Experiential Marketing in Festivals FMCG’s biggest opportunity or just another shopping centre?
As answered by Stephanie Whitaker, Managing Director of ignis
Experiential marketing in festivals
Over the past decade, festivals have become a core part of our cultural currency. The number of festivals across the UK has boomed; there are now more than 500 music festivals alone (compared to 20 back in 1998), and what festivals offer has changed dramatically – they are now less about the music and more about the entire experience they offer.
However, despite the evolution of the format of the festival itself, many FMCG brands have failed to shift their approach to festivals accordingly and see fill the experiential marketing gap. This is surprising as, arguably, it is the FMCG industry that is best placed to capitalise on the shift.
Brand engagement and event branding at festivals
Today when a much wider cross-section of the population is attending festivals, the experience consumers expect is much more akin to the experience they get in a shopping centre, i.e. everything is in one place and brands need to fight to get their attention.
FMCG brands have a strong heritage in delivering powerful, successful shopper marketing and social media campaigns, and so would seem perfectly suited to capitalise on this shift. The issue is that whilst they know how to “do social”, and have woken up to the fact that festival-goers will be connected whilst at the event, they are failing to provide an experiential marketing strategy that makes them stand out from the crowd.
Experiential marketing in festivals for FMCG
In an era where consumers self-select most, if not all, of the brand engagements they experience, brands need to ensure they are doubly relevant to consumers – i.e. not just relevant to the festival they are at but are relevant to the consumer in some other way. Those brands that only fit to the festival and not the audience needs will find that, like the music that was once the key attraction of a festival, they become background noise to consumers. In order to successfully capture and retain consumer interest, brands need to start thinking about festivals as an opportunity for experiential marketing and as an element within a relationship. They should apply some of the tactics we are seeing crop up in-store to try and add to the consumer experience.
FMCGs using a youth marketing at Festivals
First and foremost, festivals are about having a good time especially for younger demographics. The only way brands can ensure that they are seen to be adding to this ‘good time’ is to approach festivals as a partnership between the brand, festival and festivalgoer.
Brands that get this wrong could find festivals become nothing more than a shopping centre in a different location for them, and struggle to achieve cut through. However, FMCG brands must not ignore the festival opportunity as the potential spoils far outweigh the risks.
Those brands that get youth marketing and experiential marketing at festivals right, offering something that makes consumers’ festival experience easier and/or better, will find that festivals become a key building block on the road to a lasting relationship. In the current climate, this is an opportunity brands cannot afford to miss.
