The best music festivals are always developing to enhance the festival experience and increase engagement, social media visual aids like YouTube are crucial for this to happen. YouTube is a great online PR method to influence people and communicate a festivals brand.
The most effective reasons for using YouTube as part of a festivals digital marketing strategy are, the cost effective nature to produce. It is a great platform for festivals to market on (second largest search engine and third most visited website worldwide), this shows potential for viral marketing and potential to enter a whole new market. Another advantage is content never dies, and can easily spread. You can also target audience based on the previous videos they have watched, meaning target a specific audience (Murdico, 2013).
It also provides effective metric for festivals as they are able to see how many likes, views, subscribers, comments, channel engagement rates, channel view rate and traffic sources they receive. YouTube produce an engagement and view report, this is vital information that allows festivals to see how a campaign is doing which enables them to determine what content to use and improve future marketing and is overall a important tool to measure the effectiveness as well.
A key aspect for music festivals on YouTube is ‘User Generated Content’. It is a form of content created users of an online system or service, in connection with YouTube it allows customers to create their own videos of their experience, which can help promote the festival (Chua et al., 2014). It acts as an implicit incentive, this allows the user to feel good as a member of the festival community. YouTube allows users to share media from their lives with others, this in turn builds a relationship between the festival and customers, and it helps promote a festival without them having to promote it themselves which acts as a great PR scheme (Jodl, F. 2010). Examples of successful user generated content include the video below (for Coachella), which highlights the customer experience, and with over 30,000 views, is definitely beneficial to engage people.
Drawbacks of YouTube include, the fact there is not necessarily a guarantee of a desired outcome. Viewers have the final say on whether to support or reject the content, and they may be entertained by the video, but that doesn’t mean they are compelled to follow that up in support of the festival. YouTube also has poor branding and customization (little say over presentation of video).It also does not offer much flexibility on videos, as YouTube has restrictions (videos posted have limited dynamism as a promotional video and has limits on calls-to actions feature). (Gaille, 2015).
Other drawbacks is the worry for companies to receive poor reviews from there videos, which cannot be erased, this could potential diminish a festivals reputation. A huge negative is the fact the high competitive and quantity of videos produced, meaning it’s really hard to stand out. Related videos are placed on the same page by the platform system, with all these options, a video must captivate the audience straight away (Fairley, 2015).
In order to overcome these potential drawbacks, festivals most post regular, high quality videos that instantly engage the audience, because of the high competition, if festivals don’t fulfill this criteria, they will be left behind, examples of this include ‘The Great Escape Festival’, as the channel shows, they rarely upload videos and have just 180 subscribers (which won’t engage viewers, don’t spend a lot on the YouTube campaigns and also don’t provide the most engaging videos, unlike their competitors).
Examples of effective YouTube marketing campaign by music festival include, Tomorrowland. They produced a 30 minute video, which has over 48 million views and over 280,000 likes (shown in the link below), showing the power of a good YouTube video for festivals. As it is such a competitive platform, each festival is trying to outdo themselves with a bigger (higher cost), more innovative and engaging campaign. This video is also proof of great communication between festivals and customers, to keep loyalty and engagement levels high. It’s an example of ‘viral marketing’, as the high views seriously contributed to a ‘buzz’ and an increase in brand awareness. Viral Marketing can easily happen on YouTube as it’s such a large platform, and the word of mouth (sharing videos in this case) factor, can help promote a festival to new heights (Ferguson, 2008) .
Another effective example is Coachella, there YouTube page is updated nearly every day with insights into the festival, to keep PR and communication levels high, as well as creating a community for customers through the engaging and informative videos (interviews with acts, live performances etc.). The image below shows there channel. Evidence of its effectiveness is the fact that they have over 445,000 subscribers and successfully keep customer relations high (Coachella,2016).
Emerging advances for festivals using YouTube, is living streaming. Major music festival ‘Coachella’ in 2016 is offering free streaming for people who could not attend the festival (YouTube is the exclusive provider). The streams will be provided along with on-demand content. Coachella is providing three separate live streams, from different stages on their YouTube channel, which views can personalise for their favourite acts. (King, 2016).
A campaign like this, will allow the people who could not get tickets for the festival, to experience it from their homes. This leads to great PR, reputation and attracts potential new customers to the festival, as well as engaging audiences and awareness at the same time. The videos below produced by Coachella, is promoting the live stream with over 2 million views and 10,000 likes, it has definitely had a positive impact for the festival, it has helped create awareness of the live stream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOwhkVpwKn4
In context to Cooks ‘User Contribution Systems’, YouTube is an active, aggregates content. It is a creative expression, by both the customer and the festival itself. Meaning they have freedom to produce what they want in connection with their experience (can be both positive and negative). Videos will gain momentum by people sharing them (gaining more and more views) (Cook, 2008). It also allows for creative marketing visually, with the Tomorrowland video backing this up.
YouTube is a social media method, Shirky (2008) defines it to ’Increase our ability to share, to co-operate, with one another, and to take collective action’. With that in mind YouTube can allow for a great relationship between festivals and customers (sharing and co-operating videos), increase engagement, create awareness and also improve through information gained. YouTube can act as a great digital marketing tool for any music festival, with examples (Coachella and Tomorrowland) to back this up. It’s a great online PR method, to help gain new customers (due to its large platform), engage people and interact with customers.
It is useful to capture moments for both customers and the festival, which in turn helps promote. User generated content, really builds a relationship between the two and allows for creative marketing as well and it always has the potential to turn into viral marketing, with its low cost and high reputation in social media and large platform, any festival would be silly not to use YouTube as a digital marketing resource, because the rewards are fruitful. The viable metric system, means that festival can promote to target markets and also see where they need to improve as well. If a festival produces a highly engaging, high quality, regular YouTube channel, it is a very effective marketing tool.
By Isaac Roblett
References
Chua, T; Li, J; Moens, M (2014). Mining user generated content. Chapman and Hall/CRC. P 7.
Coachella (2016) Coachella Live 2016: Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOwhkVpwKn4. Accessed 20 April 2016
Cook, S. (2008). The contribution revolution: Letting volunteers build your business. Harvard Business Review, 86(10), P.62
Fairley, J. (2015). The Pros and Cons of YouTube Business Marketing.[Online] Available: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pros-cons-youtube-business-marketing-james-dean-fairley. Accessed 19 April 2016.
Ferguson, R. (2008) “Word of mouth and viral marketing: taking the temperature of the hottest trends in marketing”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 25 Iss: 3, pp.179 – 182
Gaille, B. (2015). The Pros and Cons of YouTube Business Marketing.[Online Available: http://brandongaille.com/16-pros-and-cons-of-youtube-for-business/. Accessed 19 April 2016.
Jodl, F. (2010) Understanding Participative Consumer Behavior. München: FGM-Verl.,
King, B. (2016). The Coachella Music Festival Is Streaming For Free This Weekend Exclusively On YouTube. [Online] Available: http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/04/15/the-coachella-music-festival-is-streaming-for-free-this-weekend-exclusively-on-youtube/. Accessed 19 April 2016.
Murdico, D. (2013). 12 great benefits of video marketing.[Online] Available: http://www.ragan.co.uk/Main/Articles/12_great_benefits_of_video_marketing_46511.aspx. Accessed 20 April 2016.
Shirky, C (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. London: Penguin Press.
Tomorrowland (2014) Tomorrowland 2014 | official aftermovie. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtDG-Cnj-pw. Accessed 30 January 2016