Quality management of events

Abstract: Social media and the web give a target group a never ending flow of information up to a point where there is no possibility to take it all in. Because of this a campaign easily disappears amongst all the information. Therefore it can be advantageous for a company to use events as a marketing channel. An event is an activity that gathers the target group in time and space – a meeting in which an experience is created and a message is communicated. It triggers emotions and can be used by a company in order to create a stronger relationship to a target group, which could generate a stronger brand identity. Since a happening like an event creates stronger feelings than traditional media, such as an advertisement in a newspaper, an event can also create strong negative feelings. These feelings can be connected to the brand. Because of this, it is important to plan the work process of the event carefully and to use quality management methods. This should be done with the brand in consideration, and how it is supposed to be communicated. By the conduction of four qualitative interviews and observations for twelve weeks, an investigation has been done on a communication agency. The aim was to investigate how a communication agency works with quality management when doing events. The aim was also to investigate how they, when working, consider the customer’s brand. This is done in order to see how quality management affect a target group’s impression of a brand. The material has been analysed or compared to theories about quality management, brand communication and emotional marketing. The result shows that there is methods that can be used to quality manage a work process of an event. Overall the focus should be on building in quality in the work process by hiring and consulting the right people and partners and using tried out methods and approaches. When that foundation is built, the quality management of every part of the project should be done continuously throughout the project. By using quality management, the focus can initially be on the aim of the event and on the target group as well as on finding the appropriate project group. It is crucial that the agency initially gets all the information needed about the customer and the brand. That information helps the agency to fulfil the goals and to continue the process, production and implementation with the brand in consideration. If the project initially has goals and aims, a valuable evaluation can be conducted after the event and its results can be used in order to improve the agency’s work. The work with the brand, that is supposed to be communicated, should be considered in the overall theme and goals of the event, as well as in all the small components. In this way the customer gets a well--‐adjusted solution with the goal to communicate the brand in the right way to the right target group. Exactly how different types of quality management methods can affect the target group’s impression of the brand is hard to answer without further investigations. One thing to be sure of is that it does affect the impression. The agency’s initial research and considerations of needs and goals of the company and its target group strongly affects the agency’s work. Therefore it also affects the outcome of the event and how well it suits the customer’s needs. If an agency work with the customer and its needs in mind, it gives better conditions for giving the customer what the customer needs and to reach the right target group with right message.