Festival Marketing

Getting the Most out of Festivals this Summer

How can your brand make the most out of festival involvement this summer? Here is a quick guide covering the basics.

Add value. Assist organisers and promoters with their bottom line by increasing the quality of the events they put on. In doing this, you will enhance the festival-goers’ experience. The key to this is to understand the type of person attending each festival and what they are looking to get from the experience. Then, make sure you keep your offering true to your brand. A tea brand offering luxury showers will do nothing to promote their product or brand message, but providing tea ladies or an old fashioned tea shop serving English afternoon tea will get their product into hands in a relevant, memorable and fun way.

Be aware that all manner of gimmicks have already been done so try to be original and test out your ideas with the promoters and festival goers beforehand. As promoter Chris McCormick points out; “Festivals are about expression, through artistry, not just music. Promoters are no longer hanging their hats on their line-up and are having to focus on other art forms and also elements of the experience and atmosphere.” Brands should take heed of this and look at a variety of ways to enhance consumer festival experience.

Good examples come from brands offering relevant and useful experiences. Last summer saw Duracell taking their Powerhouse to several festivals offering music late into the night from top DJs as well as a chance to exchange old batteries for new Duracell ones for free. Ecover went to 4 ecologically friendly festivals in 2007, providing free shower gel and hand soap at all washing stations. It was a brilliantly simple example of how to offer the consumer something useful and on-brand whilst fitting in seamlessly with the festival ethos. Other successful practical activities include Orange handing out orange ponchos at Glastonbury and Wrangler running a jeans exchange and laundry service.

Duracell Powerhouse - always the last tent to close!

Build momentum around, as well as at the festival. Whilst many festivals attract people from all over the UK, some benefit from strong regional and local recognition and followings. Maximise local opportunities by working with retail outlets, restaurants, bars and clubs. Leicester’s Summer Sundae is a great example of how the festival can belong to a city, reaching out to local promoters, venues, bars, shops and businesses to get involved and provide services, support and sponsorship.

Leicester’s Summer Sundae Festival

In the run up to the festival, online integration can also help to build momentum. Every festival will have its own website as well as a social networking presence on Facebook and MySpace. Take advantage of these opportunities to connect with the audience pre and post event. Build a campaign online leading up to the event and use online brand ambassadors to seed your involvement with the audience beforehand.

Evaluation. This is obviously dependent on your objectives. For example, are you looking to generate trial, drive sales, change brand perceptions or raise awareness? Reach and sales are easy to measure, both at the festival and from surrounding activity. But, what about WOM and brand perceptions? If your festival activity has truly connected with your audience, they’ll be raving about your brand to their peers when they get home. So put in place methods to capture data (whilst benefiting your customers) so you can continue the dialogue post event and get an idea of what the extended reach is.