“Festival marketing was becoming a bit one-note. We wanted to get out into the fields…”

Social content strategists Something Something built up its profile by successfully running artists’ social media in ways that connected with Gen Z fans. But then came an opportunity to do something similar for one of the UK’s biggest and high-profile festivals. So how do you capture the spirit of a festival, asks Music Ally’s Marlen Hüllbrock, and how do you turn that into ticket sales? Something Something’s Founding Director Liam James Ward explains…

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Marlen Hüllbrock: How did you start doing music festival marketing, and how do you approach marketing something as complex and individual as a festival?

Liam James Ward: We work with a number of festivals – Parklife, Kendal Calling, Victorious festival, Truck festival, Tramlines, End of the Road, Iceland Airwaves – we’re involved in their campaigns in differing ways but for all of these festivals we run their TikTok front-to-back. And then through our partnership with LadBible, we’ve done work with Sziget [in Hungary] and Reading and Leeds.

We got a phone call from James Pyrah, who used to be head of marketing at Parklife. He said that he loved the work we were doing with artists – and would we consider coming and doing it for the festival?

@kendalcalling

tallest cup tower ever? #kendalcalling #festival #cuptower ♬ original sound – Kendal Calling

So we went up on to Manchester on the train, and we didn’t really know what doing TikTok for a festival would be like, as we hadn’t done it before. And within a couple of hours of being on-site it made sense: essentially the biggest thing for me was that while there’s a lot of incredible moments happening on-stage at festivals, there’s so much golden stuff happening off the stage – in the campsites, in the crowds, at the food stands, and at the bars.

All of us who have incredible festival memories – we don’t remember so much this amazing set that we saw, we remember the amazing or funny thing that happened with our friends, right?

And I really think that festival marketing as a whole wasn’t capturing that – it was still very focused on glossy one-minute showreels of all these amazing pyrotechnics and so on. That’s not what people go to a festival for.

If you’re marketing yourself purely based on the line-up… well, there’s three other festivals nearby, that might even be cheaper, with the same line-up.

So what is the individual spirit and tone of that festival?

Marlen: With so much similarity between the various festivals, how do you then decide what a certain festival is “about”, and how do you then communicate that?

Liam: Festival marketing on the whole was becoming a bit one-note. We wanted to get out into the fields and capture the individual people and the individual tones.

We realised that Parklife is about championing new music and feeling really close to the ground with what Gen Z is listening to. With Kendal Calling, it’s more of the local spirit and pride in the Lake District. Truck has a kind of young, fun, summer energy.

One of the videos that we did at Kendal Calling in our first year got something like seven and a half million views: it was a video of some guys who were carrying all their beers in a wheelie bin, and another one was a bunch of people trying to stack all their cups as high as possible. You can see this community and the camaraderie, and they showed the spirit of those festivals.

@kendalcalling

this a wheelie good idea (sorry) #kendalcalling #festival #festivalhack ♬ original sound – Kendal Calling

Or sometimes it’s about the local angle. The majority of Kendal Calling’s ticket sales are local – and one of the best moments we had was when we interviewed a festival-goer who said he was looking forward to seeing Natalie Imbruglia. He and our interviewer ended up singing Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” together and that video on its own did really nicely.

So we quickly hooked it up with her team for him to come backstage and meet Natalie Imbruglia – and we got a great video of them meeting and then singing “Torn” together! And that picked up so much local press that that it had a direct effect on driving ticket sales. That’s something that comes from having a good working relationship with the organisers – and with the Gala PR team.

Marlen: How do you measure success when doing this kind of social media marketing work for festivals?

Liam: Every single time, we have surpassed the goals that we’ve been set [by festival marketing teams] which makes me really happy. It’s all well and good having a couple of big viral videos – but that is really your top-of-the-funnel stuff.

So when you click through to the profile and there’s just a bunch of fun TikToks – they might be generating views, but you’re not going to sell tickets. Whereas if someone can scroll through and get a wider view – to see the family areas, the comedy tent, all this other stuff – that’s actually a stronger experience. People used to want to try and shoehorn all of the information into one big sizzle reel, encompassing it all in one minute. But all these diverse 15-30 second pieces of content paint a larger picture of what the festival is.

So we work hand-in-hand with the festival media teams to plan ahead and coordinate with the festival’s traditional video creation and marketing strategy because it’s all connected. We have a team at the festival capturing social video – some capturing on-stage content and others in the crowd trying to catch these golden moments that we could never plan in a million years.

We understand what really makes things go viral, and we’re in the position now of planning some of those moments

Marlen: So are you simply fishing for these moments or is there room for strategic creativity from your team too?

Liam: Through our learnings, we understand what really makes things go viral, and we’re in the position now of planning some of those moments. Last summer we began working with LadBible – and we had the silliest idea where we were watching The Killers play ‘Mr. Brightside’.

We got someone from the team to hold up their phone and to Shazam the song – and someone else from the team ran further away, and filmed it, zooming in all the way in, as if they were spotting somebody Shazam-ing it in the crowd. It worked well as social content because who the hell doesn’t know that tune!? It was the best performing piece of festival content LadBible had that year.

Marlen: And once you’ve established this “persona” for the festival and nurtured an audience, what room is there for growth outside of simply increasing those numbers?

Liam: We’re now bringing LadBible and Google and brands like that into the festival world. The Google/Parklife opportunity arose from [festival organisers] Live Nation’s brand partnerships team and we jumped on it. We ended up producing eight social media adverts that had high production values – but that felt much more at home on social than any typical advert you would see for Google. Festivals and the experience of getting ready to go to Parklife is a great way for Google to disrupt the idea that iPhone is seen as the norm.

That says a lot about how brands know that music audiences are really passionate – and companies like ours, which understands Gen Z music fans and what engages them, can tell their story in a way that feels authentic.

Marlen: How many pieces of content on average are you filming over the festival weekend?

Liam: Hundreds of pieces. I think for Kendall Calling last year, we delivered something like 150 edits within a week of the festival ending. And we were posting at least 20 times per day or more.

When you’re working on an artist campaign you are able to be constantly reactive to what’s going on on social media, whereas a festival happens over one weekend of a year – and then you have 11 other months where you’re promoting it. So these are very difficult tasks: you essentially have three days of content-shooting that need to provide 11 months of content to make people have FOMO – and feel that they want to be there.