This guest post is from Leona Laurie, School of Journalism and Communications Master’s student and music and event PR PRo extraordinaire. You can find her here or here.
Staging a festival generates an almost overwhelming number of PR opportunities. An event that spans multiple days and incorporates a variety of activities, types of entertainment, food and merchandise vendors, etc. allows for some creativity in marketing choices.
Beyond advertising the event as a whole, sending press releases to the local TV stations and newspapers, and inviting the press out for a preview, a savvy event planner can get some real mileage out of targeted marketing, partnering with participants, and taking advantage of the Internet. To illustrate how much PR mileage one might get out of just one aspect of a multi-faceted festival, I’d like to share some of the things I’m doing to promote the music line-up at this year’s Eugene Celebration.
Targeted marketing: Rather than putting all of our eggs in the broadcast marketing basket, I’ve been identifying the different audiences our event could appeal to and strategically reaching out to them. Since we’ll be featuring dozens of bands in a variety of genres, one of the ways we’ve targeted the specific audiences for each genre is by creating a breakdown of the many local, public, and college radio stations’ shows.
We’ll be sending a packet to every DJ in the area that includes a one-sheet and CD for each band in his/her genre and a cover letter asking the DJ to include the disc in their rotation and inviting him/her to have the artists in for interviews or in-studio performances in the weeks prior to the event. Since most of the stations we’re approaching are also sponsors of the event, they’ll benefit by having additional ways to alert their listeners to their support of a beloved local festival.
Partnering with participants: In addition to asking each band for ten CDs to use in the radio campaign, we’ve been engaging them in other types of mutual back-scratching. If the band has a MySpace page, we’ve asked them to add us to their top friends and encourage their fans to befriend us. We have asked the bands to promote their appearance at our event through their MySpace calendars and Web sites.
We’ve also asked them to provide us with the materials we need to spread the word about them: digital copies of their one-sheets and publicity photos, mp3 files of their songs to use on our MySpace and Web site, and digital video files we can upload and share. We’re promoting their appearance with press releases and asking them to do the same. We’re providing them with interview opportunities and asking them to use their other interviews to mention the Celebration. Working with them, we will be able to introduce our event to their audiences and draw new patrons, and we will introduce their music to our audience, creating new listeners for them.
Taking advantage of the Internet: On top of the heavy reliance on MySpace and our Web site alluded to above, we’ve struck a deal with Portland-based podcaster Jeremy Wilson. A sponsor of our McDonald Theatre Stage, Jeremy’s Mastan Music Hour will be featuring songs by artists booked at the Celebration in the weeks leading up to the event and inviting at least one of our bands to do an in-studio performance. Although our arrangement also includes banner ads on the Mastan Music site and audio plugs for the Celebration twice during each episode, I am most excited about the more organic content—the music—that will be reaching more than 20,000 subscribers, most of whom are in the Pacific Northwest.
Once the podcasts have aired, we’ll also benefit from the digital content available for use on our own Web site or MySpace page. The Mastan Music Hour’s audience definitely overlaps with ours, and this will be a great- and relatively new- way to make sure they know who’s playing and that they want to be in downtown Eugene September 7, 8, and 9!
Although there’s definitely more I could include in this, I hope I’ve succeeded in illustrating that just one aspect of a festival can give you so much to do in terms of promotion that you can become overwhelmed. Perhaps the next time I guest on Kelli’s blog, I’ll talk about how interns make the world go ‘round!
