The people of the interwebs, myself included, are raving about the FYRE Festival Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. If you haven’t seen it, watch it right now, or if you’re at work, here’s a quick little summary, beyond the trailer.
FYRE was a start-up platform for booking music talent. “The Uber of booking,” one employee called it. To get the word out about their company, the founders Billy McFarland and Ja Rule had the idea to throw a music festival (genius, right? On brand, totally makes sense to promote a booking platform by hosting a festival with top talent). The festival was going to be held on a private island, meals from a gourmet catering company, lodging ranging from glamping to luxury cabanas and headliners including Major Lazer, Disclosure and Blink 182. The tickets were quite expensive, as you can imagine, and only the rich could afford them (perfect target audience for the booking platform, just saying).
Long story short, all these elements of the festival were highly exaggerated when in reality the festival was not put together at all. When the patrons arrived, they were basically stuck at a trash site with no food, not enough water and no way to go home. The Netflix documentary tells the behind-the-scenes story of how the founders created this lie and the key decisions they made promoting an event they knew they weren’t going to be able to put on.
The entire internet has thoughts on how big of scumbags the people involved are and plenty of other things to say about the documentary. Yes, I agree with that all that, but honestly, the whole time I was geeking out watching this thing from the perspective of someone going into the world of marketing. There were so many lessons to be learned from this documentary from this perspective. I rounded up my top five for some discussion here.
1. Influencers have A LOT of power
The promotion for the FYRE Festival was launched with a series of videos and photos of 10 of the most well-known models/influencers having a grand ‘ol time on an island. The agency in charge of producing these videos and managing the social media was Jerry Media, lead by Elliot Tebele, the man behind the very popular fuckjerry Instagram account (excuse the expletive). Talk about popularity on popularity. The people at FYRE knew what would impress Millennials and they nailed it.
So Jerry Media produced these promo videos and pictures that were basically just the models hanging out and looking pretty on an island. Throw some yachts in the video and Millennials had no idea what they were signing up for, but they wanted in. The video “sold an experience,” it didn’t even mention anything about a music or ammentities. Regardless, that video combined with the beautifully executed FYRE Festival Instagram account and the models featured in the video each posting an orange square mentioning FYRE Festival in the caption, caused tickets to sell out immediately.
The quick sellout is proof of the power influencers hold. PEOPLE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY WERE BUYING, but they spent thousands of dollars on it. Literally, all it took was photos of models, videos of them having fun and a website featuring no photos of the festival grounds and people were all in.
2. Good graphic design helps establish premium quality
Check out the Instagram grid for the festival account.
Honestly, pretty stunning. Now I can’t fully articulate the elements of design used here that I think make the brand look so high-end but the clean lines and modern features were part of what sold the luxury of this festival. The designers in charge of this, though they had really no idea what this festival was going to have, sold the idea that it was going to be a premium experience.
People didn’t even have photos of what they were going to be staying in, or what they were eating or even what the stage looked like (because these amenities didn’t even exist). It was these graphic elements that were left to sell the experience.
3. People trust marketing
As I have harped on this whole post up to now, people did not know festival details, they just were given these marketing pieces and they were sold. That is P O W E R F U L, people! This is the idea that I kept getting hung up on while watching the documentary. It is a huge responsibility that we hold, knowing that people will believe what we promote. We can’t take that lightly.
4. If a client seems sketchy, go with your gut
The art director in charge of making the promotional video admitted that in making the video, he had no idea what to do, because he didn’t understand what he was promoting. That is a red flag to me. Now I have never been faced with this and am nothing more than an intern, so I don’t know what it feels like to have a huge cash out on the line, but he didn’t have any information and he still promoted it. Maybe we get ambiguous projects, but this seemed beyond the point of ambiguity and into straight sketchy territory. He should have asked more questions.
The people running the social media accounts also didn’t know what they were promoting and they ran out of new photos and content and still had so many questions as to what they were promoting. I don’t know what it feels like to be a professional and I wasn’t in their shoes, but watching the them express the hesitation they had then, I just want to know why the heck they didn’t go with their gut and pull out sooner.
This is something we should absolutely take to heart. We have a responsibility to tell the truth and remember that consumers are not numbers, they are people and people should come before profits. Now this probably all sounds like it’s coming from behind a veil of student ignorance, but whateves. I’ll stand on my ethical soapbox while I still have it lol.
5. The idea itself would have been an incredible promo event
My parenthetical side notes have made it pretty obvious I feel this way, but seriously. This event would have rocked and been perfect. Hosting a world-class music festival for the Millennial elite would have established FYRE as a high-end brand that had some serious power in the music industry. Genius. If only they had given themselves more than 10 weeks to plan and not lied about literally everything to the public. Shoot.