THE MAIN EVENT
The events industry has been reshaped and disrupted but is adept at adapting to new trends, writes Entourage’s Ziad Faour
gears up to host one of the biggest sports tournaments in the world, the Football World Cup 2022. As fans from across the world travel to watch their favourite teams compete, and major events take place on the periphery of the World Cup, the economy of the country will most definitely flourish with the influx of tourists and surge in demand for the hospitality sector. Egypt on the other hand has been making strides of its own in the sector, with its new MICE strategy and is gearing up to bring the world to Egypt for the next UN Climate Change Conference (COP 27), slated for November this year.
The hybrid approach seems to be the motto of our generation of marketers. With media planning taking the lead to split budgets between offline and online media to events being planned with physical and virtual touchpoints, strategies have evolved to include every new media channel, various audience segments, static and interactive branding elements, and consumer engagement activations, all tied together with brand messaging.
For example, at Entourage, we have worked with multiple countries to devise marketing strategies to promote tourism, highlight all the important sectors of the country and bring in investment. Promoting countries is the most challenging marketing job there is. Promoting countries not just for tourism, but for business and investment, and actually witnessing the intangible impact of the success of the campaign on the development and progress of the country itself. With multiple avenues that need to be marketed and messaging that needs to justify every aspect, it requires in-depth knowledge of geography, history, culture, traditions, population demographics, agriculture and industry and everything you can imagine. With countries, the most important task is to align the marketing strategy with the overall country strategy and develop a bank of content and media to drive the narrative through the right marketing channels, using the right mix of storytelling and immaculate creativity and to always remain true to authenticity. As destination marketing campaigns involve multiple different clusters of audiences and different geographies, media planning and budgeting are as crucial as producing the creative campaign itself. But once you have a successful campaign, the results percolate down to all sectors. This is where I feel our next biggest opportunity is.
The other side of an opportunity is always a threat or a challenge. As volatile as our industry may be, it has proven to be resilient and agile in the face of instability. The threat of financial recessions and the possibility of another global contagion creating havoc in our lives is very real. With more than two decades in the business, I am certain, we will come out on the winning side of any challenge.