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CHAPTER SIX POST-EVENT IMPACTS OF TARTAN WEEK

Introduction

6.1 This chapter presents the post-event impacts of Tartan Week relating to the Scottish Executive's objectives; the longer term impacts linked to the events funded by the Scottish Executive at Tartan Week; and a report on the communications (media and PR) achieved.

Meeting the Objectives

6.2 The Scottish Executive had three objectives at the start of Tartan Week 2007. In this section of the evaluation report, we have highlighted each of these objectives and the extent to which each have been met.

6.3 Objective 1: Raising the profile and understanding of modern Scotland in the US.

6.4 The evaluation findings indicate that a significant number of Americans had the opportunity to see/hear information/advertising relating to Tartan Week thereby raising awareness of Scotland and its culture. Figures produced by MWW and the event organisers are:

• MWW, the PR agency commissioned by the Scottish Executive to promote Tartan Week recorded 100 million media impressions or "opportunities to see"
• Advertising undertaken by the Scottish Museums Council/Scottish Screen reached 6,217,680 individuals. Their e-marketing reached 130,000 individuals and the potential number of people reached by their leaflet was 24,400. A total of 5,181,881 individuals were reached through PR activity achieved on behalf of the Scottish Museums Council and Scottish Screen.
• Readership/user figures provided by the Scottish Book Trust indicate that an audience of approximately six million New Yorkers were made aware of Scotland and its literature through the Isle of Jura Festival of Scottish Writing.

6.5 The findings from the event research suggest, however, that respondents and participants have very positive perceptions of Scotland but that, at present, are more likely to perceive Scotland as traditional rather than modern.

6.6 Objective 2: To promote Scotland as a place to live, to work and study.

6.7 The findings from the event and post-event research indicate that respondents and participants were more likely to perceive Scotland as a place to live rather than as a place to work and study.

6.8 Events at Tartan Week included those aimed at specific audience segments including the business community and it is anticipated that these events helped to promote the country as a place to do business and to invest in.

6.9 This year, events did not include any which were organised by Scotland's education sector. The Scottish Executive should give consideration in 2008 as to how best to communicate, through its funded events, Scotland as a place to study.

6.10 Objective 3: To attract increased tourism to Scotland.

6.11 The findings from the research undertaken at events and post-event suggest high levels of interest in visiting Scotland. This objective was shared by the Scottish Village which is funded by VisitScotland.

6.12 Detailed information about website and media achieved for Tartan Week 2007 is presented in a later section within this chapter.

Longer-term impacts

6.13 To attempt to extrapolate the value of the economic impact of the events at Tartan Week 2007 based on the information provided would be inappropriate. Table 6.1 sets out the evaluation team's assessment of likely cultural and economic impacts of the various events which took place this year. The nature and scale of the impacts arising from each of the events is shown along the timescale within which they may be expected to be realised.

6.14 The evaluations submitted by event organisers give anecdotal evidence of the immediate effects of attendance at Tartan Week. There is much which is positive in terms of new business contacts made and in some cases contracts agreed. It is difficult to tell from the information provided how much of these are purely down to Tartan Week and how much would have happened in any case. However, if Tartan Week helped at all in such cases this provides a positive message about the impact which the Executive's investment has made. At present, however, this can only be qualitative. It does appear from the evaluations provided that the Scottish Executive's support for Tartan Week has had a positive medium-long term impact.

Table 6.1: Longer-term impacts of events at Tartan Week

Marketing/ PR

6.15 The Scottish Executive invested £70,000 in marketing and PR to support Tartan Week 2007.

6.16 The key objectives associated with the Scottish Executive's marketing and PR for Tartan Week 2007 were:

• to raise the profile of Tartan Week and all the events and activity surrounding it
• to encourage greater participation from US audiences
• to promote Scotland as a great place to live, work, study, visit, do business, invest
• to raise the profile and understanding of modern Scotland in the USA
• to increase traffic to the website www.tartanweekny.com

6.17 The main channels used by the Executive's marketing/ PR team to communicate its key messages for Tartan Week 2007 were PR, online activity and direct marketing. The strategy's three distinct sections included: pre promotion to generate interest in the week ahead: Scotland Run - pre-promotion and on the day activity, and activity around the week itself including partner events.

6.18 In collaboration with VisitScotland, the Scottish Executive funded the Tartan Week What's On Guide, the www.tartanweekny.com website and light poles around Grand Central Station. This was repeated from marketing activity undertaken jointly in 2006.

6.19 Event organisers were asked to provide details of their event/s to the Executive by 1 March 2007 in order that deadlines for printing the What's On Guide could be achieved. This included details of their events (dates, times and content) plus a thumbnail picture.

