Is there a more majestic moment and place to be than a summer festival? For many bon vivants, summer festivals are the place to be and it certainly helps that they’re getting better every year. For festival organizers, on the other hand, this feeling is much different. To stay appealing to wide audiences and maintain that fresh, exciting feeling after years of running a festival in the same place, they have to keep up with the trends.
In this article, we’re bringing you some of the most exciting summer festival trends that will rule 2020:
Personalized Approach to Attendees
Long gone are the days where festival attendees were just one tiny speck in a crowd of people enjoying a concert: nowadays, you have to appear as if the festival revolves around them as individuals.
This trend resonated loudly across all industries dealing with event management: personalization and individualization are no longer cool perks, but necessities to keep the attention of the audience.
Luckily, in the promotional phase, there are many relatively simple ways to tailor your marketing to the audience you’re trying to attract. Email, content marketing and social media marketing all have options to personalize the experience you’re providing for potential attendees through marketing channels.
Spectacular Social Media Marketing
If there’s anything constructive and positive that we could learn from the Fyre Festival fiasco is that social media is king when it comes to promoting a festival event. That’s why you should make sure that your social media game is on fleek months before the start date of the festival. There are also many peculiarities when it comes to promoting a summer festival on social media. Unlike in other contexts, you should use as many channels as possible, use content marketing, email, and utilize the power of influencers and celebrities.
Here are some of the tools that can help you get the best out of your social media marketing for summer festivals:
- Socinator – an auto-poster social media tool that will help you save time and resources on running social media profiles for your summer fest
- GrabMyEssay – find fantastic copywriters for your festival promo texts
- SmallSEOTools – online tools that help you identify and improve SEO issues to show your texts and promotional materials to a wider audience
- Studicus – hire social media writers who can present your festival on social platforms
- SupremeDissertations – find writers who will find the right words to captivate your target audience
Power to the People
Give attendees the opportunity to mold what the festival will look like.
“Social media coupled with the spirit of the new millennial generation has given all of us the feeling that we can shape the world with digital actions. It’s not just a feeling, though, because as we know, events are now shaped from behind of a screen. If you give this same option to your festival attendees, they will be absolutely thrilled”, says Georgie Peterson, event manager at TrustMyPaper.
Festival Apps
Mobile apps are no novelty in summer festivals, but their use in 2020 is likely to expand and cover many other aspects than they did so far.
One of the most interesting uses of festival apps that had already been implemented at business conferences and events is the ability to connect to other attendees beforehand. Given that summer festivals have a very important social dimension, this can become a differentiation factor from all other festivals out there.
For example, you can include chat groups, forums and communities where festival attendees can discuss whatever they feel like talking about: travel arrangements (trip-sharing), what to bring & how to pack for the festivals, hyping up for the concerts and more.
Face Recognition
With the mass introduction of facial recognition technologies on smartphones, the trend has quickly found its way into events and festivals as well.
The technology has multiple benefits both for event planners and attendees: it reduces the check-in time and simplifies the entire process, while giving attendees the chance to prepare for their entry in advance.
Holograms
Image source: NPR
From 2012’s Tupac Shakur hologram at Coachella to Silicon Valley’s fictional RussFest hologram, everybody’s crazy about holograms and projections and they’re cropping up on many festivals around the world.
Naturally, it’s very complicated and costly to create and prepare a hologram show, but you can include interesting and unique bits of virtual-reality magic all over the place and wow your attendees.
Side Activities
Just like all other events, summer festivals constantly have to up their game and provide additional value to be able to attract loyal and new visitors year after year. One of the main strategies festival planners use to achieve this is to provide many other side activities alongside the core experience.
For example, if the core experience of a summer festival is music concerts, there’s no reason you shouldn’t include other fun activities in the mix during the day. There are many fun examples from international festivals, such as photo booths, day parties, contests, prize raffles, scavenger hunts, wellness sections and much more.
The ultimate goal is to provide your guests with something amazing to do every minute of every day. Great music and atmosphere rock, but if that’s all your festival has to offer, it will be miles behind in an age where summer festivals start to offer much more to their attendees.
Conclusion
Festival planning and marketing is an exciting field that’s changing all the time, so you have to keep up with the trends in the industry to keep your potential and actual attendees interested and engaged.
From social media to the utilization of new, cutting-edge technologies, there is a lot you can do to make sure your festival marks 2020 as the year of new, exciting and fresh.
