Gringo\'s bingo - Individual essay PDF

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An insight of how a legendary Magaluf event can be used as a prime example for event design and crowd engagement. Looking at mostly events, tourism and marketing techniques...

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BANNER ID: B00324585

EXPERIENTIAL EVENTS DESIGN

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 20TH OF NOVEMBER 2020

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATIVE DESIGN TECHNIQUES APPLIED IN CREATION OF GRINGO’S BINGO, MAGALUF WORD THE COUNT: 2,200 1

CONTENTS

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5. CONCLUSION

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6. REFERENCES

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7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this report is to examine theoretical concepts of experiential event design and how it affects events globally in contemporary society; by using appropriate sources and academic underpinning. Pine II & Gilmore (1998:98) defined experiences as “when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props to engage individual consumers in a way that creates a memorable event.” Experience event design is an important part of consumers buying behaviours in today’s world. “Experience marketing is usually broadly defined as any form of customer-focused marketing activity that creates a connection to customers.” (Schmitt, 2011:9) This report will use Gringo’s Bingo in Magaluf – “an adult only rave-bingo night” (Refineria, 2020), to explain various academic concepts and frameworks within this sector. The rationale for this selection is due to the uniqueness of Gringo’s event and how memorable the experience was. This is due to a number of factors, such as its unpredictability and active audience participation, which will be discussed in more depth later in the report. Personal reflection will be included throughout sections of the report to highlight what Gringo’s Bingo was like from a customer perspective.

2. THE CONCEPT OF EXPERIENTIAL EVENT DESIGN AND ITS IMPORTANCE TO CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

The experiential marketing industry is continuously growing and is becoming an important part of consumers buying behaviour in society today. “There has been a lot of press about how millennials and Gen Z consumers are less focused on buying ‘things’ and prefer experiences.” (Schaefer,2019) By being able to connect with a brand it enables customers to feel involved in the business and create an emotional relationship with them. O’Sullivan & Spangler (1998) described the components of marketing experiences – the pre-experience, participation and post-experience, all of these stages must work in harmony in order to achieve overall success. The pre-experience is what draws the customers in, the participation is what keeps them engaged with the event and the post-experience is how they create a relationship with a customer, so they have repeat business. Pine & Gilmour (1998) created a concept known as the five value creating opportunities that are likely to drive further progress in the dynamic experience economy. The first opportunity looks at 3

customised goods, which is a major trend within experiential marketing events by offering pop-up shops or stalls that offer customised products. This idea is beneficial for both businesses and customers. It allows customers the opportunity to receive personalised products that no one else will have, creating a positive range of emotions for the brand, as they will feel appreciated. “Popups give businesses the opportunity to create a physical presence in an area in which they otherwise wouldn’t.” (Morton-Prior, 2019) The next aspect is enhancing services; it is important that brands are constantly evolving to remain up to date with current trends. Organisations that focus on the quality of service their employees deliver to their customers, are more likely to successfully create long lasting relationships, resulting in brand loyalty. “Companies that provide an emotional connection with customers outperform the sales growth of their competitors by 85%” (Morgan, 2019) Highlighting that improving a brands employees delivery of an experience can have an extremely beneficial impact on the business sales.

Experiential marketing is becoming a globally recognised business strategy and is becoming as important to an organisation as its products or services are. Pine & Gilmore (1998:100) state that “no company sells experiences as its economic offering unless it actually charges guests an admission fee.” Experiences have been used as a marketing tool to assist promotion on a brands product or service. However, with the increase of popularity with experiential events, many businesses have introduced charges for their experience. This not only increases profits, but also adds a sense of exclusivity to events, which will cause a surge of demand among potential customers. The last two elements are the use of technology and the transformation of experiences. Technology is a fast-growing market, and its use within marketing is becoming more significant, with the use of virtual reality headsets and similar products in experience events. “The ‘phygital’ space – using a blend of physical and digital experiences can deliver a unique and deeper understanding, using virtual and reality.” (Young,2019) The use of technological devices is critical for contemporary society as the world is becoming more tech-forward. It is crucial that businesses understand what engages their target market and keeps them interested. “65% of consumers say that live events and product demonstrations helped them fully understand a product better than any commercial or other method could.” (Olenski, 2018)

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3. THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY AT GRINGO’S BINGO Being able to experience the business from a consumer’s perspective is an effective way of identifying different aspects that the organisation could improve on. This concept is actually known as customer journey mapping. Reason et al. (2016:167) defined the theory as “the steps that customers go through when they use a service.” Each step throughout the journey is known as touchpoints. The Interaction Design Foundation (2020) defined touchpoints as “any interaction (including encounters where there is no physical interaction) that might alter the way that your customer feels about your product, brand, business or service.” Throughout this section of the report, Gringo’s Bingo will be used to explain the customer journey concept. Webb (2017) stated that there were four main touchpoint moments – the pre-touchpoint, the first, the core and the last. Each of these touchpoints are important in fully engaging the customers and making their experience a memorable one for the consumer.

