Event as the Promotional Tool of Place Marketing

This book presents two concepts – place marketing and event marketing. Theoretical knowledge within these concepts is not widely spread, they are usually examined separately but not together. A lot of companies use event marketing in order to promote their products or services. But what about cities? Can they use events in order to attract more tourists, residents, investors and industries? Can the event be one of the tools for communicating a city image? As an example, this work examines the Finnish city of Mikkeli. Year by year Finnish cities become more and more popular among Russian tourists, investors, universities and employees. Mikkeli is among these cities. But it needs to increase its awareness among Russians and find new ways of attracting them. An event can be one of these ways. The purpose of this work is to get a better understanding of place marketing; how events are used as a promotional tool of place marketing; and, based on the developed theoretical framework, to evaluate the value of place marketing practices to position the city more favorably compared to its rivals, to probe the interests of the potential customers and find the ways of how to attract them.