The festival come down isn’t just reserved for the rockers and the ravers. Major brands have become savvy to the value of marketing at music festivals, however, hundreds of thousands of pounds is being poured in to campaigns where the brand message is forgotten and discarded as soon as the wristbands are cut. So, what is the attraction and how do brands ensure longevity of engagement and sell through of product long after the tent has been packed away?
The attraction
Music festivals can be incredibly lucrative; you’re appealing to a young consumer with disposable income and a long purchasing life ahead of them. The average festival goer has grown up in a commercial world and research suggests that they expect to see brands at festivals and if a brand gets it right in terms of their activation, the consumer views it a positive experience.
Festivals are a prime opportunity to talk direct to consumers, to build brand affinity with repeated exposure and to get the product directly in hand. Consumers go to festivals for escapism and brands need to support this to be able bond with them. Overloading consumers with information or a hard sell doesn’t work as consumers are in a completely different headspace. Brand festival activations need to be creative and engaging without relying on consumers to put in too much effort. Its important that any brand activation is engaging to that particular festival audience- which differs across the various events. If the activation is aligned with the specific festival creative it is more immersive in the overall festival offering. Consumers need to believe in it and the credibility that garners leads to a successful brand affinity.
The flirt before
In the lead up to an event too many brands think that plastering the logo across the literature will suffice, it won’t. The most successful brand festival campaigns are those that put the onsite activation at the heart of an end-to-end campaign running both before and after the festival. Digital and social media campaigns that engage consumers in the run up to the festival build a good foundation for onsite and post event success. Mixcloud provides a fantastic opportunity for brands to collaborate with talent and create an exclusive pre-festival mix that will enhance its pre-event presence. It doesn’t need to stop at audio; YouTube is the platform of choice for most young people as their main way of listening to music, not just watching it and there are plenty of channels, such as UKF with over 8 million subscribers, which brands can partner with.
Timings are key, too many brands miss the boat in terms of the festival comms and deals are often done too late so they miss out on key PR spikes. Line-up or ticket sales announcements are crucial points for the consumer when they are at their most excited and engaging with the overall festival conversations. Most major festivals trend on twitter and appear heavily in the media, so brands need to plan their campaigns with this in mind. Pushing content that’s applicable to each announcement; interviews, audio packages and behind the scenes video will utilise the social reach and give a taste of the festival ahead.
Being involved at every stage of the pre-event activity enables brands to begin engaging with consumers while they have the festival at the forefront of their mind- especially during the winter months when they are generally at home online rather than trying to compete during the summer months when consumers are out and about at other events.
Courting in the campsite
Once the event is underway, tote bags and branded beach balls are the basic, essential ingredients but brands need to add some spice to stand out. UKF recently partnered with Exit Festival to host and curate the main stage in Serbia and organised a secret party in one of the main unrestored caves under the fortress. Word of mouth quickly spread the news of the exclusive cave-rave and the spontaneous look and feel along with the disclaimer the guests were required to sign gave it rub of authenticity. Experiential activity such as this pays dividends at festivals. Stories of exceptional experiences are amplified and spread through campsites, doing all the hard work for you. The next day those lucky few who attended boasted of how they saw the headliner Dub FX DJ from his iPad.
More festivals and events are utilising live streaming, which in itself is a great opportunity. A recent Chase and Status gig at the O2 in front of 20,000 was live streamed to another 21,896 online. It doubled the reach for Chase and Status however the real winner was Beats by Dre that sponsored the live stream. Every user saw a pre-roll, the branded player and had the ability to click through to the brands website. Looking beyond the event itself, it’s also extremely important to consider the Chase & Status archive has since been viewed over half a million times (605K) on YouTube, a fantastic longevity for the live stream content, the brand association as well as the moment itself.
How to seal the deal
During and after, brands should focus on producing content that is fun, beautiful, immersive and carries with it opportunities for sponsorship and product placement that keeps the brand central to the festival experience. Multi-channel media networks offer a plethora of platforms that can be used to host or promote live Streams, pre event audio mixes, interviews and post event videos. All of these can carry a brands message and can be enjoyed by “reflectors”, who attended the festival and use the brand as the portal to access their memories, or “dreamers” that use the content to access a slice of the action.
It is because of the brands involvement, that the event comes alive.
It is really important that brands consider a multi-year year commitment; if you have an on-going relationship with a festival you can continue a conversation throughout the year by utilising content, partners and platforms.
An example of an ideal endgame is to incorporate user-generated material intermixed with a brand’s produced content at the end of the festival. This can then be downloaded, streamed or shared socially. This creates wonderful memories, which ultimately keeps the festival feeling alive for longer. It has to be the intension of the brand working with festivals to make a big noise that can really harness the impact of ‘shared socially' content. By utilising social channels for branded content distribution and the power of people seeing footage shared by friends, it amplifies the brand association beyond just the festival attendees.
By Jenni Cochrane, Head of Events & Tours at AEI Media and Julia Bruns, Director of OurKidBrother.
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