Being a music junkie, the festival I've chosen to report about for this assignment would be the "Gilles Peterson Worldwide Festival" which was a 4 day long event held at various places around central Singapore as well as Sentosa from the 7th to 10th of May.
I managed to get hold of tickets for the "Worldwide Festival Club Invasion" at HomeClub as well as the "Beach Weekender Pass" for the "Worldwide Festival Beach Weekender" held at Sentosa. The Worldwide Festival has an amazing lineup of both international and national Deejays and the crowd at both venues which I attended was AMAZING! The deejays pumped up the beats non-stop from Dusk till Dawn and it was an unforgettable experience for me.
Pictures of the event after the Jump:
The enthusiastic crowd at Sentosa during the festival with a personal friend, local deejay Ming on set.
A closer look at Deejay Ming's Set
A portion of the awesome crowd during a set Deejay Kentaro from Japan
Extremely overpriced orange juice and sprite
Now let us move to tackle the questions posed by the assignment.
1.) Compare the selected festival with a similar festival that has been held in another city in terms of it's marketing strategy.
The festival in which I would like to compare the "Worldwide Festival" with; would be the "World Electronic Music Festival" held in Ontario annually.
Programming of both festivals are relatively similar. Both festivals are jammed packed with local and international deejays that are famous. The only difference between these 2 festivals would be how deejays are invited. For the Worldwide Festival, Gilles Peterson himself the legend of the Trance scene picks out the Deejays which he would like on the tour whereas for the World Electronic Music Festival, participants of the festival as well as a panel of the festival committee would get to choose who plays for the festival. However whatever the case is, both festivals promises world renown deejays providing heart pumping, bass booming the whole night through.
The people or participants that attend both festivals are exactly the same, those who attend festival love electronic music and love to dance the whole night through under the stars.
The Packaging and Distribution of tickets are also rather similar in both festivals, they make use of their media partners as well as ticketing distribution partner and venue sponsors to sell the tickets. The only difference would be that the World Electronic Music Festival has only one Venue sponsor to promote their tickets whereas the Worldwide Music Festival has several official venue sponsors to contribute to the distribution of the tickets.
The price of the tickets I believe would vary a little. The World Electronic Music Festival has a 3 day pass at only $50USD whereas the Worldwide Music festival sells their "Beach Weekender 2 day Pass" for $55SGD at the door of the event.
As for the product, both festivals provide the exact same product. Good electronic music under the stars or at a club.
Partnerships are extremely important for festivals to be a huge success. I managed to find out that both festivals have the same categories of partnerships. For example, both festivals had official radio, television, magazine, financial, ticketing, drinks, venue as well as alcoholic beverages categories of partner. Though their partners may not be the same, however their partners all fall within the above-mentioned categories.
As for the promotions, I am not sure what promotion did the World Electronic Music Festival offer, however, the Worldwide Music Festival offered Early Bird ticket promotions whereby if you buy your tickets earlier (usually before a certain date), your ticket price would be cheaper than that of the original price.
Last but not least as for the Place of the festivals, both had about the same type of places. Both festivals were held in various venues around the state or country it is in. For example some of the festivities were held in beaches, open grass patches and clubs.
2.) Inform your readers about these best practices.
I find that all of these marketing strategy practices are extremely important to make a festival a success. However i would say that the 3 most important practices would be Programming, Price as well as Distribution. This is because a lousy programming with lousy artiste performing would not attract people. The same goes for the price of the tickets; if the prices for the tickets are too high, people would think twice about attending the festival as the prices of the tickets may not be within their budget. Last but not least distribution of the tickets is extremely vital as it has to be spread out and convenient enough for people living anywhere and everywhere to gain excess to it. The higher the exposure rate of the distribution channels, the high the chances of more people wanting to buy it.
3.) Identify the Stakeholders in these festivals
The main stakeholders in these festivals would the partners of the festivals. These partners like the media, financial and venue partners are looking to gain something out of the festivals too. For example, increase readership of a lifestyle magazine by doing an exclusive coverage of the festival as they are the official magazine partner. Therefore some of the stakeholders in these festivals would be banks or financial institutions to provide financial support for the festival.
4.) Reflect on the main purpose of this event or festival
The main purpose of this festival is to allow Singaporeans as well as tourist in Singapore to have a taste of electronic music and how wonderful it is. It allows locals in the country to see and meet their favourite deejays in their particular music genre. A way to describe the Worldwide Festival would be "An explosion of cutting edge grooves by the best of today's inspired artists" as well as "an exceptional lime-up in a unique environment".
5.) Comment on the amount of tourism benefits by the host city of the chosen event
The host city Singapore would be able to reap quite tremendous benefits in terms of the in flux of tourist from neighboring countries coming into Singapore to experience this once a year festival. This is because fans of the electronic music scene in neighboring counties like Malaysia and Indonesia do not have the chance to watch their favourite deejays spin there. Therefore being hardcore fans and addicts of electronic music and fervent fans of their favourite deejays, they make their way all the way from their own country to Singapore just to attend this festival so as to experience their favourite deejay play first-hand instead of the always listening to them on their Ipods.
