In festival and event management, we are each assigned individually to go to one of the events that are taking place in Singapore. Out of the four choices that are given, I have selected to attend the Singapore Arts festival.
The Singapore Arts festival is an event that celebrates the local arts activities from our diverse culture. It displays the hard works of the various artists from performing arts to music, theatre and also visual arts. It is where artists from up to 20 over countries, come together to offer more than 400 activities in Singapore. Now, they had incorporated performers from the local, Asian and even internationals encourages both regional and international exchanges and collaborations. The festival itself provides extensive performances outdoor for free at various venues island-wide and could also be ticketed indoor at the Esplanade theatres.
Line Up of the Festival
There are a number of lines up from the different performing arts and out of the many; I decided to attend 5 different line ups of the festival. One event that I attended was indoor performance and was ticketed at the Esplanade theatre studio and the others are free outdoor events are at the various venues in the different parts of Singapore.
What do you want to be strange.R?
The very first event that I had attended was a visual arts display just outside the Raffles city mall. It provides a display of arts using the everyday objects that always seems strange and new to us. It was transform into the experience of these people and how they transform these everyday objects that we came to see at daily basis into something that is strangely familiar to all of us.
Terima Kost (Dance)
It is a dance performance by a group of professional and talented dancers from the country Indonesia at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Through the dance, it tells a story about a group of teenagers that chose to live in the concrete jungle and how they live with it. The performers danced without any intermission for an hour straight and it was definitely full of energized and an outstanding dance performance. The story was definitely passed across well.
Red (Stalker Theatre Company)
The event took place just outside the Vivocity by a group of performers from Australia. It showcases a dance theatre, live music and circus-style performance whereby the performers did some extreme movement with the ladders while telling a story about the earth that is almost damaged by human and other nature causes.
The Diamond (The Dream Engine)
This event was held at the Merlion Park by a solo performer all the way from the United Kingdom that was hanging solely on the long white cloth moving and twirling in tune to the music, colourful and dancing lights. After the sun goes down, the light created some ghostly images of the dancer that was dangling in mid air.
Transport Exceptionnels (Compagnie Beau Geste)
The final event that I had attended was held at the Tampines open field. It was a performance from a country France showing the tender love and the mechanical digger. It showcases a series of emotion of modern love between man and machines.
Comparisons of Marketing Strategy
After some thorough research over the festivals from the different countries, I decided to compare the arts festivals that were held in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Product
It is important that in order for the festival to be a successful one, festival planners must take into consideration that what they are selling out to the mass audience will cater to the different needs, wants and at the same time ensures that they will come and pay for the event. Thus, the Singapore Arts Festivals as well as the Hong Kong Arts Festival had came up with different types of lines up to cater to the different various age groups and interest. For example, both the Singapore Arts Festival and Hong Kong Arts Festival had the different kinds of performing arts genre such as visual arts, dance, theatre and musical to cater to different interest as the people that attend the festival might have different purpose and wants from one another. At the same time, in order for them to reach out to a bigger target, both festivals from the two countries had various activities for the whole family to enjoy and even included shows that may interest the younger ones as well.
However, the Singapore Arts Festival took into consideration to provide free outdoor events for the public to enjoy, unlike The Hong Kong Arts Festivals which events are all ticketed. This helps in a way that it will attract the new comers that are just aware of the festivals and by attending these free events to witness the grant and excitement of the whole festival it may help to arouse their interest to come back the next year festival for a ticketed programme.
Place
In order to enhance the atmosphere of the festival, the selection of venue plays a big role in making the festival more Both the Singapore Arts Festivals and the Hong Kong Arts Festivals are mostly ticketed events, thus the events are usually held indoors in big arts convention centre. For the Singapore Art Festivals, the ticketed events are held at the Esplanade theatre which is a very well-known hub for the performing arts by professional artist from all over the world as well as local artist. The Hong Kong Art festival had also make use of big theatres in the country such as the Hong Kong City hall and also Hong Kong Academy for performing arts halls to conduct their events. Both countries ensure that they are holding their events at prestigious and well known places to show that the festival that is going on are grant and also provide an exclusive and one of a kind feeling to their viewer as such places are seldom patron by the people.
Also, The Singapore Arts festivals management had taken in mind to hold some of their events at the most frequent and most populated area of visitation places in
Singapore. For example, the Orchard road and Marina Bay. This is definitely a
great way to showcase the festival out to the massive crowds. However, the
Hong Kong Arts Festival does not feature any of their events at such strategic
places. Since most of the events in Hong Kong Art Festivals are mostly indoors and
in closed surrounding, public will not be able to share the excitement of the event
much.
