Festival Time is here again. Jump on the bandwagon?
A decade or so ago, festivals were not things that troubled brands unduly. Glastonbury was still very faithful to its hippy roots, ‘T in the Park’, backed by Tennants Lager, was successful but it took months to sell out, the ‘V Festival’, backed by Virgin , was similar – successful but not manically so.
Various other festivals came and went, struggling to reach critical mass, and from a marketing perspective festivals were seen as an indulgence rather than a core means of reaching the music loving public. Fast forward 10 years and the situation is very different.
Tennants and Virgin have been followed by brands too numerous to mention, and festivals have lost their reputations as dens of iniquity and become shining beacons in the marketing plans of brands that want to connect with a youth/youthful audience.
So much so, that each festival is in danger of being subsumed by brands. Thankfully, the festival promoters have, in most cases, resisted the temptation to take the money and run, and have imposed severe restrictions on what brands can and cannot do. Add value to the festival experience and you are welcomed. Go on a tree-branding mission and you will be castigated.
Many of the most successful activations of brand activity have not been ‘on site’, but have been treating festivals as a 6- or even 9-month programme of marketing that culminates in the festival itself. A good example of this has been how the Guardian, by being the main Glastonbury media partner, has been able to give added weight to its festival coverage, which starts as soon as the sun comes out in spring and provides thousands of column inches by the end of the summer.
Or there is Virgin’s policy of offering tickets to its customers before they go on sale to the general public, a tactic now embraced by O2 for all the venues it sponsors.
Virgin Mobile also launched an ad-funded series on Channel 4 called ‘Road to V’, which featured unsigned acts all vying to get the ultimate prize of a slot at the V Festival, which ran in the two months prior to the festival itself.
But by being brilliant on-site, in other words adding value to the festival experience, as brands such as Bacardi have done with their Bacardi bars or Walls ice-cream have done with their sand-filled beaches, you absolutely can stand out from the other brand activity on site; it is much harder if your effort and your return on investment relies on just a couple of days’ activity. And if you just do something bog standard on site, then you will drift into the background as easily as a member of the crowd.
So, what does it take to succeed?
Do you have to do something brilliant and spend a fortune in order to stand out?
No you don’t. What you do need to do is to understand the mentality and needs of the festival-going public. For instance, an astonishingly large number of people don’t go to festivals to listen to the music. The repeat purchase percentage is very high. with people going back to the same festival year after year. They don’t want brands that don’t belong there, cr*pping on their festival. Again it comes back to how you, as a brand, can add value to their experience. So a tethered hot-air balloon, that is used for branding purposes, would go down like a lead one. A tethered hot-air balloon that is used to help punters see the festival site from the air would be seen in a far more positive light .
In many ways, festival marketing is no different to normal marketing. It’s just that your audience will applaud you louder if you get it right, ignore you if you don’t make an effort and laugh at you if you get it wrong.
Thank you and goodnight.