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: 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?
In this post, our friends at Splatter have taken a look at 2010’s hottest phenomena in China, the Music Festival. Below they touch upon what brands can gain from this phenomena. These benefits aren’t exclusive for the Chinese market though, but apply to many other markets.
Until relatively recently, China’s music festivalers were restricted to one option only, Heavy-metal heavy Midi which has been held in Beijing since 1999 and stood alone as the only regular event in China until, in 2007, two new players strode purposefully into town. Aiming at a more attractive (to marketeers at least) “indie hipster” crowd, Modern Sky Records in Beijing launched their eponymously titled 4 dayer, and Splatter’s sister company Split Works launched the Yue Festival in Shanghai, backed by Bacardi and Converse. Since 2007, Music Festivals have erupted in every corner of China, with (rough estimation) around 60 in 2010 and there is more to come…
Festivals are however an expensive game - creating a temporary village for 1-4 days, paying local and national government licenses and then of course artists fees, both international and domestic (domestic artist demands have tripled in the last couple of years due to the increased popularity and demand) - puts festival investments into the millions of RMB (1 RMB is approximately 0,15 USD). On the other hand, you look at the ticket prices of the average festival (60RMB/day) and the average attendances (2,000 – 8,000 – be wary of anyone who claims more, Splatter attend them all), it becomes clear there is a large financial disparity occurring.
How do the organisers make up this shortfall? In China, there are four ways currently:
A local government offers to underwrite the festival (Suzhou Holisland, Zhangbei Inmusic, Zhenjiang Midi Festival) as a way of promoting the town/ district
Sponsorship fees (Modern Sky, YUE, Nokia’s Strawberry in Xi’an)
Real Estate developers offer to host a music festival on their land to attract people to the area and then to hopefully sell them expensive property (Tianjin Dreamvalley, Great Wall Tanglewood)
Promoter funds the festival personally (at Niu Yu Hui near Guangzhou, the farmer whose land hosted the festival, sold his car and laptop in order to pay the bands due to poor ticket sales)
More often than not, festivals are funded by a combination of the elements above (e.g. Zebra Festival, a festival in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, is a joint venture between Zebra Media and the Chengdu Government/Chengdu Media Group and Suzhou’s Holisland was actualy underwritten by local government to draw attention to a new real estate development).
Because of the need for funding, brands and agencies in China are being approached by most, if not all of these festivals throughout the year. But, why would you want a music festival as a part of your branding strategy? Splatter tell their clients that music festivals scratch at least 4 distinctive itches.
First, brands get a great experiential and engagement opportunity to have a deep and meaningful interaction with their consumers. Going to a festival is the most exciting thing most people ever do; this makes them incredibly open minded to messages from sponsors.
Second, brands can use their participation at the music festival to tell a broader story to the media, by buying media and mobilising online communities. Festivals can deliver huge value in terms of PR and marketing when done well.
Thirdly, your brand benefits from increased awareness as well as a positive and often passionate association and alignment with the festival itself and the artists attending.
Finally, there are enormous sampling opportunities, which your target consumer will often pay for! On site, sales can be leveraged, and most experienced brands report substantial increases in sales post event.
Which music festival would fit your brand?
Splatter is a specialist music communications agency based in China. Split Works, Splatter’s sister company, is a Beijing- and Shanghai-based concert promotion agency. Together they maintain China Music Radar, a blog about the Chinese music industry.