6.20 In addition to the promotional items mentioned above, the Scottish Executive funded a my space site (myspace/tartanweek.com) and tartanweekblogspot.com aimed at attracting younger audiences to Tartan Week. The blogspot featured the adventures of Morag (a tartan VW van) as it made its way around New York promoting Tartan Week. Event organisers accompanied Morag on her journey and helped to promote Scotland by talking to those who approached the van and handing out balloons/What's On guides.

6.21 The Scottish Executive commissioned a New York based PR Agency, MWW, to provide PR support for Tartan Week and its event organisers primarily in the week leading up to Tartan Week and Tartan Week itself. The Scottish Executive sought to gather increased media coverage for Tartan Week this year through relevant broadcast, online and media support. In addition, some event organisers were proactive in achieving PR support from other organisations/individuals within New York to ensure that their events reached specific target audiences.

Communications - Website Analysis

6.22 Website statistics were collected for the following key websites as advised by the Scottish Executive:

• www.tartanweekny.com
• www.scotlandistheplace.com
• www.scotlandinusa.com
• www.scotland.org
• www.scottish.parliament.uk

6.23 The statistics for the above websites are collected by different organisations and software programs. Due to the differences in the way the statistics are collected for each website, comparisons between them are limited. The differences in the collection of the data from the Scottish Parliament means comparisons between 2006 and 2007 cannot be made for this website.

www.tartanweekny.com

6.24 As in 2006, the Tartan Week official website was jointly funded by the Scottish Executive and VisitScotland. The statistics for www.tartanweekny.com are collected by Net-Tracker, a web analytical tool.

6.25 A total of 45,339 user sessions were reported during the period March-May 2007. User sessions were at their highest in March 2007 with the site reporting 25,306. The figures highlight increased activity in the month leading up to Tartan Week and the period of Tartan Week itself (31 March to 14 April 2007).

6.26 Almost 31,000 unique users were recorded by Net-Tracker during March and April 2007. In May only 2,043 unique users visited www.tartanweekny.com, again highlighting increased activity on the lead up and during Tartan Week 2007.

www.scotlandistheplace.com

6.27 The trend in Figure 6.1 shows visitor numbers to www.scotlandistheplace.com are higher in 2007 than they were in 2006. In 2007 a slight decrease in visitors occurred during the first few days of Tartan Week (380 visitors), however, the number of visitors began to increase from the middle of Tartan Week onwards. ²

6.28 The week directly following Tartan Week 2007 (Week 7) had the highest number of visitors across March, April and May (5,746 visitors). This could suggest Tartan Week created increased interest in Scotland, therefore increasing the number of visitors to www.scotlandistheplace.com.

Figure 6.1: Number of visitors towww.scotlandistheplace.com

www.scotlandinusa.com

6.29 New visitors to www.scotlandinusa.com in 2007 are considerably lower than new visitors in 2006. In the week leading up to Tartan Week 2007 there were 70 new visitors, this increased to 101 new visitors during Tartan Week.

www.scotland.org

6.30 www.scotland.org is a new website operated by the Scottish Executive. At the time of this evaluation the Scottish Executive had not yet received fully formulated statistics for the site therefore only limited figures are available.

6.31 In March 2007 www.scotland.org received a total of 21,661 visitors. This increased to 28,736 visitors in April 2007, an increase of 25%. Visitor numbers continued to increase during May with 36,974 visitors. This continual increase in total visitors could be due to the fact that this is a new website and that Scottish Executive promotional material is driving people to the site.

6.32 US visitors to www.scotland.org increased from 8,394 in March to 11,581 in April highlighting an increased interest amongst US citizens in this site during the Tartan Week period. As with total visitors, US visitors continued to increase to 14,020 in May 2007.

www.scottish.parliament.uk

6.33 The Scottish Parliament changed the way in which it collected its web statistics at the end of 2006 to ensure that the figures they collected excluded search engine spiders. The Scottish Parliament has advised that these figures are more accurate than its 2006 statistics. As there has been a change in the way the statistics are collected comparisons cannot be made between 2006 and 2007.

6.34 The gateway page to Tartan Week material on the Scottish Parliament website ( http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/nmCentre/events/tartanweek/index.htm) ranked highly under most popular pages viewed overall. In March the gateway page was ranked 176 in the most popular pages overall, while in April the gateway page moved to be the 38th most popular page overall.

6.35 The Tartan Week gateway page ( http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/nmCentre/events/tartanweek/index.htm) also ranked highly under most popular pages viewed within News, Media and Events. In March the page ranked 13, while in April the page was ranked number 3 within News, Media and Events showing an increased interest in these pages on the lead up and during Tartan Week. In May the page moved to rank 27 showing a decrease in interest after Tartan Week finished.

