Abstracts Category : Other

Event Planning and Marketing : Case: Kontula Kokkaa (Kontula Cooks)

by Isatou Ceesay

The aim of this thesis is to study the organization of the Kontula Kokkaa event organized by the Kontula youth centre in order to broaden my knowledge on event planning and most especially the marketing requirements involved with a view to finding ways to improve it. The objectives include familiarizing myself with the Youth centre and come up with market-ing tips that will yield more audience for the event as well as the Youth centre, and also plan and implement an activity as part of the event. The Kontula Kokkaa event, organised by the Kontula youth centre on 29th September 2017, was a food themed event that gave young people the opportunity to explore many varieties of cuisines from different cultures to promote diversity. The event was organised as part of the Lhifest 2017 week which included activities such as food art, girls corner and market stall. The project was divided into several tasks including the theoretical framework, a list of so-cial media marketing tips that I prepared for the event organisers. I was also tasked with organizing the girls corner as part of the event and the event itself. The goals of the event were to organize a memorable event in a set timeframe by acquiring at least 250 people for the event with the help of the social media marketing tips I developed and most importantly, for me to acquire skills and experience on how to organize similar events in the future. The goals of the event are discussed in the thesis using the SMART goals framework.When planning an event, the most important factor is the audience being targeted as they are vital to the marketing of the event. The audience targeted for the Kontula Kokkaa event was young people. Thus, digital marketing especially social media was used as the main marketing channel for the event. Social media usage in Finland continues to grow amongst all age groups and it was easy to reach the targeted group. The goal was to have 250 people participate in the event, and this goal was reached with 734 people including more than 200 young people.