What “Integrated Marketing and Advertising” Really Means

Introduction

The savings and additional effectiveness of “Integrated Marketing and Advertising” now includes event production. Hold on. We know they are buzzwords. We hear those buzzwords and many similar — so often, from so many marketing “experts,” that they’ve almost lost their meaning. In today’s marketing landscape, we have a virtually unlimited assortment of advertising methods, marketing channels, and communication platforms with which to connect with customers and prospects. Everything from legacy print and broadcast media to the Internet, social media, and whatever new marketing channel or connection method one of the talented geniuses comes up with this week. It’s not only a confusing field, it is evolving at warp speed. Here’s an image that shows the rapid progression of technology over the past decade.

A truly integrated marketing firm simply creates and implements integrated advertising and marketing, including event promotion and production. That means top agencies now accomplish whatever it takes to get a lead, make a prospect prefer your brand the most, and then helping drive the conversion to investment and brand loyalty. There are many methods, types of companies, and specialties alone.

A top integrated marketing and advertising agency does this all in-house. This means that when you hire an integrated agency as your event production company, you get more than a successful event and a couple of videos squeezed from the show flow. Without the help of additional vendors, an integrated agency, like FabCom, brings artists, writers, programmers, computer artists, photo- and videographers, audio recording, green screen for AR and AI, event marketing, production, and optimization, collateral materials, and whatever else it might take to boost the success of your brand, your mission, your cause, and your event.

But that’s not all. Because you’re choosing an integrated marketing and advertising agency over an average event production company, all planning that goes into the event is strategic. An integrated agency creates a plan for success and increased ROI throughout the year, with your event being one of the steps to achieve that. As your company follows the strategic optimized marketing plan towards success, promotion and brand loyalty are put into place for a better event next year.

Our best-of-class agency, with offices in Los Angeles, Seattle, O’ahu, HI, and Scottsdale, would be the envy of most giant ad shops in New York. Whatever it takes to move the needle for your company’s revenues and ROI, we empower it. At FabCom (FC), this is all accomplished with all of the cross-discipline experts shoulder to shoulder. It’s all in-house, embedded and integrated in everything we do.

Event Marketing Scenario

This client engagement provides an excellent overview and example of the breadth of a top integrated agency’s proven capabilities and the power of integrated marketing and event production.

A not-for-profit organization dedicated to the support and promotion of radical life extension and physical immortality came to the agency when they experienced marketing and logistical challenges. This group of early adopting advocates has a goal of influencing a much broader audience, and ultimately the mainstream population.

Their major fundraising initiative was an annual promotional exposition, coming into its third year. The group felt that organizing and promoting the event was becoming too much and that they were only reaching a limited audience – they needed an integrated marketing firm that could pick up and carry the logistical load as well as make the event more successful from year-to-year with a broader audience appeal.

They had built their potential audience for the event by leveraging their partners’ and speakers’ networks. They found that – even with a mutual connection – it can still be difficult to engage and motivate people within their event marketing areas.

With event attendance trending below projections and venue already reserved, the organization hired the agency to help only 52 days before the event. FC knew there was a big challenge to reposition them with a better ability to connect and convert more event ticket sales. In addition to the short time frame, the group’s unique message posed a challenge for broadening and deepening the prospect audience.

Marketing Process

We began, as we always do, with our comprehensive strategic development process. First addressing the audience issue.

Event Advertising Segmentation and Messaging

Based on in-depth research, the agency engineered an identity and positioning in order to have the advertising align with those elements and function as a coherent, connective, and convertible campaign. The agency team was focused on capturing the essence of the event and the benefits the potential audience would experience when considering it.

FC broke down RAADfest’s audience by looking at the demography, the psychology and the behaviors of the audience. Each group has to be marketed to and reached with unique messaging because each of these groups think of aging and life differently.

FC harnessed the emotion behind the group’s use of the infinity symbol – what it means and what it represents. From there, FC wanted to make the static gold ribbon of the previous identity come to life, showing that feeling. FC redesigned the infinity symbol to have true life in it and animated it around the target audience or feature. The symbol became unique, and even took on a role to symbolize the life force energy beyond the event’s identity.

FC presented three unique online messaging progressions for each of the age groups (30+, 50+, 65+), as well as universal male and female cohorts. The ads were designed to extend their reach beyond the group’s existing base by presenting the event as a very approachable, educational, and science-based expo for learning and fun.

Website, Online Elements, and E-commerce

The agency created a fully-functional landing page and website for the event as well as an e-commerce store. Online ads included links to both.

Event Merchandise Sales

In addition to merchandising the event itself, FC developed and sourced a line of more than 25 branded apparel and specialty items, as well as the event/ speaker videos, to sell on-site and online. Besides incremental revenue, these branded sales helped spread awareness of the group, its mission, and the event. On the landing page, users can either immediately register and pay for the expo or scroll down to see more about the event. The client was concerned about not linking the online ads to their main organization website until we explained the concept of a requisition “squeeze page.” The user is given less options so that they don’t get confused and lost in the mix. By having the squeeze page, we were able to generate more conversions and online sales.