Partnership
Events such as the festivals usually work hand in hand with partners to package their product better. This is so to make their packages worth buying and attractive. Thus, The Singapore Arts festival had partnered with Barossa esplanade to provide buyers to the Singapore Arts festival certain exclusive privileges such as 10% off their ala carte meals and also provide them with cheap rates to their wine and beers upon showing their tickets.
Same goes to the Hong Kong Arts festival, they had partnered with Master card to provide free up to 6 or 10 months of interest-free installment period to pay for their festivals tickets if they holds a ‘Hong Kong Arts Festival Mastercard’.
Promotions
To prevent from creating an one-off effort, both The Singapore Arts Festival and Hong Kong Arts Festival have come up with a promotion of providing special privileges to those who become a member to the festivals. For the Singapore Arts festival, they came up with the Artsfest club and it actually provides the individual who joined in with exclusive privileges such as being the first few to find out of the Arts festival information, getting the tickets at discounted rates, good seats will be reserved specially for them upon request and many more. Plus, there was no registration fee for signing up as a member.
The Hong Kong festival had the same concept as well that was sold out to the locals and tourist that was called Festival friend. Similarly, a member of Festival friends are entitled to special privileges also such as discounted ticket prices, preview information of the festivals and many more. Also, both festivals from the two countries had aggressive advertisement to launch out the festival such as having posters up, commercial advertisement in televisions and more.
I realized that there are certain differences between the two festivals. Singapore Art festival member club, Artsfest, are given better privilege by being able to volunteer to help out in the event at the festival. This enables them to get up close and personal to the performers and at the same time being able to witness the festival. Thus, this will encourage more of the public to sign up for the membership and thus, attracting more people to attend for the festival. The Hong Kong Festival had no whatsoever packages or promotions to market out the festival further.
Packaging and Distribution
The Singapore Art Festival provided package purchasing of tickets. For example, after buying tickets for more than 4 shows, one is entitled to a total discount of up to 15%. Same goes to the Hong Kong Art Festival, in order to receive respond of creating sales for the ticket, they came up with special benefit to those who make advanced booking of tickets such as tickets discounts or free drink coupons.
Also, both countries provide convenience to overseas people who wish to attend the event. For the Singapore Arts festival, they had included information for them to book their tickets by providing the addresses of overseas Sistic agents for them to get their tickets from and for the Hong Kong Art festival, they had provided overseas fax numbers for those who live overseas to book their tickets.
However, the Hong Kong Arts Festival management had take into deeper consideration to make better convenience to the potential visitor by providing a postal booking service for them. This is especially good for those people with busy and hectic schedule and would prefer things to be mailed out to their house directly. Unfortunately, the Singapore Arts Festival did not provide any such services to sell out their tickets out further.
Programming
In order to engage their viewers, both the Singapore Arts festival and Hong Kong Arts Festival show that they can provide variety to their programs. The Singapore Arts festival had different types of performing arts shows lined up to cater to the different needs and wants of the viewer. Thus for the festival event in Singapore, they had came up with different types of shows such as theatre, music, dance and visual arts. The Hong Kong Arts Festival had the same exact lines up for their festival but just that they had a show on orchestra as well.
The difference between the two festivals is that the Singapore Arts Festival offers
free events for the public to enjoy. This is definitely to bring awareness to a first timer
the enjoyable experience of the festivals. The events for the Hong Kong Arts Festival
have no free events for everyone to enjoy.
People
In order to create satisfaction feeling of the festival in the visitors, the Singapore Arts
festival had taken significant notice of the surrounding of the event such as the safety
of the visitors and the performers. For example, in one of the outdoor events that I
had attended, they had gate barriers to prevent any distraction made by the viewer
and also to make use of it as a divider to separate the viewer from coming into the
performer’s zone. Same goes to the Hong Kong Arts festival, their events are
guarded by securities and police on duty to ensure safety of everyone so that those
who did not have tickets do not come to gate crash the event.
Since most of the events in the Hong Kong Arts Festival are ticketed and indoors, the viewers are not able to enjoy and experience a unique atmosphere of the celebration of the festival as much as those viewers in the Singapore Arts Festival.
Price
In order for such event to happen, up to thousands over money needed to make it a successful one. Thus, it is important that these festivals incur prices on their event shows to make sales. Thus, both the festival in Singapore and Hong Kong had imposed prices to their event shows. At the same time, they also open up merchandise stores to sell out souvenirs of the festival as well.
However, some of the events for the Singapore Arts Festivals are not ticketed unlike
the Hong Kong Art festival making it a little difficult to make the maximum profit of
the event sales.
Stakeholders of the Singapore Arts Festival
For the Singapore Arts Festival, I had identified a few of the stakeholders for the
festival. The first stakeholder will be The Singapore Tourism Board. They had
collaborated with the STB to launch out and also publicize to the public of the festival
that will be held in Singapore. It is the official partner that helps in promoting the
event and alongside of that, it will also helps in promoting Singapore as a destination
to visit.
