London Fashion Week - Sponsorship

What is sponsorship?
'Sponsorship is a mutually beneficial arrangement that consists of the provision of resources or funds, goods or services in return for a set of rights that can be used in communications activity, for the achievements of objectives for commercial gain' - Masterman, G (2007)

Organisations and businesses sponsor an event in order to tie their product or service to that market segment. This segment may relate to their products or service, and will identify with the sponsors products.

Firstly I checked out the London Fashion Week website to see what sponsors they have sponsoring their event.

I believe that the majority of these sponsors will be sponsoring the London Fashion Week for a commerical advantage. This means that there is a business relationship between the provider of funds, resources or services to an individual, event or organisation which offers in return, some rights and association that they may use for commercial advantage.
Above shows all the main sponsors of the London Fashion Week. If we look at the Sponsor of the event, many of the sponsors have a link with the fashion industry. For example; Topman, Topshop, Monsoon etc are all clothing companies. M.A.C and Toni&Guy are beauty companies which also relate to fashion. Therefore, by sponsoring the London Fashion Week these businesses will be becoming more recognisable and people will relate their brand to the London Fashion Week which is a high profile fashion event. This may lead the businesses/brands to make more sales or gain more customers. Resulting in it being worth while sponsoring such an event.

Vodaphone is the principle Sponsor of London Fashion Week. Vodaphone is sponsoring the event, and in return they are holding their own London Fashion Weekend which will follow the London Fashion Week and will link to the event. This starts on Thursday 23rd of February and goes on to Sunday 26th of February. Tickets are ranging from £12.50 to £125 and customers of Vodaphone are able to buy tickets to the event 48 hours before they go on general sale. This will encourage individuals to join Vodaphone as they will want a greater chance of getting tickets to this event.

The main reasons in which these sponsors are sponsoring such an event is to, gain a competitive advantage, raise awareness of their brand/product or organisation, to build on their image and to develop and maintain relationships. These are the likely returns that they will make from sponsoring the event. By sponsoring an event such as the London Fashion Week, it is unlikely that the Sponsors will gain any negative association again their brands, therefore there is very little risk associated with sponsoring the event.
Below is a video of Sponsors Topshop's performance on the Catwalk.

Sponsoring an event like the London Fashion Week can gain recognition for brands and businesses.


http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/news_details.aspx?ID=407 - This link will take you to an article which has been released by the British Fashion Council, to thank all the main sponsors of the event.

Florence and The Machine

'Sponsorship is a mutual agreement for an exchange of benefits'

 -Sleight, 1989; Meenaghan, 1998

So after searching the internet frantically looking for at least one sponsor of the Florence and The Machine tour, i find out that there is no sponsorship. Live music concerts in general do not have sponsors of their events, unless the artist is a major name. For example; Take That had Samsung sponsoring their 2011 tour, this is an example of a well know band, having sponsorship. However, Florence is a well know artist yet her tour will not be as big as the Take That tour, therefore there is no need for sponsorship of the event.

• British Fashion Council. (2012) London Fashion Week(online)Available: http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/
• Meenaghan, T. (1998) current developments and future directions in sponsorship. Internation journal of advertising.
• Sleight, S. (1989) Sponsorship. McGraw-Hill

Website Comparison - The Florence and The Machine Tour

In a typical month, 38 million adults will use a search engine

In 2011 - 80.1 billion dollars was spent on on-line advertising

With a large amount of people using search engines, it is essential for events to be at the top of the listings for the top search engines; Google, Yahoo and Ask. 

I have already found the positioning of the London Fashion Week website, therefore here I am going to focus on the Florence and the Machine Tour website position. 

After typing 'The Florence and the Machine tour 2012' into Google, it brought back 9,300,000 results in 0.26 seconds. 

