Development of marketing communication complex in the promotion of sports events and organizations: principles of planning and the implementation technologies during 2018 Fifa World Cup Russia

Pic 11. Reasons of buying the FIFA tickets

The next question was to ask the respondents about the frequency of visiting the FIFA matches. As it can be seen from the pie chart (pic. 12), the vast majority of the respondents - 87% - will go to the FIFA World Cup match for the first time. This fact allows to assume that the considerable part of the respondents are going to attend the FIFA matches not because they are active fans of football, but because this event is held in Russia for this time. There are only 6% of payable active fans - they visit several matches during the FIFA World Cup, and 7% of the respondents usually visit one match during the FIFA World Cup. These respondents could be grouped into 13% that represent football fans. Hence, the results of this question highlights that there are only 13% of football fans versus other 87% of the respondents who have other reasons and motivation for attending the FIFA matches.

Pic 12. Respondents by frequency of visiting the FIFA matches

One more question was aimed at identifying the number of people for whom FIFA World Cup is a way to show their status. The question asked about the perception of stadiums during the matches of such a scale. As the bar chart below represents (pic. 13), 26 respondents out of 70 consider stadiums to be a prestigious place to visit for a person with a particular status - it is almost one third of the respondents (31,4%), just 2 people more (40%) answered that for them it is an opportunity to release adrenaline together with other fans. And 22 respondents, which is slightly more than 37%, consider stadiums during such big matches as a place to watch an interesting football event. Therefore almost one third of the FIFA target audience are not pure football fans, but are people who consider such events to be status and prestigious.

Pic 13. Perception of stadiums during big matches

The next question of the survey divides the respondents by their attitude to attending the matches. The results are represented on the pie chart below (pic. 14). According to this pie chart, the majority of people consider it interesting to attend the matches - 73%. For 19% of the respondents it is a true pleasure to visit the matches. 1% of the audience even make use of the event for networking - to meet new people and build relationships. Thus, summing up these answers, a conclusion could be made that 93% of the respondents have very positive attitude towards the matches, and there are the remained 7% of the respondents who think that attending such matches is not safe.

Pic 14. Respondents by attitude to attending the matches

The next five questions of the survey highlights the communication and promotion tools of the FIFA World Cup.

First of all, the pie chart below (pic. 15) helps to find out the number of the FIFA website visitors among the respondent sample. A considerable part of the respondents - slightly more than 77% - visits the FIFA website, the other 22,9% do not do it. So, the website should be one of the preferable tool of marketing communications with the target audience for the FIFA. As a consequence, it is important for the FIFA to pay much attention to the website content, its design, user-friendliness, marketing advertisements and promotions made and announced via the website.

Pic 15. The number of the FIFA website visitors in percentage from the respondents

The results of the next pie chart (pic. 16) represent the frequency of the FIFA advertising contacts. As it could be seen below, 14% of the respondents confirmed that they see the FIFA advertisement every day, 19% of people see it once per 3 days, and double more respondents - 38% - once a week. Other 29% face up with the FIFA advertisements several times per week.

Pic 16. The frequency of the FIFA advertisements seen by the respondents

The next question of the survey aimed to learn the most popular placements of the FIFA advertising - those places where the FIFA advertisements were captured by the target audience most often. It is clear from the bar chart representing the results of the question (pic. 17), that more than a half of the respondents (54,3%) see the advertisements on the FIFA website. This source of marketing communication turned out to be the most effective in terms of the number of unique contacts - 38 out of 70. The next three places where people see the FIFA advertisements in descent order by the number of respondents are street banners (45,7%), TV (42,9%) and mass media (40%). Then less popular marketing communication sources comes - press and radio - 24,3% and 18,6% correspondingly. According to these results, it is quite obvious what three sources of marketing communication should be in focus - the Internet (including the FIFA website), street billboards and TV.

Pic 17. Places where the respondents meet the advertisements

As for the FIFA website, according to the pie chart below (pic. 18), although 64,3% of the respondents like the FIFA website, more than one third would like to see some positive changes in it: 10% are dissatisfied with the website at all, and 25,7% like it but still think that there is something missed in the website. So, there is a point to consider and to work on in order to improve marketing communications with the target audience. In addition, it is an important tool of FIFA promotion as the previous charts showed that the website is visited by the vast majority of the target audience.

Pic 18. Number of respondents that like and do not like the FIFA website in percentage of respondents.

The key points of the survey results are highlighted below.

The target audience is represented by both male and female in almost equal proportions. The vast majority of the respondents are payable consumers which was confirmed indirectly by two questions - about travelling and about car driving.

The most remarkable conclusion of the survey is that active football fans is not the biggest part of the FIFA target audience, due to the charts, active fans compose 13%-29% of the respondents, not more. Which is matched with the chart on pic. 1, where active and moderate fans composed 12% and passive fans - 10%.