THE PRE-TOUCHPOINT MOMENT This is basically the decision-making point, where the customer has not engaged with the product/service yet and is still deciding if it is what they want. It is a critical part in the customer journey for the business. This is the moment where they need attract their target market and make sure that they can persuade them through good advertisement and sales advisors. In Magaluf, and most other holiday destinations there are workers called Holiday reps, who help promote different activities and events for guests to do whilst abroad. For Gringo’s Bingo this is the pretouchpoint moment, this is where people engage with the reps and have the opportunity to attend the event or not.

THE FIRST TOUCHPOINT MOMENT Once the customer has decided that they want to attend the event, they then enter the first touchpoint, which is basically the consumers first interaction with the business. Webb (2017:149) stated that this engagement between the customer and the brand can be digitally, non-digitally or both. The first moment for Gringo’s would have been the initial purchasing of the tickets for the

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event from the reps at designated bar and heading to the venue to queue. The anticipation of waiting to enter the venue is what creates the real excitement amongst customers.

THE CORE TOUCHPOINT MOMENT Webb (2020:165) defined this moment as “when customers are engaging with your product, brand, or service.” This touchpoint starts the moment customers and staff interact. Employees are brand representative for the business, so it is crucial that they provide a positive and memorable experience. At Gringo’s the first interaction with staff at the venue was when we were guided from the queue to our seats and had the opportunity to order beverages. Once everyone was seated, the bingo began.

THE LAST TOUCHPOINT MOMENT Businesses want to leave their audience satisfied and wanting more. This moment is where all the hard work from the other touchpoints comes together to create a lasting, positive experience for the customer. In Gringo’s, the final touchpoint was exiting the venue and having the opportunity to meet the celebrity of the night and take photographs. This adds excitement for the consumer but also helps promote the event as customers will post their photographs on social media, which will reach to a larger market.

THE OVERALL SUCCESS OF THE EVENT Using the Schmitt (2011) experience marketing framework to evaluate the success of different aspects of Gringo’s Bingo. The five key factors are – sensing, feeling, thinking, acting and relating. The sensing element refers to engaging the five human senses – hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. Gringo’s managed to effectively engage the sight and taste senses. The decorations for the Mexican theme was visually appealing for customers and the beverages served tasted really good. However, they could improve upon their hearing, touch and smell aspects. The noise of the event was exceedingly loud which caused miscommunications between the waiters and the customers, which could lead to wrong orders. The interior of the event was out-dated and dirty making it uncomfortable for sitting for long periods of time e.g. the length of the bingo game. Also,

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the smell of the event was a mixture of hot air and body odour, which is not an ideal combination for a successful event. The feeling and acting factors also apply to the moods and emotions created by the behaviour and actions provided by employees. The emotional labour – “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (Hochschild,2012:7) – is important in the way employees make customers feel. Due to Gringo’s entertainer’s behaviour it promotes positive emotions for the consumer, making it a memorable customer experience. The thinking factor is the intellectual stimulus of the event, which in Gringo’s is obviously the bingo. The relating element of the framework discusses the social interactions within an experience. In Gringo’s, there was social interactions between customers and staff, as they were bringing people up on stage to participate in different activities. These interactions positively impacted the overall experience. The event promotes active participation from the audience. It also involves an entertainment aspect in regards, to the host and staff ‘performance’ and an escapist aspect as you can be called on stage to do certain challenges, which you can become immersed in (depending on the activity of course).

4. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT In Gringo’s, the event itself is based on loud music, entertainers using microphones and guests screaming with enjoyment. This element of noise is essential in creating a lively atmosphere for the customers. However, in terms of service during the event e.g. ordering beverages, it can be difficult both server and customer to understand each other clearly. The staff are faced with not only with the loudness of the event and how it disrupts their conversations with guests; but the language barriers as well, considering Gringo’s is based in a popular holiday destination. Other similar events like Bongo’s Bingo in the UK, do not provide table service during their event. Instead, customers are asked to leave the main arena and purchase alcohol from a bar located in another room. Although there are less chances of orders being incorrect, it is still not a practical solution as it means customers will miss certain segments of the show. In this regard, Gringo’s table service is better. However, it could be improved by introducing technological customer service devices such as apps and QR codes. Due to the pandemic, the hospitality sector adapted to government guidelines by using apps like Serve Safely and MyPub to allow customers to purchase food and drinks at a safe distance. “Serve Safely allows customers to order and pay at their tables by mobile phone, as well as using video and text to allow venues to provide a personal 7

service.” (Manning, 2020) If Gringo’s used this within their customer service, it would reduce miscommunications, promote quicker service and enable international guests to order beverages comfortably in their own language format. Another recommendation for improvement at Gringo’s is their waiting time. Although there is money to be made in queue times from businesses being able to offer fast-track tickets and priority queuing, it can cause great irritation for customers who choose not to pay for these services. “A customer’s waiting experience is composed of a perceived waiting time and his or her emotional response to the wait.” (Chien & Lin, 2014:319) Organisations allowing customers to queue for long periods of time can actually be causing a detrimental impact on their own event. If a consumer goes into an event irritated, it can be extremely difficult to change their emotions towards the business, therefore affecting the overall customer experience. Gringo’s could change this aspect by implementing staged queuing. Rather than having everyone leave the bar together, they could change that groups of customers leave the bar at different times e.g. 50 people leave at 9pm, then another 50 leave at 9.20pm etc… This would reduce queue times and reduce stress for the employees guiding customers to their seats.

5. CONCLUSION In conclusion, this report has examined and evaluated the importance of the experiential events design industry and how it assists numerous businesses in effectively marketing their products/services. It also provided insight into contemporary societies consumer buying behaviour by using appropriate academic concepts to underpin all relevant internet information. Using Gringo’s Bingo, allowed for an in-depth evaluation of the customer journey mapping concept and how it allows organisations to establish flaws. The extra-ordinary service Gringo’s provided has enabled customer to have a lasting memorable experience. They also used celebrity endorsement to their advantage to attract more guests. The events management team must evaluate their main target market – tourists, aged 18-30 – and choose a celebrity that will appeal to their customers; They mainly use reality stars from shows like Love Island. The events staff were also a key factor in what made it such a positive experience. Other events like Bongo’s Bingo could adopt some of Gringo’s successful elements such as the use of reality stars for promotion and the event decorations to feel more immersed in the theme. However, Gringo’s could still improve certain areas of their event, such as the waiting times for entering and the process of ordering drinks 8

during the bingo. They could use their competitors as inspiration on how to change the aspects of their event that are failing.

6. REFERENCES             

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Chien, S. and Lin, Y., 2014. The effects of service environment. Customer Touchpoint. 2020. [online] Available at: [Accessed 10 November 2020]. Gringosbingo.com. 2020. Gringos Bingo Mallorca. [online] Available at: [Accessed 8 November 2020]. Hochschild, A., 2012. The Managed Heart. University of California Press. J. Webb, N., 2017. What Customers Crave. AMACOM. Manning, E., 2020. Robot Waiters and Ordering Apps: How Technology Could Help to Save The Hospitality Industry. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: [Accessed 15 November 2020] Morgan, B., 2019. 50 Stats That Prove the Value of Customer Experience. [online] Forbes. Available at: [Accessed 1 November 2020]. Morton-Prior, S., 2019. Build an Emotional Bond with Your Customers Using Experiential Marketing | Customerthink. [online] Customerthink.com. Available at: [Accessed 1 November 2020]. Olenski, S., 2018. 3 Reasons Why Cmos Should Embrace Experiential Marketing. [online] Forbes. Available at: [Accessed 6 November 2020]. Pine II, B. and Gilmore, J., 1998. Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review,. Reason, B., Lovlie, L. and Brand Flu, M., 2016. Service Design For Business. WILEY. Schmitt, B., 2011. Experience Marketing: concepts, frameworks and consumer insights. Columbia Business School,. Young, J., 2020. The Power Of Experiential Marketing. [online] The Drum. Available at: [Accessed 11 November 2020].

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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