The New Breed of Festival

It is 1.30pm at a train station on the east coast of Spain. The ticket office attendant informs us that the train to Alicante is full and the next one is due at 7.30pm. Exactly 10 minutes after our plane is due to depart back to the UK. Four taxis, three trains and a plane ride later we roll into London at 2am; exhausted, sunburnt and broke... but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Cast your mind back a few years and your choice of music festival read as this: Glastonbury, Monsters of Rock, V Festival, T in the Park and Reading. Those with a continental touch would make it out to Germany’s Rock Am Ring, while the really adventurous would brave it with 1.4 million Brazilians watching Guns N’ Roses and er.. Lisa Stansfield at Rock in Rio.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the calendar became populated with new names and festivals revived from their heydays such as Isle of Wight. The result is that the festival season is now year round, but the main players tend to run from The Great Escape in May through to Bestival in September. Efestivals, the music festival bible, lists 655 festivals in the UK alone in 2009. That is a potential captive audience of several million that brands can target in increasingly creative, relevant and supportive ways.

 

Backyard

While there have been some casualties, such as Big Green Gathering and Beachdown, the demand for live music has led to scores of success stories. Since 2000 there has been a phenomenal rise of “backyard” events put on for friends, many of which have evolved into boutique festivals that command the respect of both fans and brands alike.

 

The Green Man Festival, in the Breacon Beacons, Wales, started in 2003 and was attended by 300 people on a single day. The following year it expanded to 1,000 people over two days and attracted early performances from the likes of Four Tet, Fionn Regan and Joanna Newsom. This year Green Man has developed to a 10,000 capacity four-day event incorporating literature, film, theatre and comedy as well as the music.

 

It is this incorporation of other art forms that has helped develop the niche of the boutique festival from the homemade to the mass market. Many people who have attended festivals for years have grown tired of the huge crowds and similar, youth focussed line-ups offered by the major festivals. Now they leave the fun and games to be had at the likes of V and Reading to the kids... or are now taking kids of their own to these relaxed family-friendly affairs.

 

Amplify recently created the Branch and Root experience and bar at Camp Bestival on the Dorset coast for Red Bull Cola. During a rare foray into the crowds to watch comedian Lee Mack, I encountered a wall of pushchairs so dense that I assumed that there had been a collective effort to protect the tent from the wrath of the sea. It certainly was an experience for Mack too, who commented that he’d “never been heckled by a five year old jumping up and down whilst sticking out his tongue.”

 

Opportunity

This scene should not scare brands off; on the contrary it presents a massive opportunity for to make significant impacts within this environment through appropriate and relevant positioning. This new breed of festival may not go for the big and brash branded areas seen at more commercial events. However, with lateral thinking into what are the key characteristics of each festival and how a brand can position themselves, they can be seen to be adding value in the eyes of the festival organisers. With there being so many festivals out there this also means brands can pick and choose which is appropriate for their needs rather than be forced to shoe-horn activity in to an environment that doesn’t want it.

 

The Branch and Root experience managed to add theatre, music and mystery to Camp Bestival, as well as a much needed over 18s, late night area for those without children in tow. With Rowntree’s Randoms, Amplify has looked at the aspirational activities of the 16-24 year old target age group such as extreme sports, adding White Air and Freeze Festivals to its tour schedule.

 

Foreign Soil

It is not just in the UK where the festival boom has impacted. Benicassim, Exit, Sonar, Iceland Airwaves, Roskilde are leading names on a growing list of festivals across Europe and beyond where music festivals have grown from nothing. The predominately British voices in the crowd further highlight the national festival obsession. With the draw of warmer climes, budget flights and cheap tickets, the UK audience are taking advantage of festival holidays.

 

Though it started in ‘94, it wasn’t until 2005 I noticed Oasis and The Cure were headlining a festival I had never heard of, Benicassim. Five days later for £80 with £39.99 return flights to Valencia, I was soaking up the sun at a mainly Spanish affair. Fast-forward to 2009 and the £160 ticket and £250 each way Valencia flights are a perfect example of how the festival market has grown.

 

In 2005, Benicassim only featured two sponsors – Heineken and Red Bull. This year, there were about eight prominent brands with Heineken having to step up its activity with its ‘chilled’ experience in order to prevent it becoming lost in the crowd.

 

The upshot from the growth of the music festival for brands is that they no longer feel forced to tag their name to any festival so that they are seen to tick the youth market box. Now there is the freedom to match a brand with a festival that has the same values and audience as their own. The positive association gained from adding value to the festival illustrated by Red Bull’s the ‘Branch and Root’, should mean that the elephant in the room, ROI, is met over time in a natural, organic way.

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