What is WIARD Promotions©?

WIARD Promotions is a new business venture created by undergraduates of the De Montfort University Business School as part of their Business Enterprise course. The name WIARD © is an acronym meaning Working Intelligently Around Real Dilemmas. The main purpose of WIARD is to operate in the Entertainment and Leisure industry utilising the new opportunities that Web 2.0 present. More specifically, WIARD intends to redefine the industry as integrated leisure and entertainment organise a selection of unique and attractive showcase events throughout its life cycle and offering its audience value adding after sales services free at point of delivery. These events will serve as a platform on which students can showcase their talents and skills as we will be sourcing expertise from fellow students giving them valuable experience that will help them gain employment in the future.

The focal point of WIARD Promotions is the WIARD Web site and in particular the WIARD FM section.

What does WIARD Promotions do?

We want to take the talents of students based in the East Midlands (Leicester, both De Montfort and Leicester University, and Nottingham, both Trent and Nottingham University) and ensure that they ‘get WIARD ©’ to an audience. Whilst we will seek to stage events such as; stage dramas, live music shows, sport competitions and other exhibitions in partnership with local promoters as well as staging our own event targeted at both; students and the local community of the East Midlands. The operating core of the organisation is the media department where the WIARD FM radio shows, highlights of events in the region and media programs are recorded and published. WIARD Promotions works with non-profit organisations to provide an avenue for our target market to gain experience of working within our operating core and their career opportunities.

How will WIARD Promotions achieve this?

Initial investment will come from the East Midlands Media

Our new plan is that in the first period of operation (3-9 months) to focus on raising the profile of the WIARD FM site which will host club nights/gigs listing in the East Midlands and driving subscription numbers via inter-promotional campaigns with local promoters (affinity marketing).

We are offering an incentive to local promoter in that in return for our logo and URL being displayed on their promotional material we will offer to list their events on our events page and provide a photographer (student or member of local community) that will take pictures for the website as well as being displayed in newsletters. This is an example of the content that we will provide. In the future we will seek to offer a camera services where video highlights are recorded and displayed for the site (maybe charging a fee for the service).

Only once we have a critical mass of members on the WIARDWeb network will we seek to promote our own events and events and start to gain a positive cash flow.

WIARD Promotions will set up its own exclusive promotional channels* through which information of events will be communicated to students, these channels will complement traditional methods of promotion.

Once we have our own distribution channel established we will seek to offer the site content in new contexts (i.e Mobile devices such mobiles phones, and handheld video games devices.). This will take advantage of existing communications infrastructures (World Wide Web, mobile phone networks WAP).

In essence WIARD Promotions seeks to connect the local community via the WIARDWeb.