The Three Rivers Arts Festival is a 10-day event (5 June 2009-14 June 2009). This event was held in downtown Pittsburgh. The Women's Committee of Carniege Museum of Art founded this festival in the 1960s. This "little outdoor art show" in the past is currently the region's biggest multidisciplinary showcase of visual and performing arts. 

However, these two festivals do share some similarities and differences in terms of their marketing strategy. Broken down into 2 components, this marketing strategy refers to the 8Ps'. 

Experiential Components:

Ladysmith Black Mambazo 

The Three Arts Festival

Ben Hardt and his Symphony

Dance:

The Three Arts Festival

However, Fun for Kids, an event by The Three Arts Festival, is one factor that differs from Singapore Arts Festival. One of the events is called Caribbean Vibes Steelpan Workshop. 

 

B) Place

Under the category of place, one definitely differs from the other. As for 2009, Singapore Arts Festival is held at a wide array of place. The opening of the festival, which marked the start of the event took place in Marina Barrage. Being the latest Singapore's downtown icon and the largest and most urbanized catchment area, this venue is a perfect spot to gather a massive amount of patrons. The dance and theatre performances were mainly held in either the Victoria or Esplanade Theater. Other venues include National Art Museum and Drama Centre Theater. Music covers venues such as the Esplanade Concert Hall and LASELLE College of Arts. The closing ceremony took place in the heartlands of Yishun.

On the other hand, venues for the Three Rivers Arts Festival includes the Point State Park which is the festival's main stage, Dollar Bank Stage, Theatre Square Carbaret  and a whole lot more. Point State Park caters more to art lovers whereby arts activities was held here. These activities includes calligraphy, quilting and Widgets into Yard Arts. Dollar Bank Stage, on the other hand, caters more to music lovers whereby concerts and music performance are held there. 

C) Programming

In Singapore's Arts Festival context, I observed that most of the major performances starts from 7.30 pm onwards. This is the timing whereby people will usually end their work of school and it is convenient for them to attend these events. The earliest programme, Dream-Work/ Dream-Home, starts at 8.30pm. On top of that, only a minority of performances starts at 3pm. Also, all these programs run throughout the week; be it weekdays or weekends.

However, most of the weekends or performances that took place in the Three Rivers Arts Festival started as early as 12pm. Two events taken from this festival includes the Calligraphy Guild of Pittsburgh and Turners Anonymous.  

Programming of the respective festivals can be found in brochures as well as their websites. However, I personally think that Three Arts Festival website is a more detailed one. To give a better clarity to the people, the website has actually categorized the events by date and location. Below is taken from the website itself. 

For more infos, log on to:

(click on the website for further details.)

D) People

People here refers to the interaction between visitors and the staff/ volunteers which plays a large part of the event experience. One common practices of both of the events is the involvement of volunteers. Throughout the year, Singapore Arts Festival involve volunteers preferably the youths in running the event. One example is stated below depicted from http://singaporeartsfest.com/news/?m=200904.

This is an advertisement whereby they are recruiting volunteers performers for The Big Game and Closing Celebration. 

The same goes for the Three Arts Festival. These volunteers can actually sign up through their website. According the sources, Three Arts Festival rely on a a massive amount of volunteers yearly. Below shows the positions for volunteers for Three Arts Festival. This is taken from their website

(click on the website for further details.)

 http://www.artsfestival.net/getinvolved/volunteer-positions.html

E) Partnerships

This year, Singapore Arts Festival 2009 features 7 new commissions, which consists of 2 world premiers and 1 Asian premier co-commissioned with international partners and 5 other international partners. Further elaborations on other sponsorships will be stated in the section of stakeholders. 

As for the Three Arts Festival, they held partnerships from the corporate, foundation and the public. This includes the media coverage as well such as 91.3fm wyep.

Here is the list of partners that are involved in the Three Arts Festival.

Taken from:

(click on the website for further details.)

F) Promotion

Promotion here refers to the array of "communication mix" such as advertising, PR and sales promotions. 

In Singapore's context, they did a massive amount of work in terms of advertising. For instance, banners were put up mainly along Orchard Road and even taxis have themselves advertised forthis festival.   In addition, they also advertise this festival on taxis.

One significant sales promotions by Singapore Arts Festival 2009 is the discount privilege particularly to ArtFest Club Members as well as ArtsFest Ticket Holders. These promotions include discounts in purchase of books, accomodation in Marina Mandarin and some food and beverage outlets. Some of these promotions are shown below and are taken from: 

G) Packaging and Distribution

Singapore Arts Festival 2009 offers package distribution in terms of the purchasing of tickets. For instance, purchasing tickets for 4 or more shows are entitled to a 15% discount, whereas 2 to 3 shows to a 10% discount. Moreover, full-time students, NSFs and and senior citizens are entitled to 20% discount limited to one ticket per valid identification per pass per show. Other Package discounts includes Group Bookings and School Bookings. 

Packaging and Distribution in the Three Rivers Arts Festival are limited.

H) Price

Singapore Arts Festival 2009 offers a range of price tickets from $16 to $120. However, as mentioned earlier, there was early bird discounts from 9 March 2009 to 12 April 2009. Another one will be the general sales from 13 April to 14 June 2009.

However, this totally differs from the Three River Arts Festival whereby most of the performances are of free admission and open to public.