Communications - Media Analysis

6.36 This section presents the analysis of media items which appeared in weeks prior to and during and post Tartan Week. Where appropriate, comparisons have been made with the 2006 Tartan Week evaluation to assess whether media coverage was greater and whether Scottish Executive activities achieved greater coverage.

6.37 The data is split into pre, during and post Tartan Week. The dates are split as follows:

• Pre Tartan Week = any items recorded prior to 30 March 2007
• During Tartan Week = 31 March - 14 April 2007 (inclusive)
• Post Tartan Week = any items recorded after 15 April 2007

6.38 Domestic media cuttings for analysis purposes were received from the Scottish Executive's Press Office, News International and event organisers post-event evaluations. All media cuttings were entered into an Access database and analysed.

6.39 US media cuttings for analysis purposes were supplied by the New York based PR Agency commissioned by the Scottish Executive to provide PR support for Tartan Week and event organisers' post-event evaluations. This information was also entered into the database for analysis. It should be noted that at this stage press activity from VisitScotland has not been included in this evaluation.

6.40 MWW has reported that it achieved over 100 million media impressions or "opportunities to see" - an advertising equivalency of $4 million.

6.41 The analysis has been split by print, Internet and broadcast. Print is defined as any media from press or magazines, Internet as any presence on a website and broadcast includes radio and television coverage.

Print Coverage

6.42 The total number of print cuttings in 2007 was 303 (244 in domestic and 59 in US) an increase of 47 items overall (domestic and US) on 2006. In 2007, as in 2005 and 2006, items were most likely to appear during Tartan Week, while only a few items appeared after Tartan Week.

Figure 6.2: Number of print items (domestic/ US)

6.43 Domestic print media was most likely to appear as news items (213), while in the US print media was most likely to take the form of event listings (26) and news items (22). This is similar to the 2006 findings.

6.44 One of the Scottish Executive's targets for media in 2007 was to increase the coverage of Tartan Week in US news. This has been achieved in 2007, with 22 news items in the US compared with only five in 2006.

6.45 Slightly fewer event listings were recorded in 2007 (26) than in 2006 (30). This could be due to the fact that more news items were achieved in the US press in 2007.

6.46 Dressed to Kilt was the Scottish Executive funded event most likely to be mentioned in both domestic (118) and US (28) print. This is similar to the results found in 2006 and could be attributed to the "celebrity audience" that attends the event every year. Although Sir Sean Connery did not attend Dressed to Kilt in 2007, celebrities such as the Trump family attracted a lot of media attention in both the domestic and US media. It is likely that the increase in mentions of Dressed to Kilt directly relates to the increase in news items in the US press.

6.47 Visit Scotland's Scottish Village was the second most mentioned event in the press while the Tartan Day Parade was the third.

6.48 The tone of each reference within print cuttings was assessed against the messages outlined in the Media Strategy, to ascertain whether it was positive, factual or negative regarding individual events, Tartan Week and/or the Scottish Executive. An example of each type of article is shown below.

6.49 Print items in both the domestic and US press were most likely to be factual with these being either event listings or articles giving a general overview of events at Tartan Week.

6.50 Only 10 negative items were recorded in print media, all of which appeared in the UK. This is a vast improvement on 2006, where 46 negative items were recorded in the domestic press. The majority of the negative items in 2006 related to the Ministerial programme.

6.51 Positive print items were most likely to appear during Tartan Week 2007. A number of the positive articles related to the Scottish designers taking garments to be included in the 2007 Dressed to Kilt event.

Internet Coverage

6.52 The Internet cuttings were not split by US and domestic as the Internet is a global entity. 2007 has seen a significant increase in Internet items on Tartan Week. In 2006, 84 internet items were recorded, while in 2007 this has increased to 121. Almost two thirds of the Internet items were dated during Tartan Week.

6.53 The event most likely to be mentioned on the Internet was Dressed to Kilt. This is likely to be related to the high proportion of celebrities who attended the event.

6.54 As in 2006, most of the Tartan Week events were mentioned on the Internet, most of which were event listings. Scotland Rocks was the event most likely to be mentioned - 14 times in total and included Internet articles on www.nme.com ( NME Magazine website).

6.55 Internet items were most likely to be factual, mainly event listings or small descriptive articles on events. There were four positive Internet items recorded in 2007. No negative articles were recorded on the Internet during the period of the 2007 Tartan Week evaluation.

Broadcast Coverage

6.56 Broadcasts for this evaluation were provided by MWW, Dressed to Kilt, Scottish Book Trust and the Scottish Museums Council/Scottish Screen.

6.57 Television broadcasts from the US supplied by MWW are shown in Table 6.1. All television items were viewed as positive reporting either on a specific event after it had taken place or advertising the event taking place that day.

