Are brands trying too hard at festivals – or is ‘festivalization’ just beginning?

Brands have not been slow to notice the passion of these audiences. Tapping into it is another matter – a tricky job that they sometimes perform well, said our panelists, but sometimes poorly. The key, as ever in the marketing game, is authenticity.

The ‘festivalization’ of brands

Nicola Murray, managing partner at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, explains that the real strategy behind that buzzword 'authenticity' is often as simple as ensuring your brand’s activation adds something to the whole.

“Brands just really want to tap into fan culture – that idea of community and coming together. And there are ways to do that. You come in, and you can badge, and you borrow from the culture. But if a brand is adding to that culture, and being part of that culture, that feels authentic and therefore credible and part of that experience,” she explains.

There’s real value in getting it right, says Victoria Anderson, senior vice president and co-lead of strategy at 160over90. Because when executed well, experiential can be the best way to communicate a brand’s identity and to connect in a lasting, meaningful way with consumers.

“We keep seeing that people prefer experiences over things,” she explains. “There’s an understanding that experiential is the most tangible expression of a brand, that thing that will keep them remembering you. I think the ‘festivalization’ of brands comes from the difficulty of striking a balance at a time when culture is becoming very decentralized. We want to try to create or give people that water-cooler effect: to have something in common that they can discuss.”

Top of the pops

So, what’s hot and what flopped at this summer’s festivals? Maik Cox, head of music production at Amp.Amsterdam points to a Netherlands festival that shows the way forward: more ‘subtle’ activations, rather than the big, brash offerings we sometimes see from brands keen just to be seen to be there.

Coxpoints in particular to Ikea’s offering. “They had a big sleeping dome where people could take a power nap,” he explains. “It was really subtle: it was more with a wink, instead of like, ‘we’re here, buy our product.’ Because there are so many activations, I think the ones that do it in a more humorous or more creative way will get more attention than the ones that are just screaming.”

At the other end of the scale, says Jonathan Edwards, co-founder and head of strategy at Raptor, when activations miss the mark, they can stick out like an oversized Jester’s hat. He points to a London festival he attended this summer (naming no names), at which he says the level of marketing bordered on the “ridiculous”. Here, he says, the onus falls on the organizers to strike the right balance.

“It’s starting to feel a bit like a duty-free, you know, an airport experience,” he says. “You’re being passed through a series of brands before you get to the stages. It’s crystallizing my own vision with this business: to put culture first.”

Edwards has a particular perspective here: as well as a marketer, he is also the founder and director of two London-based festivals: GALA and Rally, celebrating the best in club, grassroots, and DIY music cultures. He believes the key to a successful activation is to find something in the zeitgeist and then connect that with “something at the venue which feels relevant at that point in time”.

It’s not easy, though, he adds, which is why brands often get it wrong. “The thing I find frustrating is when there are five or six agencies in between. It’s like Chinese whispers. All of a sudden, you have surfboards turning up at your event in London, and you don’t really know why, and it’s because there’s a tequila brand that feels that they’re Hawaiian-based.”

Invest, don’t extract

For Charlie Li, strategy director at experiential shop TRO, effective communication with the client about why they want to be at the festival in the first place is half the battle won.

“Consistency is key,” she says. “And that’s something that brands often overlook. Because there is often a disconnection between how they show up at a festival versus how they communicate their brand purpose and what the brand stands for from an advertising perspective.

“There should be a lot of client education on this: what’s the right context? Really drill into the brand DNA, what you’re doing, and talk to your marketing team because, most often, we deal with events and experiential clients.”

Bonnie Ott-Smith, senior vice president at Jack Morton and head of its culture marketing agency Vivi, says a good way to judge whether an activation will land effectively is to ensure the brand is giving more to the festival’s community than it takes away.

Pointing particularly to festivals she’s worked with in the US aimed at Black audiences, she says: “One of the biggest things is brands need to make sure that they do not continue to extract from these communities, but actually invest in these communities”.

Because showing up is one thing. But, knowing all the words is quite another.