Fringe enhances Adelaide "brand": expert

Monday, 8 March 2004

The Adelaide Fringe Festival builds the Adelaide "brand" much better than the Formula One Grand Prix ever did, according to a leading marketing expert at the University of Adelaide.

Professor Pascale Quester, from the University's School of Commerce, says the Fringe does a much better job than events like the Grand Prix of encapsulating the spirit and sense of what Adelaide is about and, consequently that it builds a better relationship with consumers - and in turn, Fringe sponsors.

"For a big event to be successful from a marketing perspective, it needs to demonstrate engagement with the consumers it is trying to reach and to establish or reinforce a meaning which has the potential to enhance the brand(s) it is associated with." she says.

"If the idea of "Adelaide" is the brand, then I believe the Fringe does a much better job of enhancing that than the Grand Prix ever did.

"Is Adelaide really a fast-paced, competitive place of noise, speed and trepidation, as the Grand Prix suggested? If you had never been to Adelaide, you would have no better sense of the sort of place Adelaide was after watching the race than you had before.

"I believe the "brand" of Adelaide is a lot closer to the concept of the Fringe, of intellectual curiosity and thirst for new ideas and new ways of expressing them."

Professor Quester says consumers are much more easily able to "transfer meaning" from the Fringe and to extrapolate from it to the idea of Adelaide itself, a key component of any marketing venture.

"By definition, the term Fringe suggests "periphery" or a possible entry into new territories," she says. "It is also suggestive, favourably, of intellectualism in its best and most positive form. In a country where intellectualism is often devalued, it encapsulates the notion of fun and adventure, a winning combination for the Australian psyche.

"So while there might be less people who would connect with this idea and respond to it, those who do would be able to decipher the association in a positive way. For those people who know and appreciate an event like the Fringe, the brand Adelaide can only be enhanced as a result of the association."

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