The loss of Oban’s Hogmanay street party leaves a serious dent in a lot of things:
- the town – at the party-time of the year
- the local tourism industry – with no major draw to bring visitors to the west coast’s most beautiful waterside town
- Argyll’s credibility – how can we hope or pretend to be a major player if we consistently fail to succeed with major events in uniquely scenic places like Oban, with its Hogmanay funfest and Inveraray with its Connect Music Festival?
Any outdoor event in the Scottish climate, even at the most fortuitous times of the year, remains a lottery.
But how vigorous, innovative, focused and successful has been the marketing side of operations? Internet-based marketing strategies are the berdock of smart marketing today. This is the generator of electronic word-of-mouth information that can raise the profile of an event fast and far.
The Internet marketing of both the Connect Festival and the Oban Hogmanay event – whose budget, as a community-based gig will have been much lower – did not demonstrate any great knowledge or performance in this area.
But even at entry-level work, here’s an insight into the Oban Hogmanay party operation.
- No one, from its inception two years ago, has sent us any press material of any description, yet our work in promoting Argyll has been notably successful and is constantly growing.
- When we heard that this year’s event was in trouble and had to achieve a specific volume of ticket sales in short order, we did a news piece to help to flag up the need for Argyll audiences to abandon the habit of buying tickets on the door.
- At the same time we contacted a key organiser and offered to do an immediate major piece in time to help to attract the needed advance sales. The advantage of our online service is speed to audience.
- We did not receive even the courtesy of a reply.
This raises two serious questions:
How capable was the marketing of the event?
How serious were the organisers in their efforts to save it?
The enduring difficulty is that failure damages confidence in Argyll – externally, of course. Perhaps even more damagingly, it causes internal damage because successive failures subliminally condition Argyll to believe that the area cannot successfully mount medium to large scale events of this nature.
And it’s not down to the weather. How many years has Glastonbury been a mud pie? Has it damaged the durability and popularity of the event?
Oban’s alternatives for 2009′s Hogmanay – customise your own night
Oban and Lorn Tourism Association (OLTA) is promoting a wide range of events taking place around the town at Hogmanay. There’s plenty to do and a wide range of different venues.
Why not scan the possibilities at the OLTA website’s Hogmany events page and put together a night’s fun touring your own selection of events? And the boats in the bay will be hooting the bells as usual.
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There could be three reasons that they chose to ignore your offers of help.
1. They simply ignored them as they felt they had it all under control and were incredibly rude.
2. They didn’t rate you as a potential promoter.
3. They had no intention of going ahead.
I think it was probably 1.
Many businesses – especially in Argyll- don’t appear to ever read their email. I gave up on the local paper years ago after several email requests were ignored.( thought they have got their act together now). My most recent encounter was with the local radio station looking for volunteers. Email us now blah blah blah….. my offer of help remains unread on their server somewhere – 3 weeks and counting.
Your site gives good coverage of what’s happening in Argyll, always rank high in Google’s organic search. So you are doing something right. Admittedly I’m not keen on the visual design which put me off for quite some time. It may be a factor. However, the more I return the more I appreciate the content. Good job – keep it up:o)
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For David Farrell-Shaw: Going by your analysis, David, even if we were seen as useless we have a good audience we could – and would – have got them to for nothing. Simply not to bother to use a willing instrument that is to hand is to discard a potential audience and to demonstrate an operational culture that is bound to fail.
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No matter how good the marketing of an event it is inevitably to bad marketing that is attributed the immediate blame for unmet expectations or failure. Sometimes this may indeed be part of the problem, but it is often simplistic to heap blame on that without taking time to consider other factors.
I admit I don’t know anything about the Oban event, but running events of any kind is never easy; from the initial funding form filling, complex organisation, delivery and then the time consuming reporting back to funders and the proving of economic benefit to the area, with an accompanying quota of difficulties and problems to resolve. Those who run the Oban Hogmanay event will undoubtedly have disappointed many who were looking forward to the celebration and will feel the brunt of that disappointment. However, when bands or other performers have been booked, and the resultant financial contracts entered into, there does come a point when significantly lower than anticipated ticket sales inevitably raises the question of viability. Will those people who are aware of the marketing but have indicated their attendance is dependent on the weather, what’s on TV or whether, come the evening, they can be bothered, will actually turn out and buy tickets? If they do, then the event may well break even. If they don’t, there could be a substantial loss, and in the case of events run by voluntary organisations, this loss may well require to be footed by members of its committee.
Each event organised is a massive gamble which at the end of the day turns on whether it is supported by the public or not. Those volunteers who give generously of their time, energies and expertise get their return in the satisfaction of running a concert or festival which gives pleasure and enjoyment. If the event is not a success, then there is no satisfaction, so little point in continuing the process. Those who ran the Oban Hogmanay event deserve praise for their attempt, and surely a little bit more understanding for its cancellation.