So to begin; the first 3 links which are shown more prominently are ad's which have paid to be there. They are websites which are selling tickets to the Florence and the Machine tour, however they are selling the tickets at a higher price than the tickets face value. These Sites may pay to be there in order to trick people to pay a higher price for the tour tickets.
The following two website links will take the Google user straight to the official web page for Florence and the Machine. This is good as from the website you can view all the venues of the tour and buy tickets at face value and from a trusted website.
The sixth link on Google takes you to a website which is an article about the Florence and the Machine tour. It provides some useful information and shows the tour dates.

Therefore, out of the 6 links shown, only 2 of them are trust worthy, or serves the purpose. However, people who are searching for tickets for the tour are likely to go to the official page to look for tickets, rather than purchasing them from a website which they have never heard of.

So, once you have found the Official page on Google; http://florenceandthemachine.net/

 up comes a page with nothing but a Youtube video of Florence's single,  'No light, No light' to promote her new Album and tour 'Ceremonials', and a picture of Florence herself. You then have to click the button in the top right corner to enter the main site. This does not benefit the tour at all, it may increase her album sales but it is more likely to encourage people to look elsewhere to purchase tickets, or find information. People may not notice the button in the corner at a first glance and therefore go somewhere else.

Eventually, When you get onto the Florence and the Machine Official page, you can see that there is a lot going on, as you can see from the picture I have inserted. The picture shown at the top changes every couple of seconds, to show different pictures of Florence. There is a range of buttons which you can click on to take you to different areas of the website, such as; News, media, home, gallery etc. There is also a button which says 'live' if you click on this page it then takes you to a page which tells you all of the live dates of her tour. This page is clear and easy to view. You can then from here chose the venue and purchase the tickets. However, to me this seems very long winded, people (like myself) may lose patience before they get to buying the tickets; but on the plus side, the website is very quick when clicking onto the different pages.

Now to compare the two websites; starting with the search engines.
When both the event titles were entered into Google, London Fashion Week brought back more results that lead to their main website, whereas The Florence and the Machine tour only showed 2 links out of 6 which took the user directly to the official page. Therefore, on this basis it looks to me that London Fashion Week is easier to find than the tour. This may be because the event is a better known event with more people using Google to search for it.
Moving on to compare the two websites; both of the websites have a lot going on in terms of links to different pages, and moving images. However, on both pages the buttons across the top are clear to see and therefore the pages should be fairly easy to find your way around. For both the websites you are also able to register to the events to get all the latest updates on what is happening.
All in all, both of these websites are useful and easy to find your way around. However, I would say the London Fashion Week  is the better of the two websites as it is easier to find on Google, and because the link takes you straight to the web page, rather than to a different page like The Florence and the Machine one does. There is no reason why you should not be able to find all the necessary information on either of these web pages.

• Islands Universal Records Ltd (2012) Florence and the Machine (online) Available: http://florenceandthemachine.net/

Website Comparison - London Fashion Week

Here I am going to start comparing the websites of the London Fashion Week and the Florence and The Machine Tour.

The website design can have a big impact on how the event is interpreted by the website viewers. This may have an effect on ticket sales for the event or the way people perceive the event.


I am going to start by finding the position of the London Fashion Week on the Google listings.

Typing 'London Fashion Week 2012' into Google brought me 16,500,000 results, in approximately 0.19 seconds. 16,500,000 is a lot of page results for one event, therefore, it is doubtful that a lot of these web pages are related to the 2012 London Fashion Week.
The first result on the Google list was not a direct link to the London Fashion Week website. It is a link to the Sponsors of the event, Vodaphone. However, we can see that that Vodaphone has paid to advertise at the top of this paid. In general, people tend not to click on the sponsored linked which are highlighted at the top of the page as they do not trust the link.
However, the next four links which show on the listing are direct links to the London Fashion Week website. The links which show will take the viewer to different sections of the website, for example; news and events. Therefore, 4 out of the first 5 link will take the web user straight to the London Fashion Week website.
With females clicking on the first choice in the listing in 0.71 seconds, it is bad that London Fashion Week have not got the first position on the Google list. However, as some people do not trust the highlighted advertisements at the top of the Google listings, which is fortunate for London Fashion Week - and second place may just do. Also women who click within the 0.71 seconds tend to look for key words in or beneath the link, therefore they would be more likely to chose the second or third link over the first.

