B-to-B Events

Ten years ago, a small subsection of corporate marketing departments began to fall in love with a fairly new and extremely unproven discipline called event marketing. From auto and financial-services to beverage, commercial aviation, retail and technology, it started to grow like religion.

The year is 2002. “American Idol’s” debut fever is spreading across TV sets all across America. The second installments of the “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of The Rings” trilogies are duking it out at the box office (as nerds everywhere rejoice—in Elvish). And somewhere in Berlin, Michael Jackson is dangling his son Prince Michael II off a hotel balcony with a blanket over his head.

Elsevier, a leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, has hit the road to promote its new online clinical information resource with the ClinicalKey Mobile Experience Tour. The tour is designed to introduce physicians to the service and teach them about how it will change the way they search for and access content. The tour launched on Sept. 18 and will make 23 scheduled stops before wrapping on Nov. 30. Interested hospital and medical libraries can also request a special stop directly from the Elsevier website. 

In life, change is constant. In event marketing, the same. And though the industry certainly continues to evolve, one quest never slows: the data chase.

Marketers across the industry need data from event attendees in order to prove performance, generate leads, push digital communication and ignore post-experience communication. And they’re upgrading age-old tactics to goose their chances of getting it.

EFFEN Vodka is trying to grow in a highly competitive premium vodka category, and to do that the brand is aligning itself with premiere style events and courting influencers across the social spectrum with a series of invite-only Art of Design parties in key markets all over the U.S. The series will conclude for the year in New York City on Sept. 26.