5 Marketing Lessons to Learn from the Fyre Festival Fiasco
By now, most have heard of the greatest festival that never was, the Fyre Festival.
The event promised a luxury music festival with a celebrity-like experience at Pablo Escobar's private island.
The luxury experience turned into a nightmare for many attendees that summer.
If you are interested in what went wrong, watch the Netflix documentary Fyre: The greatest party that never happened or the Hulu Documentary Fyre Fraud.
Although the Fyre Festival did not deliver on its promises, there's one thing it did do right and did it very well - marketing the event.
Here are five ways the Fyre Festival successfully marketed the event;
1. Define your target audience: Fyre Festival was created for the wealthy millennials. Individuals who were willing to spend thousands of dollars on tickets to be part of the most exclusive, and luxurious music festival ever organized.
The event organizers, Billy McFarland and Ja Rule knew exactly who their target audience was and how to appeal to that demographic. They used social proof, storytelling, and scarcity as the key elements to promote the festival.
2. Use Social Proof: Social proof is a term psychologist Dr. Rober Cialdini coined in his 1984 book, Influence: The psychology of persuasion. Social proof is one of the six fundamental principles of persuasion. It can be used to influence people's actions.
Cialdini writes:
"The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find an idea correct, the more the ideas will be correct…We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves."
The Fyre Festival used models and influencers, such as Haylie Baldwin, Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid, to promote the event across their social media platforms. Influencers posted a single orange tile with similar captions: "Excited to announce #Fyrefestival Join me there!"
The target audience (wealthy millennials) who follow Bella Hadid, and Kendall Jenner, understood the assignment. Needless to say, the influencer campaign was highly effective.
3. Focus on Visual Storytelling: Research has found that 65% of the general public are visual learners. Since most individuals retain visual information better, Fyre Festival produced a promotional video showing the festival’s experience.
The video included clips of private jets, an overview shot of a beautiful island surrounding turquoise water, influencers swimming, jet skiing, dancing and enjoying a picture-perfect day at the beach. The text in the video promised "an immersive music festival ... two transformative weekends ... on the boundaries of the impossible."
The video captured the feeling the festival organizers were trying to convey. Fyre Festival was fun, exclusive, and pure luxury. The video was the perfect storytelling medium, unfortunately, the representation of the festival experience was just that, it was only a story.
4. Don't Underestimate the Power of Social Media: Social media had a huge part in the event's promotion. The orange tile was shared on social media by over 400 influencers. The post tagged the Fyre Festival social media account and used #Fyrefestival.
That's all it took. Fyre Festival sold out in less than 48 hours of ticket sale launch. The event was created for social media users (the wealthy ones), and it was sold to them on the platform they were most active.
While social media helped make Fyre Festival, it was ultimately also responsible for its downfall. Once the guests arrived onsite and found themselves in the middle of disaster-relief tents and soaked mattresses, they took to social media, which was the beginning of the end for Fyre Media and McFarland.
5. Take Advantage of Scarcity and Exclusivity: The limited quantity of tickets available for purchase in a short time for a highly promoted event typically results in a large number of sales. In the age of social media, tapping into an audience that responds to fear of missing out (FOMO) with this scarcity marketing approach resulted in the event selling out within days. The event reportedly sold about 8,000 tickets, costing from $1,000 to $12,000. It promised a flight from Miami, activities like kayaking and yoga, and a stay in a geodesic dome.
Fyre Festival successful marketing campaign resulted in a horrific experience for many attendees and several lawsuits. We should also learn from the mistakes of the Fyre Festival.
The founders lacked organization, logistics and operations skills, honesty and transparency. If they had taken the event planning as seriously as marketing it, the outcome might have been very different.
You can, however, take these strategies and apply them the right way to see success in your marketing efforts.