engleski

Event as the Brand Ambassador of its Host City: Analyzing the Social Media Exposure of Split Generated by Ultra Europe Music Festival

Music festivals have become an important part of tourist destination branding. Considering that cities can be seen as brands, they strive to establish and strengthen them. In their efforts they use various branding techniques, including the organization of music festivals. Music festivals should attract domestic and international visitors, and generate media exposure for the city. It is also believed that media coverage increase awareness of the host city as a desirable destination. In that sense, music festivals can be seen as the brand ambassadors of their host cities which represent novelty in the implementation of this concept. In the previous literature on brand ambassadors, brand ambassadors are usually persons who are hired by an organization to represent a brand in a positive light and by doing so they help to increase brand awareness and sales. But for the purpose of this research, one of the biggest electronic, dance, and house music festivals in the world, the Ultra Europe festival is considered to be the brand ambassador of the city of Split, the second largest city in Croatia. The research determines the nature and extent of social media exposure generated for Split by hosting the Ultra Europe music festival. The coverage of the festival on social media was content analyzed for any verbal and written mentions of Split or its associated images like Poljud Stadium. Four different types of social media platforms were examined ; Wikipedia, the most prominent example of wikis, Facebook as an example of one of the most popular social networks, Twitter as an example of micro blogging site, and the YouTube, second most visited website in the world. The research shows that the Ultra Europe music festival is the very important ambassador of Split branding, and that it has been mentioned more than hundred times. Due to the festival, Split gained huge media exposure and attracts more than 150 000 visitors extra every year.

Brand ambassador ; event ; social media ; Split ; Ultra Europe

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