Therefore, according to the survey results, there are only 16% of active fans among those who have bought the FIFA tickets, and other 84% had other reasons for doing this.

At the same time, a considerable part of the target audience - more than one third (37%) - consider the FIFA World Cup to be a fashion and prestigious event. And 24% of the respondents bought the FIFA tickets only because of that reason - they are not active football fans, they just want to attend a status event. These significant group of respondents have different perception and different attitude to the FIFA World Cup, and, as a consequence, their consumer behavior should probably be different from consumer behavior of active fans.

As for the marketing communications of the FIFA World Cup, the key focus should be made on the FIFA website, as it is visited by 77% of the target audience and it is the most popular resource where the respondents see the FIFA advertisements (more than 54%). Moreover, almost 36% of the respondents would like to see some improvements in this marketing tool of communication. So, it is a good opportunity to improve marketing communications and to become closer to the target audience.

2.4 Recommendations on the implementation of the marketing communications mix to promote the FIFA World Cup

As the FIFA World Cup have a very wide and differentiated audience, management and coordination of the whole marketing communication process requires an integrated approach and accurate and complex planning. Otherwise it is very difficult to control such a variety of marketing communication messages, tools delivering them and avoid conflicts at the same time.

That is why it is crucial to plan and implement integrated marketing communication concept. Planning and implementation of the IMC concept involves: first, the creation of a special department, which will be engaged in the development and implementation of IMC; second, the introduction of an additional staff unit - marketing communications manager, the head of this department, who will control the IMC process from the moment of development and planning to the moment of implementation and analyzing the results. The functions of such a manager should be planning of the IMC program, control of work of all the department specialists, implementation of external and internal communications, providing two-way communications with all participants involved into the IMC program implementation.

The introduction of a unified and integral financing is also important for the implementation of the IMC, as it will help to eliminate fragmentation and lack of coordination between all departments of the organization, especially in budgets distribution.

IMC approach will help to coordinate all the directions of marketing communications and all the tools that are used.

The survey provided with very interesting results and helped to prove the hypothesis that the active part of the target audience attends FIFA matches as they consider it to be a fashionable and status event and not because they are football fans. This means that the football festivals and other activities made for the pure football fans do not cover a considerable part of the FIFA target audience.

As football stopped being an active past time and has become rather a popular and fashionable kind of passive entertainment, an entertainment to watch rather than a kind of sport to be practiced, it should be promoted to the viewers rather than to the footballers who are interested in players better than themselves. That means that it should be promoted in such a way that people, especially young people as they are a significant part of the FIFA target audience, understand that it is a fashionable kind of entertainment.

Therefore, it is reasonable to add marketing communications and messages about the prestige of the FIFA World Cup, its supportive attitude towards healthy lifestyle and sport itself, its attractiveness as a fashionable and cool event; and to deliver such messages through the marketing tools that would be right for covering the young audience. As soon as it is an event, it should be advertised in such a way that is typical for the youth.

In this case, TV should be practically excluded as the way of advertising, because our target audience does not watch TV practically.

As we can see, nowadays digital tools, the Internet, and social media are becoming more and more popular among people of all ages and especially among the youth. These sources of marketing communication cover most young and payable FIFA World Cup consumers. And according to the survey, the FIFA website, social networks and other digital tools are to be in focus. These modern tools help to reach the target audience with better efficiency and to gain more advertising contacts.

Taking into account that the survey pointed out how many people use the FIFA website (77% of the respondents), a mobile application about the FIFA World Cup as a mini version of its website might become a great opportunity to reach more young people from the target segment. Now FIFA provides the consumers with an electronic game which is interested only for football keen people. But there is no application with the news of the FIFA World Cup and related events, and using a website on a mobile phones is not always convenient. That is why such a mobile application, especially with pushing messages about daily information releases, digests, cool features and with entertainment elements, will be a good tool to inform the target audience about the FIFA World Cup news and to keep in touch with bigger number of people on daily regularity. Moreover, push notifications of the application will help to create bigger hype around the event.

In addition, it is well known that people love posting photos and videos in social networks from the places they visit and the events they attended. This gives them a chance to highlight their affiliation to the event or fashion trend, to show their status and to get recognition from their friends, colleagues and even unknown followers. So, that means that such an event as FIFA World Cup and all the related events should have some special places to take photos and selfies.

Consequently, such an event should have a different type of promotion for young people, mostly through social networks. For example, a flashmob related to the FIFA World Cup and organized in social networks could boost the interest from that part of the target audience who are keen of following fashion and status trends. By the way, fashion for sports, active way of life, healthy food and activities is in the top now. Therefore, it is reasonable to link such a flashmob with promoting healthy and active lifestyle, as these ideas supporting sports, active lifestyle and healthcare are very popular now, and that was proved by the survey (a bit less than half of the respondents mentioned such activities as their hobby). People will post flashmob publications in their profiles in social networks and thus will spread the messages about the FIFA World Cup.