6.58 Only two events were mentioned in the television coverage: Tartan Day Parade and Scotland Run, the events which "top and tailed" Tartan Week. Almost all the broadcasts mentioned that these events were part of Tartan Week. The broadcast on NY 1 also included the web address ( www.tartanweekny.com) on the screen for more information.

6.59 All television broadcasts took place during Tartan Week, and were likely to be on the day or just after the day of the event mentioned.

6.60 The longest broadcast was 8 minutes 10 seconds on Good Day New York, Fox 5. This broadcast included the presenters of the programme wearing kilts while discussing Tartan Week in New York. The discussions of Tartan Week lasted approximately two and a half minutes and mentioned the forthcoming Tartan Day Parade.

Table 6.2: Television broadcasts

n/a - not available

6.61 According to MWW in New York four radio broadcasts were covered in the US regarding Tartan Week. Sound clips were only provided for two radio broadcasts; therefore information on radio broadcasts from WCBS- AM is limited. As the evaluation team could not listen to the two clips on WCBS- AM, information on these clips is provided in the table only.

6.62 The two radio broadcasts on 1010 WINS were positive broadcasts promoting Tartan Week as "a week of Scottish celebrations". The broadcast on the 1 April 2007 ran a total of seven times throughout the day and promoted two of Tartan Week's events; The Scotland Run and Dressed to Kilt. The broadcast which promoted the Tartan Day Parade was broadcast 16 times throughout the 14 April 2007, the day of the Parade itself.

6.63 One radio broadcast was also provided by the Scottish Book Trust. The broadcast on WNYC - New York Public Radio made no mention of Tartan Week, however. It featured Ian Rankin discussing his career and new book which he launched that evening at a Tartan Week event.

6.64 One radio broadcast on Irish Radio Network was also provided by the Scottish Museums Council and Scottish Screen. This was a one hour radio interview with Carl Watt from the Scottish Museums Council.

Table 6.3: Radio broadcasts

n/a - not available
* - provided by Scottish Book Trust
** - provided by Scottish Museums Council

6.65 Dressed to Kilt also provided data on broadcasts in the US over the period of Tartan Week. The information provided shows a number of television/radio broadcasts which mentioned/showed footage of Dressed to Kilt between the 30 March 2007 and the 22 April 2007 including

• APTN
• CBS Eyewitness News (San Francisco)
• CNBC World Business
• Entertainment Tonight (Canada)
• Extra!
• Fox News Channel coverage ( KPTV Portland, WZTV Nashville, WDAF Kansas City, WITI Milwaukee, KSTU Salt Lake City, KTBC Austin, KOKI Tulsa, OK, WFTX Naples, FL, WSJV South Bend, IN, KION Monterey, CA, Good Day New York)
• The New York Show with Mike and Juliet
• NY 1 News
• NYCTV
• The Insider CBS Channel 2
• VH1

www.myspace.com/tartanweek

6.66 For the first time the Scottish Executive launched a My Space website as part of the marketing campaign for Tartan Week 2007. www.myspace.com/tartanweek was set up in March 2007.

6.67 My Space is a social networking website, whereby people set up their own site. The site allows people to chat, share music and photos and write blogs etc.

6.68 In April 2007 had a total of 517 friends, 2030 profile views and 61 comments.

www.tartanweek.blogspot.com

6.69 In addition to the My Space website, the Scottish Executive set up a blog site. www.tartanweek.blogspot.com A blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption.

6.70 "Tam with the van" updated visitors about events in New York throughout the course of Tartan Week. The website included blogs on all the events included in the Tartan Week 2007 programme.

Key conclusions

6.71 Media and PR achieved by MWW and event organisers reached a significant American audience thereby raising the profile of Scotland - one of the Scottish Executive's key objectives.

6.72 Events at Tartan Week were targeted at specific audiences- business community, tourism industry - as well as members of the public helping to promote Scotland as a place to live, work, invest in and visit. The lack of any educational event meant that the promotion of Scotland as a place to study was not promoted as effectively.

6.73 It does appear from the post-event evaluations provided by event organisers that the Scottish Executive's support for Tartan Week has had a positive impact in terms of establishing new relationships, sustaining existing relationships and creating opportunities for those involved in Tartan Week in the US.

6.74 There was an increase in the print coverage for Tartan Week in 2007 compared with 2006 and the tone of articles was less negative tending to be classified as beneficial or factual. Broadcast coverage this year was improved upon from 2006 with one television broadcast lasting 8 minutes 10 seconds.

6.75 Whilst the majority of PR coverage for Scottish Executive funded events was obtained by MWW, many event organisers were also successful in gaining PR coverage for their events and for Tartan Week. It should be noted that VisitScotland commissioned LDPR in New York to gain PR coverage on its behalf.

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