Feature: Experiential marketing: Festivals

People are “pissed off with festivals”, according to Vince Power, the Mean Fiddler founder who once ran Reading Festival. He believes that the levels of brand sponsorship and marketing at some music events have reached such proportions that festival-goers are being short-changed. His response to this is July’s A Day at the Hop Farm (headlined by Neil Young) which Power describes as “a new independent festival, which counteracts the current brand-saturated music scene”. In contrast to other festivals, he boasts that his new event will thrive despite being “totally unbranded without any sponsorship”.

Power’s belief that festival-goers are feeling alienated provides a warning to brands who are preparing to leverage their investment in this summers’ festivals through experiential marketing. “Brands should be wary of being too corporate or overt in their sponsorship to avoid the possibility of a backlash among festival-goers who will not want to see these events hijacked by commerce,” points out Lucy Pearce, experiential director at Wax Live, part of Wax Communications. “Constant Bluetooth messaging offering special deals, for example, or advertising hoardings threaten to turn festivals into muddy shopping malls, and that will not got down well with those who see festivals as an alternative to consumer living.”

Festivals can deliver a real emotional connection to the consumer, notes Dom Robertson, client services director at experiential agency RPM. “Therefore for the brand to piggy-back that association and gain important credibility within the minds of the consumer, it’s important brands make sure they get it right. Essentially, the acid test for brands and their involvement with festivals comes when they address the questions: why are we involved, is our brand going to add value to the audience experience, and is the brand relevant to the consumer in this situation?”

Steve Jenkinson, marketing planner for live brand experience at Momentum Worldwide, explains that it is a question of the “fine line between inclusive and intrusive”. “Even as a captive audience, festival-goers will only accept brands that naturally fit with the situation, and actively resist those that bombard them with messages detracting from the festival’s primary appeal – the music,” he says, pointing to four factors that need to be balanced: effective translation of a brand’s personality; relevance to the festival’s environment, audience and agenda; convenience or a functional benefit; and being fun.

Dave Atkinson, managing partner at Space, agrees that brands should choose their activity carefully to create a long-lasting experience that people will buy into. “Brands must remember the audience of music fans are there to experience the festival and see their favourite bands. Simply interrupting this experience will not engage a festival-goer. Brands viewing a festival as an opportunity to just distribute some merchandise and deliver against an awareness objective do so at their peril if that’s as deep as the activity goes.

“To resonate at all with the target audience, brands must ensure that their communication clearly justifies their reason for being at the festival and demonstrates their right to be there alongside the target and the acts. Brands must be relevant to the situation the festival-goers are in to add value to the event, or if they are not, they must create value through the experience they create.”

Good examples from last summer included Duracell’s Powerhouse which, says Jenkinson at Momentum, was “relevant, on-brand and provided a convenient solution”. Housed in a super-sized battery-shaped tent, it offered music late into the night from top DJs as well as a chance to exchange old batteries for new Duracell ones for free.

Other successful activity last year included Orange handing out orange ponchos at Glastonbury and Wrangler offering a jeans exchange and laundry service. While Jenkinson also praises Strongbow’s Cider House experience, an alternative DJ venue, other so-called brand experiences are “often little more than branded tents or bars [and] do nothing to remedy the tenuous links between the brands’ and the festivals’ values”.

Stuart Bradbury, business development director at agency Ignition, applauds the Blue Room at the O2 Wireless Festival, where existing O2 customers could go, with a friend, to chill out. Atkinson at Space agrees that more care needs to be taken to ensure the right brand experiences are involved with festivals, suggesting it is partly the responsibility of the organisers themselves. “Currently there is little to protect the sponsors from competing brands and ‘me too’ experiences,” he says.

While creating a relevant brand experience at a festival is at the core of a successful campaign, Robertson at RPM stresses that sponsorship activation is something that also happens before and after the event. “Brand owners need to look at all the options available to them to target the audience and to put their brand messages across,” he says. “This can be anything from getting access to the database of the festival to ensuring they get brand mentions on all media that go out in connection to the festival. To ensure the best use of experiential marketing activities at a festival, you need to fully understand the consumer touchpoints involved across the whole process – pre, during and post event.”

This involves more than just databases but knowing where people will be finding out about and talking about festivals, such as in the pub or on Facebook, he explains. “Brands then need to understand where experiential can play a role in this process, from creating communities to streaming and downloading video.”

Similarly, Robertson emphasises the need for relevant communication after the festival, using data collected by brand ambassadors or the organisers. “Email and social networking means that you can communicate, reminisce or even build a reunion with consumers,” he suggests – for instance, giving people the opportunity to see photographs or video streaming of the event or of them and their friends.

Pearce at Wax Live also suggests offering festival-goers an exclusive opportunity to download the live performances they have just watched onto their mobile phones, creating “branded mobile souvenirs that they can take home”.

Bradbury at Ignition cites the example of AOL at Live 8, where staff took photographs of concert-goers which could then be viewed online afterwards via AOL. “It’s important that brands create some sort of legacy from their involvement with a festival and not just think of it as a one-off,” he says. “It should be seen as the first touchpoint in an ongoing dialogue.”

Drinks brand Innocent has notably gone one step further, creating its Fruitstock festival, which last year evolved into the Innocent Village Fete in the hands of Sledge. “Brands are seeing huge value in owning their own events and not jumping on the back of existing properties and saying, ‘Look, it’s popular so let’s sponsor it’,” explains the agency’s sales and marketing director, Ian Irving. “Innocent created a branded experience that offered the consumer total immersion and allowed the brand to control all of the marketing channels while also giving them content generation and asset ownership.”

He compares Innocent’s annual event to other diary dates such as Red Bull’s Flugtag for man-powered aircraft and the Nike 10km Run. “It boils down to whatever your brand niche is, you can create an experience or event that will suit the audience.”

Whether a brand owner is creating its own stand-alone experience or leveraging its partnership with an existing festival, it is about identifying every relevant opportunity to activate the brand, from eating and entertainment areas to the camping and toilet areas. As Robertson concludes: “Experiential is all about understanding the heart of the brand and looking at how you can bring it to life in the festival setting. More often than not, it’s the activation that the brands run around their basic sponsorship package that really delivers the return on investment.”

Jack Daniel’s

Bacardi Brown-Forman Brands developed a brand experience at last year’s Carling Leeds Festival to promote its Jack Daniel’s whiskey, drawing on its heritage.

Its agency, Momentum, recreated the spirit of the brand’s native Lynchburg, Tennessee, with the Jack Daniel’s Saloon and Barbecue Room. Festival-goers could relax with a whiskey and branded dishes and listen to acoustic music.

The Saloon was self-funding over the three days, attracting 50,000 people, and is returning to the festival circuit this summer.

“The JD Saloon’s word-of-mouth success was reflected in sales figures, showing a significant increase in loyalty among the target festival crowd,” explains Steve Jenkinson at Momentum. “Even if an experience is done well, success has to drive post-festival sales. The product has to be readily available and must build on the values conveyed at the festival. Linked festival and post-festival promotions are one way to drive sales, provided that the link between the two is strong enough.”