Forargyll is indeed a site we in Argyll are extremely lucky to have, and its record in promoting Argyll issues and events, and in helping draw together a fragmented area is second to none. However, widespread apathy is still a force to be reckoned with. And until we have the whole of Argyll marketed with professionalism and panache, the area is going to continue to struggle against other parts of Scotland which got their tourism acts together many years ago and are now reaping the benefits.
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For Dorothy Bruce: One gap area which was highlighted during the Cowal Tourism Forum’s session at Ardkinglas earlier this year was product development. VisitScoland has no responsibility for product development and the Enterprise agencies are notably shy of supporting such initiatives. The notion that marketing is mission critical rests on the parallel notion that the product itself is good enough in the first place. It should be – but this is not always the case.
We notice that linnhe, above, sees the proposed programme for what would have been the 2009 Oban Hogmanay as ‘not what the party folks were wanting’. Certainly it could be said that it was short on imagination; and on the marketing side we would agree with linnhe’s comments on its website.
If Scotland’s – and Argyll’s – tourism industry is to develop as there is room for it to do, product development needs to march hand in hand with marketing on strategic campaigns. What we have at the moment is unfocused marketing with products and the necessary infrastructural support that are erratic to say the least.
We have identified a new, worthwhile, specifically targeted and gettable audience for part of the tourism sector in Argyll and have taken some soundings as preliminary market testing. It’s early days but seems more than positive enough to merit serious exploration. But product development is at the heart of it. At the moment, not all of the elements involved co-exist in the necessary clusters. So, until there is a policy, funding and a clear route to be followed on product development, the details will have to stay in the drawer – where they may well wither.
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Their own website was contentless – nothing about the bands, nothing about last years event, nothing to encourage or excite the potential visitor.
There has been little marketing at all, who did they expect to come?
From comments around it seems that the line up was not what the party folks were wanting
If the organiser cannot read for comprehension, he does not deserve the money he is paid, he went off on one about the Tourist board comments which were, in fact, attacking the prices of Christmas entertainment in places outwith Scotland, and was inviting people to come to Scotland – for peace and quiet or for a different parties.
To quote “This year escape the crowds and overpriced party tickets, gather your nearest and dearest and head for Scotland for a Hogmanay house party to remember.” – ie the crowds and the over priced parties were NOT in Scotland. That should have been used to support the Oban Street party – get folks to Argyll and then entertain them.
How come he had not got more involved with the Tourist board already to promote the event?
The statement from the organisers also indicates that there were already issues behind the scenes “now faced with a number of external factors totally out with our control” that meant they were in trouble anyway.
And blaming BBC Alba, who could have been used to promote the event, and are only performing in front of a token few hundred audience, is just playground tantrums.
It is clear from all the responses that the organisers were incapable of working WITH others, of organising something that the public actually wanted to visit, and were their normal utterly arrogant selves.
What a shame for Oban, but well done to the OLTA for keeping the banner for what a great place Oban will be for Hogmanay.
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Trouble is folks – I only stumbled across your website “For Argyll” – who are you, where do you operate from and by what means can the folk of Argyll contact you? As one minor member of the Argyll public who has never heard of you I suggest that many other people are in the same position – please let us know what you are all about! Maybe then you will be seen as a website that we would access in preference to the Oban Times, for example. I kinda suspect that the organisers of the Oban Hogmanay event don’t know much about your either…!
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What a complacent post.
I don’t who the guys are that do this site and I dont care because I can see what they do and it’s good (and I’ve checked out the sites performance and it’s good). These are the things that count. Maybe they’re doing this site from Japan or South Korea or somewhere – who knows and who cares. There’s a good Islay Weblog site that seems to be done by a guy from Holland and who else has done anything as good as either of these two sites.
Do you need someone to tell you something’s good or bad? You don’t sound as if you can tell the difference all by yourself.
I don’t know who you are either but you sound as if you’re connected with the Oban Hogmanay party as was and you’re sore.
And if you are and that’s what you do as opposed to what the For Argyll guys do – I can see why the event went down the jacksi. You’re just not up to speed.
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Ooooooh, toys out the pram! Wonder who you are then….sounds like you have a personal beef against the hogmanay organisers and indeed probably with anyone who tries to do anything in this part of the world.
Bottom line is that anything that fails in Argyll through lack of support just adds another nail to the coffin and does nothing to promote that standing of the area in the eyes of the locals and others looking in. How often have you heard “there’s nothing do do here…”
Argyll is God’s country but needs willing hands to make sure the economic well-being of the land continues to gow and develop to keep our communities viable.
Read your reply again; sounds like you are not part of the Argyll community but have some sort of chip you need to get rid off.
Anyhoo, in my eyes anyone who tries to help communities of Argyll to prosper is nothing short of a Local Hero (and that includes the For Argyll website)
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