Effective Naturally

Are music festivals and retail really dead?

Last month a music festival in NSW called New Beginnings was cancelled.
On their Facebook page and across the media, organisers were quotes as saying "this proves festivals are dead".

I beg to differ.
This falls in the same category as retailers who hit troubled times and blame everyone but themselves.

There is a glaringly obvious problem with their statement - NOT EVERYONE IS DYING!

There are festivals that are still going very well. It's a similar story in the retail industry where some stores are closing and others are snapping up the real estate! But of course the ones not doing so well are more busy wanting everyone else to take the blame rather than proactively look at what they can do to better deliver what the audience wants.

With so many events competing for attention, you need to offer something that will capture the attention of your market and justify their investment of time, energy or money.

I don't want to sound rude, but i'm going to be straight to the point.
If you're business (retail, festival or otherwise) isn't getting enough sales then you need to realise the buck stops with you. You'd have an argument if no one else could survive, but the fact is that others are surviving, flourishing even!

There are three missing components here that separate those that are succeeding and those that aren't  - 'trust', 'relevance' and 'value'.

Let's have a look at those components. I've related them to this specific music festival, but they are no way alone:

Trust
Much human behaviour is driven by a gut feeling. A good gut feeling is required and this can only come with trust. Your market won't tell their friends about how good your offering is unless they trust that you'll deliver something worthwhile. On the New Beginnings Facebook page they use words that say "New Beginnings rises from the dead this summer with offerings of apocalyptic proportions. True to its name, the festival is unrecognisable from its previous incarnation...." It is worded like there was something wrong with the last one and this is an attempt to make something better. Of course "offerings of apocalyptic proportions" makes me wonder if they're slightly overstating their case! In the end it just doesn't drive confidence.

Relevance
The event was priced pretty low as far as festivals go but then the main acts touted were The Vengaboys (big club tunes from last decade) and a Spice Girls Tribute band. I don't think there is anything particularly wrong, especially because I was a bit of a Vengaboys fan. The thing is, if I were going to see them it would need to be in the right venue. Ensuring relevance to your audience requires you to ask a lot of objective questions to yourself like this one for example...."Would people rather see the Vengaboys and Spice Girls in a nightclub or whilst camping in a paddock?" Dance Club artists and camping don't really seem to mix. That's just my opinion, and I'm sure many other people with have theirs. What I can say is simply this...if people didn't buy tickets, they probably didn't feel it was relevant to what they were looking for.

Value
The saying "you get what you pay for" comes to mind. Relevance and Trust combine to determine Value. No one will give up their assets of time, energy and money if they don't feel like it offers a good return. Consumers are much more value conscious than they are price conscious. It's also interesting to see that according to their facebook page ticket sales for the same bands after they were moved to 'venues' were relatively strong.


The Point: If you feel like you're in the slow lane and struggling to get buy-in from customers there is no one else to blame. Sometimes the market shifts, sometimes you can help to shift the market, other times you need to do the shifting. If you're not selling enough tickets or not enough customers come in to your store it's because you haven't given them a compelling reason to do so. I'm not saying it's easy to work out what these reasons are, but the product must be created and adapted with the target audience in mind (without abandoning the DNA of your brand). Make sure you continually earn trust, keep your product relevant and deliver something they really value. If it still doesn't work then the only thing to do is learn your lesson, listen to your customers and think again.