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5 Marketing Lessons from Fyre Festival

If you haven’t heard of the disaster that was Fyre Festival, you must have been living under a rock! It’s the infamous event that rocked the internet in 2017 when promises went unfulfilled – and it’s recently become the subject of two documentaries.

Why am I telling you about the event? Because the event is the stuff of marketing legends. With the right influencers, this event was able to get millions of dollars of investment from all over the world to put on an event that was never going to happen! It sold out as soon as tickets went on sale with people from all over the world wanting to be part of this festival.

So what was it about the marketing process and strategy that made it such a big success, and how can you replicate this in your business?

The one thing that Fyre Festival did incredibly well was to create a buzz! Granted, they had a big budget that they spent on influencers but you don’t need to do the same to create the same buzz for your business.

1. Invite people to join you that have a significant following. This could be offering a freebie if you have the budget or giving a discounted rate. Then ask them to share their experience online – be that in blog posts, instagram posts, reviews on your social media.
2. Encourage everyone (no matter their following or fame) to share their experience of your product or service! This is something you do not see often enough. If someone has purchased your product or service and have had a fantastic experience, then ask them to tell everyone about it. It can be a Facebook message, an email or even a phone call, however, it is you communicate with your customers. Ask them to share their experience with others.
3. Create a hashtag and ask people to use it! If you have a retreat or event, create sections of your space that are instagrammable – display a sign with your hashtag and ask people to share their posts using it. If it is a service that you offer, ask people to share a post – it can be an image or a video – of how your service made them feel! If you are selling a yoga course, ask your students to share a photo of how they feel after they have been to your class. It could be a rainbow, sunflower, blue skies, kids laughing… whatever it is that represents how they feel after your class. Having a hashtag collates these experiences in one place for prospective clients to find.
4. Create video content that wows and inspires others. It doesn’t have to be a million-dollar campaign. In fact, Shutterstock just released a video in which they recreated the Fyre Festival promo video, using only stock videos – costing them less than $5000. Check out the very clever marketing by them in the video below.
5. Be illusive. Marketing is a little bit like dating – you do not want to give it all away on the first date. In the case of Fyre Festival, they didn’t have anything else to share BUT that worked in their favour as it kept people guessing, it kept people wondering. You want to give them enough so that they want more. Fyre Festival had limited photos as they did only one shoot but they just kept repurposing it with pretty graphics and stunning designs.

If you are struggling to grow your business and need some ideas of the next steps or just want someone to take it off your hands and do it for you, then let’s chat. Book a Discovery Call with me now and we can discuss your goals, what working together could look like, and how we can take your business to the next level.