Marketing End of Year Message 2020
Entry posted by Loui Ringer in United Kingdom ·
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Hello everyone, please see below the end of year statement from the marketing department.
I can’t believe we’re at the end of 2020 already, where has the year gone?
Before I break down different areas of the department, I would like to take a moment to share my appreciation towards every person which makes the clock tick in marketing, the Graphics, Livestreaming and Rostering teams all make this possible, so it is now time to follow in the footsteps of training and take a break until the new year.
Events:
Shortly after the government announcement of a nationwide lockdown, I met with Ben to decide what the best course of action would be for our events, we agreed that the network activity would drastically increase for a few months and therefore we wanted to increase the number of events to support that. I made a forum post here to talk more about this. I am pleased that we were able to respond to the demand in the way that we did, please see the graph below to compare 2019 to 2020.
Throughout the year, we have gathered event suggestions and grouped them by quarter, we have done this on our social media and here on the forum. We see a lot of interaction with this and we will continue to take the community’s suggestions into consideration.
We have run 4 long-haul events (excluding CTP) there is definitely a ‘market’ for long-haul events and we will definitely be looking into holding more. It is important to balance out the workload as they take a lot more planning than something like a city pair, there are 7 Divisions and vACCs involved in Crossmas for example. Ben has worked very closely with event directors from around the world to make these possible.
Regular events:
Back when we started Midweek Madness (22nd January 2020), the popularity of frequent events on the network wasn’t very high, yes they existed but not how we know it now, at the moment pretty much every division/vACC has their own frequent event, whether it takes place weekly or monthly. We continue to see the same trend within these events where they are departure heavy at the start and arrival heavy towards the end, therefore we have started to roster around that. We would like to hold onto our weekly Wednesday slot for the foreseeable future, with the main event being based at Gatwick and the last Wednesday of the month featuring a different airport, of which members can vote for. Our new Domestic Citypairs series will continue to run on the last Friday of the month.
General Aviation Events:
We continue to recognise the importance of events for the General Aviation community. Darren has been working closely with us to plan General Aviation based events for next year, as part of his club leader role. There have been a few group flights over the last few weeks which were posted in the General Aviation Club, Anyone is welcome to join the Club and can do so by clicking here! Our first event of 2021 will be “Sundown at Sandown”, overseen by Darren.
Training Evenings:
Starting in the autumn of last year, we started to work even closer with the Training Department to organise training evenings. This link has continued into 2020 and we ran 14 training evenings, our general feedback about these has been great. It is great to see them moving all around the UK to bring the students a nice amount of traffic, thank you to everyone who has flown for these evenings as it is a massive help to students!
Media:
Thomas joined the department in July and has been running our media ever since. He started work straight away on making sure that our Livestreaming Team had correct documentation, overlays and structure. We have been using our YouTube to host runway cameras, radar views, Behind the Yoke and Behind the Scope commentated streams. We are happy with the progress to our YouTube channel and look forward to another year of growth.
We have continued to use Facebook and Twitter for advertising events, mentoring sessions and exams. In the new year, we would like to start posting more updates about the division as a whole, such as the release of a new sector file and news articles. We have grown in page likes and followers throughout the year.
Conclusion:
From myself, Thomas and Ben, we’d like to thank everyone again for giving up their time to the department over the past twelve months. We ran nearly 4 times as many events this year compared to 2019, giving us a total number of 113! This breaks down into 50 events, 49-midweek madness’ and 14 training evenings. I am incredibly pleased with the outcome of this year, 2020 may not have been the best but for VATSIM UK we can mark it as the year where we ran the most events.
We hope everyone managed to enjoy the event(s) that they have had a chance to participate in, whether flying or controlling. Finally, we’ll close the year with our Hogmanay fly in on the 30th December. Have a great Christmas and be safe!
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