ABSTRACT
Event hosting and the provision of events by organisations typically involve marketing as a managerial function to add value to the consumer experience. This may simultaneously involve the role of the media as part of this managerial process. A complex relationship exists between events, the marketing process and the media, often articulated as a desire for promotion of the event to garner an audience, to create an image and desire to encourage attendance at the event. This chapter discusses the nature of events as an offer to market (i.e. to potential consumers) and focuses on the marketing communication process as applied to events and mediated by the media. Key concepts such as branding are reviewed together with the potential offered by the ‘new media’ (even though these forms are no longer new) including blogs, vlogs and podcasts and their application through generated marketing. Generational marketing focuses on broad characteristics and their habits based on age categories, labelled more commonly as consumer groups such as technology-savvy millennials, Generation Y and the baby boomers.
