Festival Marketing Strategies For The Age of Technology

Everyday a cluster of news items detailing festival money losses, line-up mishaps, festival cancellations and low tickets sales seem to appear online.

Big Day Out, Soundwave, Harvest and most recently, underage festival Push Over, have all suffered low-ticket sales, losses and bad press. People aren’t happy with festivals and they’re not going to put up with poor organisation and inflated ticket prices. But is there more to the festival crisis then meets the eye? Is it really all just a matter of poor organisation of the actual events, or is it perhaps because festival promoters are not as in touch with their markets as they could be?

The aim of any festival promoter should be to build up hype before the event and advertise a variety of aspects of the festival that will appeal to their markets, whilst also fostering a sense of community around the event. This is where gigs and festivals differ – not just because of the larger line-up, but because of the different environments and the community ethos associated with festivals.

I don’t see a lot of these marketing strategies being attempted by festival promoters themselves. Music websites like AAA build up hype for festivals by discussing it on social media platforms, covering news items related to the festival, covering the festival itself with reviews and photographers, and writing various articles related to the festival in question (not always the hype they want, of course).

Festivals themselves don’t seem to be doing any of the hard work, at least not on the online platform where most information is now communicated. Gone are the days of print advertisements and posters: social media is where people get their news, and this is where the music websites come in. But shouldn’t the festivals be putting in the effort to market their festivals online? They damn well should, considering music websites also cover the bad press and are not going to necessarily portray the image the festival promoters want to convey, even if festival organisers send websites a sappy press release boasting the festival’s benefits - as you can tell with this article.

To foster this community vibe a number of things must be put into place prior to the festival and after it. Namely, hype must first be built to attract a community of festivalgoers and maintain their interest. But the way this hype is built is very important to this cause. A festival needs an identity to have a community of like-minded people and a festival identity is first and foremost developed through marketing and advertising prior to the festival. And this is where festivals run into a lot of problems; none of this is happening.

And why is it not happening? 

First, because many festivals do not have an identity (I’m looking at you Big Day Out) and try to pander to too many markets, but I will not discuss this in length as a proper analysis would require a separate article. Second, because there is not enough hype being built prior to festivals focusing on niche aspects of the festival that gives the event an identity. Third, because what little marketing and advertising festivals do attempt are not effective, because they are not taking full advantage of social media. And fourth, because the promotions festival organisers are running completely destroy this notion of community.

Let’s run with Big Day Out as an example of a dysfunctional festival, considering, it’s well…pretty dysfunctional at the moment. On my fourth point I refer you to the Like A Boss promotion.

When you go on the Big Day Out website and click the ‘Buy Ticket’ button, you will get a drop down menu that immediately refers to ‘Like A Boss’. What is this odd Like A Boss link, I hear you ask? It’s a page advertising a special $285 ticket that gives you the premium Big Day Out experience. Cue eye rolling right now. And what do you get for your extra $100 – a ‘limited edition Like A Boss souvenir ticket’.  What, so my ordinary $185 Big Day Out ticket isn’t good enough to be kept as a souvenir? What is this special Like A Boss ticket – is it carved out of gold?

You also get a ‘special limited edition Like A Boss Club Pass, so everybody knows you’re A Boss’. Why would I want people to know I’m such a gullible douchebag that I would pay an extra $100 for crap I don’t need at a mediocre festival? Isn’t this ‘special limited edition’ club pass the same thing as my theoretical souvenir ticket?  Also, can somebody let the PR department for Big Day Out know that you don’t need two adjectives to describe what is essentially the same thing. Pick one – it’s either ‘special’ or ‘limited’. You don’t get two adjectives. Ever.

Next, you get ‘exclusive Boss main stage viewing areas’. Okay, here’s something with a little more substance. Well, that is until you realise that exclusive main stage viewing is all side stage views completely detached from the main stage pits, which is where all the magic happens. That’s who the bands on stage are playing to – not the ‘Bosses’ on the side of the stage with too much money on their hands (I can’t think of some worthy places they could donate that $100 to…like my booze money for the event).

Now we get to our penultimate Like A Boss special limited snowflake advantages. ‘Boss Entry Ways’. Okay…so it’s like that skip the line thing at the cinema, I’m guessing, because the website gives no more information about this. $100 for ten minutes in line. That’s $10 for every minute. Think about it.

Lastly, Like A Boss ticket holders receive ‘Real Boss Amenities’, none of which the website describes. This is the only thing worthy of any extra money, considering the amount of time festivalgoers waste lining up for amenities.  Maybe instead of running these ridiculous VIP promotions, festivals could focus on providing more amenities. In fact, put that in your marketing strategy and I’ll gladly go to your festival.

But the problem here isn’t that the ‘Like A Boss’ promotion is a total sham or that it is poorly advertised, although both of these issues are hindering this Like A Boss crap from being successful at all, even with the people who can afford it. The main problem is that these premium passes create a class divide that completely undermines the ethos of the festival experience and effectively alienates the majority of your ticket holders.

Did Woodstock have ‘VIP’ areas? Did Woodstock make any money, I hear you ask? No, but that’s not the point. Woodstock is regarded as the greatest music festival in history and it could have made money if it was organised by people who are actually professional promoters. Keeping out freeloaders and managing hoards of people were the key problems that undermined Woodstock’s financial success. This is not a problem for modern festivals, as nobody is even interested in going anymore. Before you worry about organising your festival, you should first and foremost make sure people are attending. These VIP promotions are damaging the festival community without gaining all that much cash for greedy festival promoters. 

One might argue that in our age of technology we are all so isolated from each other that this community spirit is not essential to selling tickets. But this is not true. In our age of technology we more connected than ever and festivals are not taking advantage of this through the platform of social media. You can feature festival camping packages, party events before and after the main festival events and other gimmicks to foster this festival community, but none of this is an effective strategy without the marketing behind it.

You know who does nail social media marketing? Rugby League. The NRL have this thing called the ‘Mission Control Centre’. It’s not as cool as it sounds, but it is the keystone to their online marketing strategy. Essentially, during an NRL game Misson Control employees utilise social media listening tools like Salesforce, Radian6 and Klout to funnel social media posts from the most influential Facebook and Twitter users, many of whom, are celebrities. These posts are then analysed by ‘catchers’, who pass on the info to ‘approvers’, who then move it on to designers and art directors, who create new posts that feature content taken straight from these popular posts. This process takes about five minutes.

Not all festivals have this kind of manpower, but it is certainly something to think about – especially involving music press who have the facilities to cover festivals in this way. What the NRL’s marketing strategies highlights is the failure of festival organisers to take advantage of modern technology that can connect us, rather then isolate us.

Indeed, with everybody connected through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram festivals need to be spreading the love before, after and during the festival to make everybody who didn’t go to the festival feeling like they’ve missed out on the best party of the year and have everybody who did go to the festival get excited about going, talk about it online and then fondly remember the experience afterward, and then talk about it some more.

I’m not advocating organising festival parties and making people pay extra for another day of events that don’t include music, which is what many festivals do, namely Falls Festival. People will make their own fun, have their own parties and build the community spirit themselves if that community spirit is associated with the festival prior to the event.

And that will be your best and cheapest marketing strategy of all. But to get there, you need to plant the marketing seedlings. If you make your festivalgoers happy and make them feel welcome, they will do the job for you.

Published by AAA Backstage.