Festivals X brand communication

Birds are chirp­ing, shorts are com­ing out – the fes­ti­val sea­son will soon be up­on us. How­ev­er, fes­ti­vals are not on­ly at­trac­tive for par­ty-lov­ing mil­len­ni­als, but al­so for brands want­i­ng to reach a wide range of peo­ple.

Festival-goers are open-minded and happy to spend their money – making them easy prey for brands 

The ad­van­tage of fes­ti­vals for brands: there is a suit­able fes­ti­val for al­most every tar­get au­di­ence. At­trac­tive com­pe­ti­tions and “free” ser­vices, such as hair­styling, DIY cloth­ing em­bell­ish­ments and fes­ti­val gad­gets, keep fes­ti­val vis­i­tors hap­py. The aim is for the brand, and its ser­vices, to re­main pos­i­tive­ly etched in their minds. Fes­ti­vals al­so pro­vide an ide­al ad­ver­tis­ing plat­form thanks to their site lay-out. As the fes­ti­val walk­ways are usu­al­ly mapped out, it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to avoid your stand. Al­most every­one at­tend­ing a mu­sic fes­ti­val will of­ten for­get to take some­thing. Brands plug­ging these gaps of­ten res­cue the en­tire week­end. If, for ex­am­ple, in ad­di­tion to sun cream or charg­ing points, you al­so pro­vide seat­ing, you can ac­quire new cus­tomers. If you have a large bud­get, you can spon­sor an en­tire stage and have your name plas­tered all over it. This is good for un­con­scious brand­ing and your lo­go will fea­ture in lots of pho­tos. A spon­sored lounge is an even bet­ter al­ter­na­tive, where you have com­plete con­trol over the at­mos­phere, sto­ry, mu­sic – every­thing in fact.

FO… what?

FOMO is the fear of miss­ing out on some­thing, usu­al­ly trig­gered by elab­o­rate­ly staged In­sta­gram pho­tos. Prob­a­bly the most aes­thet­ic fes­ti­val, Coachel­la, with its ver­i­ta­ble flood of In­sta­gram posts, makes you feel like you are the on­ly per­son not to have been there year af­ter year. By cre­at­ing a pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty that is vi­su­al­ly ap­peal­ing, a brand can quick­ly at­tract a large tar­get au­di­ence. There is noth­ing wrong with a tra­di­tion­al pho­to wall, but holis­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ed worlds, such as a liv­ing room, con­vert­ed bus or en­chant­ed gar­den, find par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance among In­sta­gram users.  When­ev­er we talk of In­sta­gram, in­flu­encers are al­ways close by. As a brand, you can gen­er­ate huge range by invit­ing in­flu­encers to a fes­ti­val as brand am­bas­sadors, get­ting them to pose with your prod­ucts and re­peat­ed­ly men­tion­ing your brand us­ing hash­tags spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed for the fes­ti­val. You can post the re­sult­ing im­ages on In­sta­gram af­ter the fes­ti­val, there­by gen­er­at­ing or­gan­ic clicks even weeks af­ter the event.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, fes­ti­vals are about af­fect­ing peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly and in­creas­ing their loy­al­ty, sur­round­ed by sen­so­ry abun­dance. That is why it is im­por­tant for your stand, lounge and gad­gets to set you apart from the com­pe­ti­tion, both vi­su­al­ly and con­tex­tu­al­ly, while re­main­ing true to your­self, al­low­ing your brand to be re­mem­bered, even six months lat­er. Who knows, maybe next year, peo­ple will buy their fes­ti­val tick­et to re­vis­it the brand and not the acts…