4. The event was successful in attracting an even split between males and females; with the Untapped team consisting of both, perhaps this translated into our marketing, as this was made clear through our press shots, inclusive style of language, and unbiased marketing branding.
However, the event did not attract specifically an audience of young professionals, demonstrating a mistake made by the team in anticipating who would be attracted to attend the event; the event's audience was a very mixed crowd featuring people of varying age ranges. Perhaps this was because as mentioned previously, the event seemed to ingrain itself within an existing online local ale community, which consists of a more varied range of people than solely young professionals, whom the organisers thought would be attracted due to ale's newly trendy reputation, and the number of young creative professionals who could be attracted to attend.
Again, it can be seen that a question on the post event survey should have asked respondents on their famillarity of ale or attending similar events prior to Untapped to give more of an insight into whether a new audience has been introduced.
That said, the environment of the event was certainly friendly and sociable, with 100% of survey respondents stating that they would recommend the event to another person, potentially highlighting an inclusive and social atmosphere.
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Summary
Bladen (2012) states event objectives form the key direction of a project's planning, providing specifics for the overall accomplishment of event outcomes, leading to organisations such as the BVEP (Business Visits & Events Partnerships) emphasising the importance of objective setting in a number of their reports; the BVEP (2010) 'Britain for events' report states that the development of a new international sustainability standard the 'ISO20121' requires rigorous objective setting so that individual specific issues can be addressed.
Taking an inward facing and
frequently measured view on
event objectives is also echoed in the BVEP (2014) most recent publication 'Events are great Britain' which describes, "The bar has been raised in how we [the event industry] respond to event briefs... rising to the challenge of producing ever better and more creative solutions to meet client objectives."
The evaluation of Untapped's objectives allows for this micro assessment, yet equally gives opportunity to examine the macro environment in order to assess competitive advantage, ultimately providing evidence for or against implementing the event again (Duncan et al, 1998); These
evaluative approaches are
in alignment with the formative (which informs process development) evaluation recommended by Adams (1997), and Untapped's suitable objectives can be viewed as overall successfully achieved, providing a case for the event or a similar idea to be carried out again in the future.
Adams (1997) also suggests that summative (what has been learnt) evaluation should be considered, which in the case of Untapped's objectives, was a realising of the attraction of a different audience than expected, and exceeding the forecast ticket sales and profit taken.
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The Untapped team in The Sheffield Telegraph