Talking about digital marketing tools, viral videos are to be mentioned too, as they are extremely effective when working with the young audience. The most important thing about viral videos is to produce them in such a way that they did not give you an impression of a specially produced video but just a kind of something made by chance - in this case such a video will be successfully spread in the Internet by people and will gain many views.

Perhaps, product placements in series for youth could also be useful in promoting the FIFA World Cup. Most probably, these are also going to be some popular films, because the audience is very much that of cinema goers, so the target audience of the FIFA event and of the cinema thirst night goes inside.

To highlight the status of the event and to make it more fashionable and attractive to the young people, marketing communications should be also made through some figures of influence - for example, through some cool students, bloggers, popular and fashionable actors and singers in order to show that they also like this kind of entertainment. Football celebrities in this case will attract only football fans, but, as the survey showed, they are not the majority of the FIFA World Cup target audience. At the same time, of course, opinion leaders in such areas as sports, physical activities, and health should be involved into the marketing communications as well, because these ideas are quite popular nowadays.

Marketing communications for covering the youth could be made not only in the Internet and through social networks, but, for example, through leaflets - they can be quite useful in the institutes and universities as well as in some popular cafes, anti-cafes, fitness clubs, cinemas, even nightclubs, and other places of youth gathering.

All in all, marketing communication complex will help to support the FIFA World Cup event in a better way and to cover a significant part of the FIFA target audience - young people conscious to fashionable, cool and prestigious events and trends.



CONCLUSION

As the result of the research made, we can come to the following conclusions:

1. Marketing communications are the process of transferring the information about the product, defining the target audience, making it of the product and effective retaining of the customers.

Together with traditional classical marketing communications (advertising, PR, sales promotion, personal selling), we must use some latest developments in the sphere, such as product and life placement, using bloggers and opinion leaders, viral videos, O2O and so on.

2. Sports industry means a constant exchange of information, specific feature of this type of marketing is emotional component in the relations with the behavior of the customers. Sports marketers usually use Internet advertising, special events, sponsorship, media platforms in social networks and organize master classes.

3. During a quantitative marketing research that was carried out the data was obtained by means of an online survey. The questionnaire consisted of 15 questions, and 70 respondents gave their answers to them. The results highlighted the fact that active football fans is not the biggest part of the FIFA target audience and that the focus of marketing communications should mostly be made on the young audience keen of prestige and fashion trends. The attitude towards such events has changed dramatically, and nowadays sporting events are perceived as fashionable and status places to visit.

4. As sporting events have become a fashionable and prestigious entertainment for the young people, that leads to the changes in marketing communications messages addressed to the target audience and in tools that are used to deliver the marketing messages. Talking about the tools in sport industry today, implementation of digital tools, campaigns in social networks, product and life placement, involving of opinion leaders and figures of influence are going to be the key mechanics of promotion. This, in turn, influences management and coordination of marketing communications mix: they require an integrated marketing communications approach and accurate planning.



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Appendix 1. Questionnaire

Google Form of the survey is placed on URL: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17xAkJcJFRH62AUhy-t50Pb8CDg7mMqCkMql_BXzxYfI/edit

Questions of the survey:

1. Select your age:

· 10-22

· 23-45

· 45+

2. Select your gender:

· Female

· Male

3. How often do you travel abroad for holidays?

· Never

· Once a year

· 2-3 times per year and more

4. How do you assess yourself as a car driver?

· It is my first car

· I do not know, I cannot drive

· I am experienced driver with a calm style

· I am a good driver with an aggressive and adrenaline style

· I stopped driving a car long ago, I have a car driver

· I can drive but I have no car

5. Sport for you is:

· Interest

· Adrenaline

· An opportunity to cheer up for the lovely team

· You are doing it 3 times a week

· Healthy lifestyle

6. Write your hobby

______________

7. Why have you bought the FIFA World Cup 2018 tickets?

· I am an active fan

· I was given a ticket

· FIFA matches is a fashionable and status event

· Other reasons

8. How often do you visit the FIFA matches?

· I will go for the first time

· I visit 1 match during the FIFA World Cup

· I visit several matches during the FIFA World Cup

9. Stadiums during such matches are:

· A place to watch an interesting football event

· An opportunity to release adrenaline together with other fans

· A prestigious place to visit for a person with a particular status

10. Attending the matches:

· Is not safe

· Is interesting

· Allows to make a lot of useful acquaintances

· Is a true pleasure

11. Do you visit the FIFA website?

· Yes

· No

12. How often do you see the FIFA advertisements?

· Every day

· Once per 3 days

· Once a week

· Several times per week

13. Where have you met the advertisements?

· Mass media

· Radio

· Magazines and newspapers

· TV

· Street banners

· The FIFA website

14. Do you like the FIFA website design?

· Yes

· Yes, but there is something missed

· No

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