Event Optimization

Most marketers would be surprised that an “integrated marketing and advertising agency” can not only promote an event, but also facilitate all online and on-site logistics before, during, and after the event, advise on increasing the value and revenue of the event, develop a merchandising program that results in significant incremental revenue – and video and broadcast the entire event in a 4K live stream (but more about that later). Our team even influenced the best hotel room rate for exposition attendees, and we consulted with the client to negotiate new sponsorship for them on-site during the event to bring the conference to Japan in the next year. Now that’s what we mean by integrated marketing and advertising.

In addition, FC designed and produced all visitor and vendor materials for the event, including but not limited to:

 
• Event Advertising
 
• Banner/Back Drops
 
• Event Collateral
 
• Sponsors Material and Offers
 
• Conference Badges
 
• Event Program
 
• Entrance/Environmental theme
 
• Show Flow
 
• On-site Live Video Production and Streaming

Creating Value + VIP Registration

FC created incremental value through positioning new premium tiered experiences. A low price point indicates a low value. FC merchandized the ticket values and created tracks for attendees, such as a VIP track. For example:

At the time, the client was offering VIP tickets for $495.00 and was going to have to lower that to $395.00 in order to attract enough buyers to meet the minimum count for venue commitment. FC created a value-added or premium tier for $1995.00 and sold out all the VIP tickets. That created an uplift in value for the hundreds of general admission tickets. Bottom line – the client was able to charge $100.00 more for hundreds of general admission tickets, doubling the incremental sales with the VIP ticket class.

VIP included:

 
• A nicer suite at the hotel
 
• Entrance to the Friday night
 
• “Speakers Party”
 
• Come meet the speakers, have hors d’oeuvre, wine, and beer
 
• VIP seating at presentations
 
• Only selling 20 VIP tickets
 
• VIP live stream ticket

We also developed a program of discounted reservation deposits for next year’s event which generated significant income and exceeded all pre-sales of previous years by 109%.

Social Media, LinkedIn, and Pay-Per-Click

FabCom strategy and tactics for social media allowed the organization to contact more than 28,000 new supporters of their cause during the live event. The agency’s business intelligence and social media team captured the event live and posted constantly on the social platforms.

Event Video Streaming and Recording

This was a key element of engagement in terms of the success of the event on-site, doubling total event revenue in real time, as well as expanding brand awareness and recognition for the worldwide audience using online tactics.

Our agency video team was the official videographer for the event. In a heroic effort, they produced the equivalent of four days of “live TV.” The 4K video feed was livestreamed on screens throughout the event and livestreamed online at a proprietary on-demand pay-per-view website created for that purpose. We broadcast each speaker and panel discussion on-site and online as well as recording them. All recordings are now available on the pay-per- view site and generating additional, post-event revenue for the organization.

The cross-discipline agency teams utilized a four-camera set-up with our senior video technologist directing the cameras through the operator of the livestream switcher or master control panel. Just as an event like the Oscars is covered by video professionals, our director orchestrated the coverage with “Ready camera one.” “Take camera one.” “Roll video.” It’s a testament to the quality of our people and equipment that the 4K livestream – four days of “live TV” – went off without a hitch.

The agency provided our own studio-quality video gear (remember, everything in-house!) saving the client over $40,000 in equipment rental fees:

 
• Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.5K & Blackmagic URSA 4k Cameras
 
• Taradek Wireless Transmitters
 
• Zeiss & Canon Zoom Lenses
 
• Livestream HD550
 
• SUMO LED & Phillips Hue Lights for Creative Interviews

Other imaging elements FC produced were:

 
• Show video animation and graphics/themes packages
 
• Still photography
 
• Video bumper animation
 
• Live stream promos:pre-event, pre-registration

In conclusion, the event sold out the contracted hotel rooms plus four other venues. The production value of the event was increased and most importantly, video originally planned only for the event venue was streamed and parlayed into thousands of additional interested viewers. Also, hard drives were filled with marketing-centric assets to increase the footprint and reduce costs the next year.

More About FabCom, a Top Integrated Advertising and Marketing Agency in Phoenix

For decades, FabCom has been at the forefront of developing integrated marketing strategies and applying rapidly changing technologies to communications that have produced enormous success and astonishing return on investment for our clients. From AI-driven customer experiences, turnkey brand centric event productions, ground-breaking ads, amazing direct marketing to mass or spot TV and radio, to integrated online marketing, content marketing, social media, product developments, and the most interactive AR/VR video productions and animated customer interfaces.

FabCom has had a mission to meticulously and seamlessly integrate all driving and contributing elements that influence end to end attribution, the customer experience and marketing ROI. Everything we do is in-house and strategic, including event promotion, integrated advertising, and production.