Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, is an annual music and art festival held in California, America. With an $84.26 million sales revenue and 198,000 attendees, Coachella is the leading music festival for sales in the world, making it an ideal platform to test innovative digital marketing campaigns, as it has such a wide coverage of users, as well as having a credible reputation too (McIntyre, 2015). Coachella is well known for being the front runner of music marketing and innovation ever since its inception in 1999.
A huge part of the festivals success is down to Coachella’s ability to connect with its loyal fan base and customers through various social media (Tumblr, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Pinterest and Reddit pages all support promotion of the festival reaching attendees as well as those who were not on location) and mobile. Their high quality use of multiple channels is key for their success (with the multiple channels shown on their website), meaning they can reach a broad spectrum of people with social preferences, added with the personal feel that customers can add their own words/pictures, meaning that word of mouth can ensue as well (Ingenex,2013).
A highly used social platform for Coachella (and probably there most recognised one) is there Instagram page, which really brings the festival and customers together in a successful manner, this is highlighted in the fact that they have over 680,000 Instagram followers, as shown below (Coachella, 2016), its a great tool. because its majority users of 18-34 year olds, really fit in with the festival age demographic as well, meaning they can market to meet there target market (Faughnder, 2015). Instagram pages however have its drawbacks, meaning they cant just rely on it, it is a tool used only for pictures, meaning written festival information cannot be used, it also excludes Windows Mobile, Blackberry or Linux users, meaning that other social media platforms must be used to bridge these gaps (Soffar, 2015).
They also incorporate smartphones by creating apps, giving official information to festivals such as line-ups, maps etc. In 2015, the festival updated its app with new features such as friend finder (search for people you know at the event), social media integration, schedule maker and push notifications (Jaekel, 2016). The downside of this however is that non-smartphones will feel alienated and like there missing out, which may not reflect favorably in there views of the festival.
A key method that Coachella use is YouTube, they use this channel for various strategies, such as keeping relations with customers high. For example shown in the ‘Coachella 2015: Thank you’ video, which gained over 3,500 likes (as shown in the link below). Also for last year’s festival they streamed live on the social media platform (which are still available now) and used the hashtag musicfreedom to encourage viewers to engage in their social media conversation. Campaigns like this however cost a lot to produce, take a lot of time to produce and YouTube is not always a organised marketing tool.
This is also a prime example for how Coachella use different social Medias together to integrate into a social platform. Chief of strategy at Zoomph Amir Zonozi said ‘Some of these audiences will overlap but they are being consumed for different reasons. For example, people might watch the YouTube Live stream to experience it and watch sets, then also watch the SnapChat stories and Vines for entertainment, stay connected with updates from the event on Twitter, and engage with Instagrams as well. Each channel has a different way of telling the same story, and they need to do them all if they want to reach their target audience, digital natives.’
Another significant strategy is their unique billboards showcasing the event and line-up, as shown below, the layout is very eye catching and is instantly connected with the Coachella brand, something that various other music festivals have attempted to replicate (Coachella, 2016).
A major reason for all this great marketing success is there use of trackable URLS and analytics, they use bit.ly URLs to track how many people clicked on a piece of content from their channel and also use Google Analytics on their Facebook apps, website and blog to know what specific content drove what specific action. Bit.ly was also used in their RSVP Facebook app, which encouraged goers to spread the word about the festival, the bit.ly URL they included each time a user stated there preferred date was clicked on over 22,000 times as shown in Shahs report. (Zechman, A et al, 2012)
Coachella have a loyal fan base now due to its personal approach, incorporated with a lot of social media, they also have competitions and free prizes, such as integrating Facebook with goers wristbands so they would automatically be entered into a special prize (adding to customer loyalty) (Stringcaninteractive. 2012).They also use sharing, such as photo booths at tents, so that customers can share their experience, so the festival gets more coverage to the general public. This is backed up with the statistic that the festival last year sold out in just 40 minutes (Brock, 2015). The loyal fan base means that Coachella has a impact on society, something that comes with its high popularity, coverage and innovative digital marketing. For example in 2013, the festival brought $234 million to the desert region around Indio alone, meaning that it doesn’t just impact the festival, but the whole city economy. Residents of the area make a living of the festival, meaning it has social implications ofnthe people. This is also seen as negative, with waste management issues, noise and air pollution and land degradation effecting the locals (Woodbury, 2014).
In relation to academic reference, I feel that Coachella can be used in the Boston Consulting group matrix. With extensive research I can see that the music festival is a cash cow, as it has a high market share (highest selling music festival as stated earlier), but now has a low market growth, as it has reached its maximum growth (unless it expands further in the future, to different countries more than just an annual event). This is shown in the facts that for over 2 decades, Coachella has maintained its market share and sales and has consistently defended that position (Brassington et al, 2013).
As Wymbs stated “The rapidly emerging digital economy is challenging the relevance of existing marketing practices, and a radical redesign of the marketing curriculum consistent with the emerging student and business needs of the 21st century is required”. With this in mind, Coachellas digital marketing schemes, overtook the obsolete versions (newspaper adverts etc) and they keep on developing there digital practices to keep up with the needs of the 21st century to keep relevant.
By Isaac Roblett
References
Brassington, F. & Pettitt, S. (2013) Essentials of Marketing 3rd ed. Harlow:Pearson
Brock, G. (2015) Coachella festival tickets sell out in record time, but many questions remain. [Online] Available at: http://www.inquisitr.com/1744930/coachella-festival-tickets-sell-out-in-record-time-but-many-questions-remain/ Accessed: 1 February 2016
Coachella (2015) Coachella 2015: Thank You. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn2mfDELAv4. Accessed 30 January 2016
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