sponsors to push sales and donations (McDonnell and Moir, 2013; Skinner and Rukavina, 2002).

Closer Risk/Stakeholder Management

With Radiation Events having limited time to source entertainment, donors, sponsors and caterers, this meant that contact was mainly restricted to email and over the phone. In hindsight more meetings with stakeholders would have been beneficial in terms of operations and risks assessments due them enabling all stakeholders to be aware of their roles in the implantation of the event, and therefore minimising the risks further (Silvers, 2008). Whilst The Riverside venue was consulted in the risk assessment phase, risk also encompasses suppliers, HR and time (Silvers, 2008 HSE, 2015), and so meetings with all stakeholders affected in the future would result in a more thorough assessment of all risks.

More effective attendee communication

With Eventbrite obtaining all email addresses from attendees (Eventbrite, 2017) this could have been utilised to further cement the legacy objective of the event for Roundabout. With it being noted that charities predominantly fail to take advantage of their event attendees in terms of converting them into long term donors (Webber, 2003), it is recommended that in the future an email be sent out to attendees asking if they would like to be contacted by Roundabout following the event regarding charitable events, updates and ways to get further involved. This would also be a more effective way of continuing the legacy of the event from Roundabout’s perspective as they would then have a customer database of interested attendees should they decide to re-create the event in the future.

Better market/sales research

With the pricing strategy set at £15, £20 and then £25, this was based on the target audience of young adults and students having limited funds (Acorn, 2017). However competitor research highlighted a base price of £25/£30, suggesting that a more detailed analysis be conducted in future to the maximum amount of funds that each attendee is prepared to spend, as this could have resulted in a maximisation of gross income (Webber, 2003).

More effective contingency planning

Due to G & Tea being a response to the cancellation of Radiation Event’s ‘SOYIC’ Jailbreak 2 weeks before its delivery, the team were left with limited time to construct a whole new event. If better contingency planning had taken place to respond to this, it could have reduced the panic, surprise and frantic response (Bloom and Menefee, 1994). This would entail identification and assessment of contingent events, development of strategies and tactics, along with evaluation of such plans (Bloom and Menefee, 1994; Goldblatt, 2014).

Thorough team contract

Although teams are thought to facilitate a more motivated, skilled and collaborative environment (Bladen, 2012), they require a clear and focused structure with committed members (Maylor, 2010). With one team member of Radiation Events failing to produce what was required in addition to being absent for the actual event execution, it is clear that a more detailed and imposing team contract be drawn up for future events to mitigate negative behaviour and instill trust (Riordan and O'Brien, 2012).

Do more offline marketing

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Literature and studies (Nichols, 2003) indicate that donors, sponsors and therefore potential attendees favour varied methods of contact from charity event organisers. Due to Radiation Events only having 3 weeks to produce and market G & Tea, social media was the predominant method of contact, with minimal physical advertising, direct mail and face to face marketing. Therefore despite young adults being more receptive to online and mobile advertising (Acorn, 2017), a recommendation would be to expand the offline marketing presence to build up a better report which could result in increased attendance and donation (Marketing Week, 2016).

Better social media presence

With Facebook being the most commonly used online marketing platform (Stelzner, 2011), it was decided that Facebook be utilised by Radiation Events due to the limited timeframe and the sites ability to target specific users and create reciprocal conversations with users (Castronovo and Huang, 2012; Hennig-Thurau et al, 2010). Despite using Hootsuite to schedule posts and gain analytics (Amiando, 2002) more engaging and regular content including videos and copy that facilitated comments and shares would have been ideal and would be recommended for future event marketing (Nichols, 2003).

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