Moving on to look at the London Fashion Week Website; www.londonfashionweek.co.uk

It is clear to see straight away who the main sponsor of the event is; Vodaphone. Their logo is shown under the London Fashion Week title and says 'Principal sponsor' beside it. It is also shown at the bottom of the page, with sponsors such Canon, London evening standard, Topshop and Toni & Guy. If you click on the sponsors on the page, the website will then take you to the sponsors webpage.
The website loads very quickly, and continues to do so as you move around the different sections.  The website itself first strikes you as being very clean cut, however, there is actually a lot going on on the home page and if you do not have any background knowledge on the event then this may be confusing. Across the top is different buttons which will take you to different sections of the website such as; LFW TV, Schedules, designers and many more. All in all, I think the page is fairly easy to navigate, and if you are looking for something specific about the event, then it wouldn't take a lot of time to find it.
There is a section on the website where you are able to register to the event, this will allow keen follows of the event to keep on track with what is new, without having to use the website all the time.

In my next post I will look at the website for The Florence and the Mahcine tour, and compare the two event websites.

• British Fashion Council. (2012) London Fashion Week(online)Available: http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/

Communication objectives

'Communication is the process where by thought are conveyed and meaning is shared between individuals or organisations' - Guy Masterman 2006 

We can define communication as the interchange of thoughts and opinions by speech, writing or signs. Communication allows us to convey information using a variety of methods both verbal and non verbal.

In the case of marketing, promotion and events, the supplier needs to make its communication with the target audience clear and appealing for them to interpret.  This allows them to represent themselves, their services or their products. 

      Marketing objectives is the process of getting the correct information about an event to the events correct target audience.

      Communication objectives work to create awareness, knowledge, attitudes, preferences or purchasing intentions of an event. 

The communication process

Throughout time, there have been many models of communication. For example the Linear model, the Shannon and Weaver model and Wilbur Schramm's 1954 communication model.

This is Wilbur Schramm's model of communication:

The Schramm process includes; encoding, decoding, interpreting and the message.
Encoding is the sending of the message to the consumer, ensuring that the message is informative and clear about the product or service.
Decoding is when the message has been delivered and the receiver is then to interpret the message.
As you can see from the diagram Schramm has made this process so that information which has been received, can then be replied to. This ensures that the receiver of the message understands what has been said and important information can be confirmed.

The Florence and The Machine tour will communicate with their fans to make sure that they are aware of the tour, the dates and venues. They will then rely on their fan base to purchase tickets to the event. Florence will not be able to sale tickets purely through promotion of the tour. Florence need to have ensure that she is always bringing something new to her music and is keeping her fans excited and enjoying her music. This will ensure a loyal fan base for Florence and The Machine. As tickets for the event are now limited, it would suggest to me that Florence has done well in communicating her event to her fans.  

The London Fashion week are likely to focus their communication on; buyers, press, industry and the public. They may have to use different forms of communication to reach each of these. Their objective may be to make each of these sectors aware of the event and try to encourage some of these, to attend the London Fashion Week. The reason why have may have to approach these in different ways is because each of these sectors will be interested in the event for separate reasons. 

• Deviny, K (2012) Schramm's Model of Communication (online) Available: http://www.uri.edu/personal/carson/kulveted/wlsmodel.html
• British Fashion Council. (2012) London Fashion Week(online)Available: http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/
•  Islands Universal Records Ltd (2012) Florence and the Machine (online) Available: http://florenceandthemachine.net/
• Masterman, G and Wood, E (2006) Innovative Marketing Communications. First Edition. Oxford. Butterworth-Heinemann