Creating Better Experiences for our Markets...
Andrew Cole MBE
Ethical leader with specialisms in hospitality, retail, asset management, commercial partnerships and property.
The NEC Group has a long history of putting on fantastic events across its exhibition halls and arena's, from Kylie to Andre Rieu to Crufts. Our market segmentation clearly indicates that people are wanting, more and more, across many segments, to increase their experiences in life.
In such a diverse and busy marketplace for experience it can sometimes be challenging as a consumer to sift through all the available ways to spend your hard-earned disposable income. The NEC is uniquely situated as an entertainment and experiences group to take advantage of this shift in what the customer desires.
A case in point is the Symphonic Lakeside event bringing the London Royal Philharmonic sellout Royal Albert Hall performances to the NEC campus in early August. It would have been easy for us to put this in the Arena along with so many other successful gigs but to give the full experience package that is becoming so in demand, we decided to place it by the lakeside. We are laying on a VIP beach area, make it family friendly with camp chairs and rugs allowed (we still provide all the catering though), finish with fireworks and make the whole thing more social - effectively trying to create the ultimate selfie experience.
This shift in provision maximises the opportunity for a new experience and this in turn has been targeted at the 'You-Gen's' of today who will know the songs (who doesn't know Queen, Adele and the music of John Williams) but will also please the 'Mature Explorers' who seek quality and pleasure, creating a multi-demographic audience and hopefully introducing a new generation to the delights of live classical music.
It can be argued that the experience and social feeling is at least as important as the music, many may choose not to even get off their rug to get closer to the music, simply soaking up the atmosphere with a Pimm's whilst their other halves or children roam.
The NEC sees itself as becoming more and more of a 24/7 leisure destination and this is one small example of 'stepping-out' from the more traditional entertainment routes and expect to see more of it!
I may as well not miss the blatant opportunity to post a link to the concert I mentioned so tickets can be purchased here and for all my LinkedIn colleagues PROMS10 will get you ￡10 off the ticket price as a reward for reading all the way to the end!