Hong Kong Arts

2.2 Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF)
Hong Kong Arts Festival’s market segmentation is also demographic, and its target market is family, youth, and mainly students. Similar to Singapore Arts Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival also uses differentiated marketing strategy and the markets are being split into different segments. For every different segment, there is a marketing plan.

For example, there are different categories in this festival, such as Family, Opera, Dance, Theatre and Music. All of these categories present different kinds of items to attract different types of people and to meet different needs of everyone.

Its aim is to inspire young people to appreciate performing arts. Hence, they came out with a small section called the “Young Friends of Hong Kong Arts Festival”. It is designed to enhance and appreciation of the performing arts among young people, especially secondary school and tertiary students. The 2008 Festival saw over 6,000 students attend performances and rehearsals.

As a result, in order to enhance the collaboration with schools and encourage teachers to integrate performing arts as part of curriculum activity, the School Partnership was launched in 2005 to partner schools. This means that schools with outstanding arts performances and the scheme will be invited as partner schools and will have the priorities in joining Young Friends Scheme (YFS) activities.
This way, it really gives opportunities to students all around Hong Kong to unleash their potentials and having their dreams come true to perform in big festivals and events on stage.

Hence, it places a position in consumer’s mind that Hong Kong Arts festival is a place for young people to see their dreams come true.

2.2.1 SWOT Analysis
Strength
 Manpower.
 Spacious theatre to hold big festivals in Hong Kong
 Does not depend largely on foreign talents.
 A unique variety of annual festivals and cultural events Opportunities
 Due to their larger population, the chances of unleashing potentials and talents are much higher.
 Such festivals give more people reason to fly to Hong Kong.
Weakness
 Language Barrier – Hong Kong’s common language is more of Cantonese though they still speak English.
 The city’s traffic is too congested.
Threat
 Living in close proximity, the chances of getting diseases and flu is higher. Such as recent H1N1 flu, SARS and Bird Flu.
 Natural Disasters such as the seasonal typhoon.







2.2.2 Marketing Mix – Hong Kong Arts Festival
Price
Promotional Pricing
“Hong Kong Arts Festival Master cardholders” may enjoy a 6 – 10 months interest-free installment period to pay for their festival tickets.
There are also many privileges to those who hold the Master card.

Place
Internet
90% of the population has internet access and the B2B e-commerce is highly developed. Hence, tickets can easily be sold through the net.
Retail
Students and youths can be reached out through “Young Friends” in order to allow them to be more aware about the importance and significance of arts in Hong Kong.

Promotion
Personal Selling
As Hong Kong emphasize a lot on relationship
marketing, it helps them to sell better through personal selling.

Public relations
It involves in maintaining mutual understanding between its organization and its publics.

Advertising
Similarly, through advertising their festivals through media, it helps to promote their tickets faster and more effectively.

Product
Maturity
Hong Kong Arts festival was found in 1973, till today, it has been celebrating arts for more than 35 years, attracting more than 117,000 customers steadily.

However, by comparing with Singapore who attracts more than 700,000 customers, Hong Kong has still got a lot of rooms for improvements to draw more customers to their Arts Festival.


Packaging
There are 60 supporting events and activities for those who purchase the Hong Kong Arts Festival tickets.
More than that, the HKAF is also an opportunity for local audiences to see their own artists in an international context.

Programming
From Baroque to Bossa Nova,a reflection of the diversity and dynamism of Hong Kong can be truly seen.
This year’s arts festival brought in the most sought after pianist, Yundi Li. She gained the sort of celebrity in Asia that is rarely enjoyed by classical musicians, after winning the 2000 Chopin International Competition. Hence, this attracts more people to want to purchase the ticket for her performance.


People
Many leading artists from all over the world, especially in Hong Kong and China as well as the westerners, are involved in HKAF.


Partnership
Since Hong Kong believe so much in young people, they came up with the Young Friends Scheme, which focus on familiarizing young audiences with performing arts and nurturing their talents.

On the other hand, the newly established Credit Suisse Emerging Artists Series aims to benefit highly talented artists who are on the edge to make their international breakthrough. Hence these 2 small organizations came together to form a partnership.

Winners of the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award receive cash prize and offers the winner the chance to appear as a soloist in concert with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Lucerne Festival.