How Event Marketing is used to Communicate Place Brands

These days, the strategic tool of branding concepts is not limited to just product brands but also used for place brands. Place brands have the need to differentiate themselves from other places in the eyes of stakeholders. By effectively communicating with its stakeholders, place brands can harvest the benefits of having strong brand associations. One relatively new and unexplored way of communicating the place brand is through the use of event marketing. Event marketing is a strategic tool that is used to communicate to the stakeholders, influence customers and add to the brand. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a better understanding on how event marketing is used to communicate place brands.To achieve the purpose of the thesis a qualitative case study of Swedish ski-resorts where chosen. The primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with two knowledgeable and experienced people in the area of the branding process for Swedish ski-resorts. The findings indicate that places have different stakeholder groups that they consider more or less important but that the activities places conduct will affect all groups rendering them almost equally important. When it comes to the use of event marketing, places conduct well planned long term events and sponsorships with firmly set objectives. For what purpose and how this is done depends on the stakeholders, the objectives with the event and what the place want to communicate. The findings further suggest that some of the purposes can be to add to the place’s brands image, to attract customers, to illuminate certain aspects of the place and to provide “that little extra” to the customers’ satisfaction.Validerat; 20150624 (global_studentproject_submitter