Olympic venues

One thing both the venues for my events have in common are that they are both going to play a part in the up and coming London 2012 Olympic Games, Earls Court is going to host the volleyball competitions and Wembley Arena is going to host the badminton and rhythmic gymnastics.

You may wonder why I chose to bring this up... well the Olympics is the reason I went to visit Wembley Arena, after being selected to be part of the volunteer army which is needed to make the games happen I had a orientation and training session on the Sunday just gone. Therefore thought I would get some good venue research done for this blog!

The journey into London wasn't as straight forward as I had hoped... I'll just show the pictures as I think they will tell a better story.

View from my flat as I woke up

There's something not quite right here...

Ok so eventually I got to Wembley Arena and proceeded to look for advertising for the up and coming events and shows. I quickly came across plenty of large posters promoting all kinds of events scheduled at the arena including of course the X-Factor Live Tour.

Taken inside Wembley Arena 5 Feb 2012

Taken inside Wembley Arena 5 Feb 2012

I continued to walk round the venue and soon spotted various information desks and stands with a selection of marketing leaflets again about various events, amongst these was Wembley Arenas Events Guide.

Front and back cover of Wembley Arena's Events Guide

Inside Wembley Arena's Events Guide

Also on the stand was a specific handout for X-Factor Live Tour as seen below, I was expecting this to be a smaller version of the posters which were dotted around the building, but they weren't, however judging by the full dates list it was just a standard handout designed to be used in all venues on the tour.

Promotional leaflet for the X-Factor Live Tour

After visiting Wembley I thought I would take a trip to Earls Court to see if they had a similar amount of advertising materials... in short, they didn't. What they did have was a whole lot of promotional signage advertising the current exhibition, Destinations Holiday & Travel Show. I expect they will have a similar amount of marketing for the Ideal Home Show in a months time, but I will definitely go down there and have a look!

Taken outside Earls Court 5 Feb 2012

Inside the venue's foyer I didn't find any posters of the Ideal Home show, or any other up and coming event at Earls Court, although I did find a "What's on" poster tucked away in a fire escape corridor which did have a small piece of text relating to the Ideal Home show!

Taken inside Earls Court 5 Feb 2012

Taken inside Earls Court 5 Feb 2012

Situated on the only reception/information desk was a "What's on" leaflet, this had some basic text about the show and the shows web address. (Exactly the same information as the poster above!)

Inside Earls Court's What's On leaflet

So what did I actually find out...?

Well Wembley Arena had an obvious higher level of promotional materials on site and appeared to be actively advertising future events to all they're visitors. Whereas Earls Court appeared to focus much more in transforming the venue to suit the current exhibition or show and any material they did have was either hidden or was trying not to take attention away from the Destination Holiday & Travel Show.

The X-Factor Live Show leaflet which I picked up from Wembley and in fact all the leaflets on the stand appeared to not be one particular style or design... this suggests that these are all produced by the promoter/organiser rather than the venue.

Im not really sure what the next post will be about but I've got plenty to go on... so stay tuned!