50 | OPP INDUSTRY AWARD PROFILE: A Place in the Sun
www.opp.org.uk | JUNE 2010
Exhibiting success
Thorough and detailed research, plus a real willingness to experiment helped the organisers behind “A Place in the Sun Live” to stand out from the crowd in the OPP Industry Awards 2010 Best Exhibition Platform category. Geoff Hadwick reports.
carefully at the profile of the 9,062 visitors who attended its Earls Court show in early April 2009, they found some very revealing information. “Independent research showed us that 58% of our visitors were planning to buy an overseas property within the next 12 months and 85% within the next two years,” APITS reported, and their “average budget was £196,000.” It must have made for cheery reading and given everyone involved a boost. What’s more, APITS also found that 68% of its audience planned to buy abroad with “savings rather than a mortgage, finance or equity release.” In other words, the show had pulled off a neat trick … where else would you find thousands of willing international property buyers in the same place at the same time, many of them
W
hen the organisers of A Place in the Sun Live 2009 (APITS Ltd) looked
completely untroubled by the vagaries of the credit crunch? Amazingly, a third of the show’s visitors already own property abroad and this sizeable chunk of the audience goes to APITS “looking to expand its portfolio, usually for investment purposes.” This is not a gathering of the weird and the naïve.
Does all of this come together by chance, or is it down to some well- honed marketing?” Needless to say, nothing is left to chance and the organisers work really hard to make sure the audience that they want to see turns up. “A Place in the Sun Live is marketed to (two different) targeted audiences” say the organisers. The first chunk of the promotional push is aimed at savvy property-buying consumers who have already got the bug. The second part of the campaign targets the wider (and less knowledgeable) general
consumer market through a varied mix of promotional tools. For instance, national, regional and specialist press are used to promote ticket sales, as well as an extensive trade and consumer PR campaign. Of course, the show benefits enormously from Channel 4 promoting the exhibition via announcements after A Place in the Sun programmes have gone out. The TV people also very supportive on their website
www.channel4.com. And all of this is underwritten by a comprehensive below-the-line campaign including: • direct mail • door drops • email broadcasts to our the APITS database
• email broadcasts to targeted databases such as Rightmove, Property Index and Primelocation.
The key question, of course, is what does the price tag look like? Answer:
about £250,000 per annum. That is no mean spend, but the
organisers know it will all be wasted if the visitor experience is poor. Every exhibition is only as good as the audience it generates. APITS does everything it can to make sure visitors go home happy. The show bosses says “APITS Live is designed with the
“Amazingly, a third of the show’s visitors already own property abroad”
end-buyer of overseas property in mind. Our aim is to deliver shows that inspire confidence and are informative and practical.” “We invest £100,000 per show in visitor attractions (including a) main stage with the presenters from the show, seminar theatres and feature areas. We carefully select over 30 speakers from
BUSINESS
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