Opinion
All about
experience
Nick Morgan, CEO of The Fair, examines the
growing trends of ‘festivalisation’ in events
T
he Festival; ‘an organised set of events, such
as musical performances’ has grown in both
meaning and scope to become a type of experience
that now crosses venue, audience and sectors and
is becoming the aspirational experience – type
across the event sector as a whole.
Festivals are a platform by which a group of
people can come together to learn, celebrate,
watch, make, share – they are enhanced
environments where memories and connections
between people are made and where people want
to come back to again and again.
Making use of the festival format isn’t new,
it has long been used by brands as a means to
provide customer experiences for many years
now. It’s a no-brainer really – a field full of
potential customers that perfectly fit the brand
demographic being treated a face-to-face brand
experience, will be four times more likely to buy.
Festivals are content-rich, they need to provide
experiences within experiences to keep their
audiences coming back and with a very savvy
customer group with high expectations and more
competition for to attract them, festivals are
have to up their game every year. The amount
of content brought together at a festival and the
marketing that goes on throughout the year to
keep audiences interested is a combination that
turns these audiences into what every brand wants
– loyal brand advocates.
The curation of off-line and on-line experiences
to produce something that doesn’t shove a theme/
brand partnership down audiences’ throats, but
which naturally flows, takes a lot of planning
and is a role within itself. Brand partnerships
are carefully woven into the narrative of event
experiences, and organisers put significant budget
into creative, actors, production and venues. This
investment comes with great rewards and as a
result, they have a loyal client base who then have
a high quality benchmark that is hard to emulate.
30 — June
Traditional exhibitions, trade shows and
conferences have adhered to a set format for
as long as I can remember but their delegate
expectations are changing. This could be
because the experience economy as a whole
is so powerful now, it could be because a new
generation of delegates come from a highly
connected environment where they expect a level
of experience from everything from doing their
weekly shop to going to the local cinema.
Enhanced customer experience is the key here,
and to get a true festivalisation experience, the
MICE industry need to engage with the festival
industry. The industry has to adapt and yes, given
that floor space is often a huge cost in itself, on
first review, festivalisation may be deemed to be
expensive and non- traditional sites may be seen
as a risk but investment will pay off in terms of
tenancy at shows and attendees. It may cost more
but there is return on investment in future years
in terms of increased tenancy, attendees and brand
partnership revenue that ticks all the KPI boxes.
At the same time that festivalisation is
becoming more and more popular, the festival
industry itself is facing huge challenges – the
contradictions here are significant and my fear is
that the word ‘festivalisation’ will end up outliving
‘the festival’ and will just become a new marketing
buzz word far removed from its roots.
What I would like to see is investment into
festivalisation and for it to be done well – in order
to make this happen, perhaps we do need to rip up
the rule book on format, production and customer
journey and start again but this time, working
together across sectors to make something new
and truly engaging.