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Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Marketing of the Glastonbury Festival



The festival has employed an integrated marketing communication, defined as a ‘unified coordinated effort to promote a brand concept through the use of multiple communication tools that speak with one voice.’ (Shimp, 1997).

It has become an iconic brand with minimal direct advertising and approach that is ‘non-commercial.’

Involvement from sponsors is low key. Branding is not allowed on site, and the sponsors, have to remove all logos. The idea is that sponsors are to give something back to the people at the festival.

From a marketing point of view, this works in their favour, as over branding in this environment would work against them. According to Glastonbury Festival Commercial Manager, Hannah Rossmorris ‘the type of people that attend this festival are media savvy and don’t like being told what to buy’ (Virtual Festivals June 26, 2002). 

Integrated Marketing:
-       Flyers – disturbed throughout various unions

-       Editorial and press – interviews, festival line-up and advertising which promotes core message in UK music publications such as Q Magazine, NME, Mix-Mag, Mojo and Kerrang as well as national newspapers such as The Guardian and local newspapers in surrounding areas.

-       Television and Radio: Programming across BBC 2, 3 and 4 (with highlights via red button streaming) over the Glastonbury weekend complimented by radio coverage on BBC 6 music and BBC radio 1 (who also communicate core messages leading up to the festival).

-       Online                                                                                                                         
The Glastonbury website provides up to date information on attending the festival and their various initiatives.                                                 

BBC provides live streaming of the festival.                                                

Orange: Orange, sponsor of the Glastonbury festival took advantage of the social media useage by festival attendees and published a photo on their website of the festival encouraging people to zoom in and tag themselves through websites like Facebook. Over 8000 people tagged themselves in a 70,000 person crowd within days. It become known to be the world’s most tagged photos (Firth 2010). 

-       Guardian Newspaper website provides schedule of the festival.

-       iTunes: allows the download of Glastonbury videos with the entire proceeds of the sale going to charity.

-        Advertising on Charity Websites that are sponsored by the Festival.                                                                       

-       Social Media usage:                                                                        
-       Twitter: 87,243 followers, 40,000 mentions the week before the festival.
-       Facebook: 200,422 fans                                                            
-       iPhone App: 100,000 downloads of the official app out.                          
74% of the 135,000 ticket holders.
-       4.9 million texts and 2.7 million calls were made from the site by attendees (Densley, 2011). 

2 comments:

  1. It is fact that more and more people turn first to social media, which include platforms like Facebook, twitter, YouTube, for all kinds of information. From an environmental standpoint, social media appear to be more sustainable than print forms. However, social media associated with the production of hardware and the energy requirements of computing. Print media are rapidly becoming more sustainable through the use of recycled papers and vegetable. So, my point is the best way is combine print media and social media, that’s also Glastonbury Festival used measures .

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    Replies
    1. I agree with you there, on the production of hardware and energy requirements of computing, although if you look at the link 'Glastonbury Social Media Chart' on this blog, you will find that Social Media is a very successful tool for the Glastonbury Festival, and more so than any print form I would suggest, as they do target a lot of students and young people.

      With print media, I would say that wouldn't it also use the same energy requirements of computing, as although they are using vegetable dyes and recycled paper, the process and energy used in printing these flyers hasn't changed, but yet it is still better than using non recycled paper or inks.

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