How to make the best use of festival funding
In a previous post, our friends at Splatter highlighted the benefits of brands involved with music festivals. Here they share some advice on how to make the best use of festival funding.
As Splatter mentioned in their previous post on Sounds Like Branding, brands can gain pretty much from being part of a music festival, e.g. engagement, storytelling, sampling opportunities and so forth. It is however up to the brands and their agencies to make the best use of a sponsorship and turn the fans into customers (or customers into fans, as we say at Heartbeats).
The obvious question for a brand wanting to leverage off the passion created by music is:Â How do they pick through the options and ensure marketing spend is effectively used?
According to Splatter, you should:
1. Ensure that involvement in a music festival or music festivals is a part of a broader music based strategy. The consumers will smell the lack of authenticity if your presence at a music festival (for cool cred) isn’t backed up by relationships with artists, fans, online leverage, great use of music in retail A-T-L that incorporate music in some creative way.
2. Work with a specialist that understands the market place and actually knows everything about the festivals, the music, the fans and the brands. There is a huge difference between the quality of festivals on offer, and you will save time and money by speaking to people that already know.
3. Work with only established events (or at least credible and authentic ones, according to Heartbeats). If a promoter comes to you with a grand idea to run a festival, but they have no history of doing credible events, then be very cautious.
4. Ensure that you have a plan for your participation involving detailed pre, onsite and post event creative, planning and execution. Leverage every step of the way. Get as much access to artists as possible, ensure you can use the festival in your own brand stories, get involved in the pre-event marketing campaign. Do some marketing of your own. Create content during the festival and spread it afterwards. Look for multi-year relationships, so you can build your brand alongside the festival as it grows.
5. Get creative. If you think that slapping some logos around the festival grounds and having hot girrrrrlls in short skirts handing out samplers is all you have to do once you are at the festival, then think again. Creative and useful experiences allied to pre-event participation and continuous conversations can turn festival sponsorship into something truly valuable.
6. Ensure you have pre-agreed metrics so you can measure your investment ROI.
So, which festival would fit your brand you think?
