Thursday, June 26, 2008

The Adidas Sundown Marathon

Introduction
The event i am going to introduce on is the Adidas Sundown Marathon. It is a marathon that takes place at Changi point, on 31 May 2008 at night. There are four different races, such as the Ultra-Marathon 84km race which takes place at 8.30pm, the Marathon 42km race at 11.59pm, the Corporate Challenge 10.5km and the Team Challenge 10.5km race at 8.30pm. There are a total of 6029 participants, which includes VIP participants such as Mr. Michael Palmer, a member of parliament for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC.


Background of the organizer
The organizer is HiVelocity Ptd Ltd. It is a company who has passion and love for sports. They have a great team, which is made up of energetic and driven people who love sports. They provide knowledge, consultancy, marketing and distributing sports brand and organizing sporting events. There are two different units, the Brand Team and the Event Team. The Brand Team distributes top international sporting brands for sports, while the Event Team caters in sports marketing and sports event management.
Role of event to Singapore
This sundown marathon will be beneficial to Singapore, because it is the first night marathon race, making Singapore special and attractive for this event. It helps to create revenue for Singapore, as many people are signing up for the event. It also provides publicity for such event, so that in future, similar events will be popular and hence increase yields and demands for it. The event also acts as a catalyst for supporting other attractions, such as Changi Chapel and the ferry point to Pulau Ubin which is near the place where the event took place. It will also benefit Singapore in place marketing as well. The sundown marathon creates positive images, because with the event, Changi Point become more lively and more crowded with people and this improves the quality of life for the residents staying around the area. The event is also a sporting event which promotes healthy well-being. With such a big event in Changi Point, it also attracts residents living around the area to go to the event to explore or to participate.

Stakeholders
The stakeholders of the event includes the organizer, HiVelocity Ptd Ltd, the title sponsor, Adidas and the rest of the sponsors: Premium Sports Nutrition—Powerbar, Your Heart Rate Monitor—Polar, Official Hydration Pack—Ultimate Direction, Your Training Partner—Athlete’s Circle, Event Partner—National Parks and partner in Sports—MILO, Dell, Field Gear, SgRunners.com, SMU, ELM. In additional, the rest of the stakeholders will be the VIP participants, the runners, the media, the spectators, volunteers, the event road crew, the security measure group, the stage crew and the construction crew as well.

Target Market
The target market includes male or female adults and youths from the age of 18 to 74 years old, who love to do sports, and corporate team members who are interested in sporting event.


Marketing strategies employed by the organizer
The marketing strategy employed by the organizer will be promotions through internet marketing. The organizer set up an Adidas Sundown Marathon website to increase awareness to get people to know and introduce them about the event. Due to technological advancement, many people are using internet everyday; hence marketing an event on internet will be good to reach out for corporate members, adults and youths. At the same time, the internet provides Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for the readers to know more in-depth about the marathon and to answer their queries about the event. The website provides with attractive prizes for the winners and goodie bags, to attract people to participate in the event. In additional, it provides special promotion prices for people who sign up early for the event. The earlier they sign up for the event, the cheaper the price it is for the event. Such promotions can be the early birds promotions, special period promotions and the normal period prices.
http://www.sundownmarathon.com/

They employed using print advertisement, such as the newspaper to increase the awareness level for the marathon event. This is to reach out to a bigger market of the target market in Singapore, as most Singaporeans read newspaper. Also, word of mouth to other people can be useful in the sense that they pass on details on the marathon to other people. The Product of the event would be the marathon race itself. As the marathon race is the first night race in Singapore, it allows participants to enjoy the difference of running at night and in the afternoon. Running at night is usually quieter and it usually give a different experience for the runners, making the race special and unique. In additional, Adidas is a famous brand with great reputation, having them as a title sponsor would build up the image of HiVelocity. The place will be at Changi Point, and the race covers the area of residential area, the Bedok reservoir, the beach, and the scenic view of the surroundings at night. This provides the runners with awful experiences and reflections. As for the people, there are volunteers seen around the event, giving help and directing people or participants who need assitance. They are integral and important to the event in making the event a sucessful one.
Rate the organization of the event
I would rate the event on an equal scale of 5 out of 10. There are advantages, as well as disadvantages on the organization of the event. The advantages about the event will be that there are enough volunteers around every booth, because volunteers act as an important role in making an event a successful one. If it was not for their help, the event would not run smoothly. Their perseverance and dedication are crucial to the success of the event. The quality of service the volunteers gave was great, because when I was around the event, I asked one volunteer on where is the starting point for the race; he kindly showed me the way through. In additional, from what I had observed, they were very supportive to the participants.
The security in the event is tight, as there are guards guarding the event, road and directing cars. The prizes, medal, goodie bags, running t-shirts are attractive and appealing as well. I would rate the whole atmosphere of the event as moderate, as the good thing about it was that it has banner advertisements on famous sporting brand, Adidas, having tagline such as "Impossible is nothing" which was appealing and inspiring. However, because the event happens at night, there was less cheering for the participants, therefore the event give a feeling of being dull and not active as compared to a marathon that occur in the afternoon. Lastly, the temporary tents in the event were not really attractive as well.

The disadvantages on the organization of the event would be that the location of the event is not accessible, because it is located at the east side of Singapore.It might not be accessible for people coming to the event from the north side. Furthermore, there are not enough car park lots found at the location. We need to place the event at a place near the central area, whereby it is accessible for everybody and also have a bigger car park area. There are not enough medical assistant at many running points and the route markings are not really obvious at certain points, because the light sticks used for the route marking were found mostly at unseen places and the colors used for the light stick was blue, which is hard to identify.

Moreover, the event does not really have a wet weather plan, because there are not enough shelters seen around to shelter the participants or spectators when it rains. The runners who were running have to find their own shelters when it rains. Hence, if it rains, they must have a proper planning of whether or not the race is still going to continue or whether there are other plans to it. At some part of the race, the water point was too far apart at some point, they should plan to have an equal distance of water point, from each water point. Therefore, with all these advantages and disadvantages or the event, I would rate the organization of the event on an equal scale.



The potential of the event by the organizer to meet tourist demand
I feel that the event has some potential in meeting tourist demand, in a sense that it is large scale and it also attracts tourists who like sports. As sports tourism is a Special Interest Tourism now and because of its popularity, many people are going to countries for sporting purposes. In additional, the Adidas Sundown Marathon takes place at night, making it a special marathon sporting event in Singapore and tourists usually demand in special and unique event hence it has great potential of attracting people from different countries or a larger market to join the event.

There are definitely more potential to meet tourist demand. We all know that the event is a first time night marathon event in Singapore, it does not really reach the potential of tourists from overseas, as most people who join the event will be local people. In order to get more people from overseas to know or participate in the event, the organizer could advertise the event internationally. They could advertise or publicize it through travel agency, or collaborate with them to advertise the event to the overseas tourists. This is because, travel agency usually has close contact with tourists from overseas, therefore, with collaborations, it really helps to reach out to a larger market.

How the value of the event could be raised to be align with the tourism mission of Singapore
The singapore tourism mission of Singapore is " We develop and champion tourism, so as to build the sector into a key driver of economic growth for Singapore." There are ways for the marathon event to align with the tourism mission of Singapore. We can invite journalist to write about the event, together with the help of the media, to post the event as world news, so that everybody know about the special night marathon event in Singapore. With increase awareness of the event internationally, it will generate interest for people from overseas who loves sports to come to Singapore for the event. Increase demand for the event, will definitely yield positive economic returns for Singapore.



References: