Brands have a myriad of opportunities to reach festival-goers with great experiences, enabling them to leverage their sponsorship, and create a lasting impact on their campaign.
Summer is almost here and this can only mean one thing – the music festival season is upon us! A study seen by Marketing Week highlighted a number of non-traditional festival brands joining the well-established festival sponsors in the battle for consumers’ attention. Brands looking to sponsor music festivals will have a great opportunity to get close to consumers and capitalise on great experiential marketing activities.
Last year, the events industry in the UK saw a big increase in festival attendance, however, this year the UK festival scene will suffer without the appearance of Sonisphere ,The Big Chill, and Glastonbury, which will be on its break. Research by YouGov has also revealed that over-priced tickets and events such as the Queen’s Jubilee and Olympics will have a big influence on the festival attendance. With such high expectations around the summer season this year, festival organisers will have to work harder than ever to provide a thrilling experience for festival-goers.
Giving people a remarkable experience that is in line to both brand communication and the festival will ensure that the audience will take away the right messages and create a genuine connection to your brand. As Marketing Week’s article examined, brands like Persil who created an area to keep kids entertained at Camp Bestival, and Timberland who set up an Earthkeepers Power Camp at Cornbury Festival and Camp Bestival powered by green energy to promote its sustainability message demonstrate that if the experience is relevant to the audience and the environment, festival-goers will naturally engage with the brand.
The study also points out the return of alcohol brands to sponsoring festivals with the aim of bringing the brand to life. Last season, Magners created an experiential activity to drive awareness, trial and educate consumers about the new Golden Draught variety. Mobile operators such as Vodafone and Orange have also reaped the rewards by enabling festival-goers to charge up their phones at popular ‘charge stations’.
To ensure the best use of your festival sponsorship, you need to fully understand the consumer touchpoints involved across the whole event. With festivals been so expensive, from over-priced tickets to high costs on food and camping, people will be more likely to engage with brands that offer attractive ’freebies’.
What brands need to bear in mind is that there is a fine line between being inclusive and being intrusive. Festival-goers have a passion for music and the activity needs to be well-balanced to effectively translate the relevance to the festival’s environment in relation to the brand’s personality, convenience and the Fun-Factor. Brands need to give festival-goers a reason for them to stop and take notice.
By making an activity relevant to the right people you will not only motivate your consumers to talk about your brand, but when they see the sponsorship in action, they will also see how your brand is adding value to their lives. This will ultimately help your sponsorship go further, resulting in affinity and brand loyalty.
Hotcow have the experience to create eye-catching and engaging experiential campaigns. If you are looking for an experiential partner to activate your festival sponsorship, contact us.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning Experiential Marketing agency. We get brands in front of consumers in ways that persuade them to buy. We fully implement our ideas; nothing needs to be farmed out. For more information or free consultation, contact us.