Skip to main content

What I learned at Lollapalooza.

I just returned from three days at Lollapalooza with my daughters. Great time with the girls.  Outstanding festival – really well planned and run.  (Chicago is a fantastic city!)

While I've spent years creating events for youth marketing programs, often from the outside looking in, this gave me chance to experience youth marketing from the mosh pit out.

By and large, the marketing was fairly flat-footed.   The usual branded swag became white noise.  The best efforts came from a handful of marketers whose presence added something to the fan's experience.

The best by far came from my old friends at Toyota.  Their tent wasn't an escape from music – it celebrated music and creative expression.  There you could hop in a Corolla retrofitted to be a four-door photo booth; spin to win some cool prizes; listen to little-known, up-and-coming bands (the roots of Lolla, right?) who performed in the tent and were streamed over the interweb; as well as create art and posters.

Estancia Wines showed that it understood a simple fact about three-day concerts:  people need to sit in the shade.  The Estancia tent was set up like an outdoor ultra-lounge, featuring leather chairs and couches, cafe tables and stools, and, of course, a wine bar.

AOL did a decent job promoting its Lifestream service by setting up a helpful charging station.  Very simple and insightful.

The most well-intended but ineffective effort came from AT&T, which handed out ear buds to promote that it was offering free wi-fi inside the festival.  The only problem was that its wi-fi coverage didn't extend throughout Grant Park. Epic Fail.  (They've learned what veterans of Lolla and Coachella have long known – 3G networks become paralyzed by tens of thousands of people simultaneously blogging, posting, tweeting, texting, poking and uploading.)

My daughter Lauren has a great idea for any marketer gearing up for next year:  Sponsor a tent where fans can decorate and personalize their own "find me" stick, and perhaps upload the image to their friends.  I noticed in the crowd how some people brought poles and sticks decorated with stuffed cats, balloons, jesters, etc – anything they could hoist up to help their friends find them in the sea of fans.

Let me not mislead you into believing that I actually spent three days thinking about this stuff.  It was all about the music.  And here's the music I really loved:

The Strokes
Arcade Fire
The National
Frank Turner
Against Me
The Walkmen
Yeasayer
Matt & Kim
Gogol Bordello (tied with Matt & Kim for the most entertaining band)
Social Distortion
and, of course, Green Day

Me and Green Man are tight.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What makes a premium brand premium?

I was thinking the other day about the DNA of premium brands . One thing is certain -- it's a relative idea. For example, Hyatt is not a premium brand if you're used to staying at a W or a Ritz Carlton. But if your vacations to date have been holed up in a Holiday Inn, then by all means a stay in a Hyatt is a premium experience. Another thing is certain -- a brand is considered premium only when we believe it is worth the price. And that's where we can dig deeper. Why are we willing to pay more for a product when there are others that provide the same service or function at a lesser price? I have spent a good part of my marketing career developing strategies and ideas for a wide range of  premium brands, including American Express, Sony, Callaway Golf, Hilton, Jaguar, Land Rover – even the Toyota Prius.  Through these experiences I have come to believe that a premium brand is built upon specific tangible and intangible attributes that give it a sense wort
13 comments
Read more

Super game. Dull ads

As a passionate Giants fan it is safe to say that I had a good time yesterday. But as an advertising professional I felt a bit underwhelmed by the caliber of the advertising . Many were entertaining. But few possessed that intangible Super Bowl-ness...big, pop-cultural, fun. Even fewer seemed to have anything relevant to say about the brand, such as the Planters "uni-brow" spot. I loved the Bridgestone "screaming animals" spot, but it would have been a much better spot for the Saab featured in the spot than the tires the car rode upon. As for Bud, good spots, but I've seen the dog and horse thing before. Tide's talking stain was funny, but did it have Super Bowl-ness? My fav? The Coke "balloon float" spot. It was classic Coke (for Coke Classic). Big. Entertaining. Unexpected twist. Utterly charming. And Charlie Brown finally won something. Coke is about smiles. And that spot was just that. The Audi spot that I wrote about last week liv
2 comments
Read more

Marketing as a service.

What if we re-imagined marketing as a way to serve customers?  What if we designed it as a way to provide real-time value and utility to customers? Our SXSW panel at explored these issues and more.  Marketing as a service harnesses Big Data to provide more meaningful and helpful experiences for customers.  It is a principle born of the belief that the dynamics of customer loyalty have fundamentally changed.  Loyalty can no longer be solely defined by customers staying loyal to a brand.  Because the internet provides us with unlimited choice, the tables have turned – brands must now demonstrate their loyalty to customers by serving them.
1 comment
Read more