The second stakeholder that I had identified is the PSB academy. They are the
sponsors to one of the event in Singapore Arts Festival, ‘Arts on the move’. They
believed that arts are also part of education where it challenges your creativity, talent
and humanity of the learner. Thus, they wanted to promote and support such event to
encourage everyone of the benefits of the performing arts.
The very last stakeholders will be the Singapore Tote Board. They help in providing fund to the Singapore Arts Festival so that it will be able to operate. The purpose of funding this festival is because they encourage anything that will bring benefit to the community of the country. Knowing that the Singapore Arts Festival will bring good such as attracting tourist and also improving the economy of Singapore, they do not hesitate to help out in delivering a success to the festival.
Best Practices
The Singapore Arts Festival had come up with all sorts of marketing strategies to publicize the event itself in the country.
The very first marketing strategy that they had was that they had actually open up an official website solely to provide all the necessary information about the festival in a single site. It provides details of the events line up on the different dates and even included specific venues and timing. It also provides short scopes on every event that will be shown for the festival.
Secondly, that I realized of was they had commercial advertisement on the line ups of the Arts festival on the Singapore’s main television channel, channel 5, and also other Mediacorp stations such as Suria, Okto and Channel 8 every now and then. Each time, they aired out different lines up of the festival and also included the dates, timing and venues also. At the same time, they also broadcast the events through radio stations such as 98.7FM and 98.FM. It is definitely one of the better and easier ways to inform the nation wide of the festival that was happening since almost every household in Singapore owns a television or radios.
They had also collaborated with their official sponsors such as coca-cola to advertise the Singapore Arts festival on their drink cans. The layout and design of the logo of The Singapore Arts Festival that was displayed on their drink cans was one of the strategic ways they had in mind to publicize the event to the nation.
They had also displayed big banners on the festival event at the most visited places in Singapore by the roadsides or even on the sides of the escalators and sliding doors. Usually the banners are found at the most popular and busiest venues such as the Esplanade, City Hall, Orchard Roads and Clark Quay where tourists and locals love to hang around at most for leisure purposes.
Another way that they had come up with was to provide free outdoor events for everyone to enjoy. It helps to promote the festival as it provides an idea of what the festival will be all about and also helps in cultivating interest in newcomers who are just aware of the festival. Hopefully, in this way, they will be keen and look forward to attend another set of events for the Singapore Arts festival in the next coming year.
Purpose of Event
The entire purpose of this event that is taking place in Singapore annually is because to continue on strengthening the arts deep within the hearts of the modern generations. Now that we are improving and moving towards technologically-wise, we tend to rely on computer games or IT gadgets for entertainment. Even now, music and arts can be obtained through the guitar hero and PSP or even be downloaded directly from online to watch live performances at the comfort of their own home through their desk tops or laptops. Little did they know that the excitements of witnessing such events are slowly forgotten and disappearing. This event helps these young ones to keep in touch with the beauty of performing arts in any sorts of form such as dance, theatre, visual arts and more at the various venues such as theatre halls, open field, along the streets and many more. These events will also help to create an ongoing awareness to the performing arts and visual arts. Even though it is not more than just a leisure and entertainment, it is important to instill this on as these performances and arts provides meaning and certain history behind our culture. Also, by holding such events in a country, it provides a platform and stage for these talented artists to show their brilliant talents. At the same time, along the way they could actually cultivate an unknown interest that an individual have towards the performing arts. The festival will help to reach out to massive audiences it holds meanings and stories behind every performances and that it is not just empty.
Tourism benefits
When such events take place, it obviously brings in more revenue to the country as these events will attract more tourists to the countries. This is especially the tourist that comes to support and watch the performances from their respective countries.
At the same time, it provides opportunity for Singapore and the other different countries to work together to bring a festival together. They are able to share ideas and experiences and also learn from each other through such events. If there are good ties between any countries with Singapore, there could be an opportunity for Singapore to be invited to perform and showcase our talent to their country.
The other tourism benefit is that it provides awareness to Singapore especially that we are such a small island and have not much publicity of our country in the other countries. Thus with such festivals taking place, massive and aggressive advertising will provide extensive publicity of the festivals, thus attracting tourist and visitors for the event. In return, it brings in more tourists to our country in future.
Overall, I realized that having such events like the Singapore Arts Festival brings not only benefits to the economy of Singapore, but at the same time bring a whole new experience and interest of the individual in Singapore’s community. Personally, for someone who have no interest in the performing arts, I was impressed with the festival and am looking forward to a whole new events for the upcoming festival the following year as it not only create interest inside me but also, open up to me the fun and light message that these performing arts have in store.
