From the Californian deserts of Coachella to the English fields of Glastonbury, festival season and the brand marketing opportunities that surround it have rebounded for 2022. Sensing a prime opportunity to market to Gen Z, luxury, premium and mass market brands including Hugo Boss, Wrangler and Depop have launched festival pop-ups, influencer activations and gifting campaigns.
The brands’ projects anticipate big returns in terms of social engagement and site traffic. Before the pandemic, Wrangler’s festival marketing was low key, says Holly Wheeler, VP of global brand marketing at Wrangler Kontoor brands (which also includes Lee Denim). The focus was on gifting and dressing artists at Americana or country music festivals.
Now, Wrangler is thinking bigger, partnering with festival organisers Live Nation for the first time this year to create pop-ups at Lollapalooza (Chicago in July; Berlin in September) and Americana festival Austin City Limits (in October). Capsule collections are available on site and online. “With the opening up of the world, in this post-pandemic era and as music festivals return, we thought now is an awesome time for us to do something bigger,” Wheeler says.
“Festivals create such an amazing outlet for freedom of expression and style,” she explains. “We felt that… it was the best time to activate.” KPIs include traffic to Wrangler.com, new customers, sales of the capsule collection and social media engagement throughout the festivals.
Wrangler is one of many brands targeting festivals with renewed vigour. “Brands want to have visibility at fun, highly anticipated event moments like Coachella or Glastonbury,” says Lydia Steele, vice president of fashion at PR agency Purple. “This season we hosted a gifting suite at our showroom for some of our brands, including Lacoste. We had back-to-back appointments with editors and VIPS… The best part was seeing photos of talent enjoying themselves whilst wearing the brand.”
Luxury: Creating viral moments
For luxury brands, the focus is on creating viral moments. This year, they’ve included Harry Styles wearing Gucci at both his Coachella performances and Dua Lipa in The Attico at Denmark’s Roskilde. Luxury knitwear brand AGR has noted direct increases in sales from dressing artists at gigs and festivals, says founder Alicia Robinson. AGR’s Cherish cardigan, worn by the likes of Kid Cudi, Burna Boy and BIA, has sold out.
This year, AGR gifted clothes to creators attending festivals across the UK and US, including Coachella and Glastonbury. “Festival activations allow the clothes to be seen by a different kind of consumer; someone who may not shop on Farfetch or Net-a-Porter,” says Robinson. “It allows it to be seen in a natural, fun environment, rather than just on a catwalk or in a magazine where it may feel unobtainable. It’s also so fab to see the crazy festival styling that features AGR.” The two most important KPIs are social media engagement and website referrals, Robinson notes.
Festival gifting can be more cost-effective than usual influencer marketing, experts say. “If you put it in perspective, to post two [Instagram] stories for a brand, budget wise, [costs] a lot more than a festival ticket,” says UK-based influencer Leo Mandella (@GullyGuyLeo), who has over 700,000 Instagram followers and has worked with brands such as Fendi and Gucci. “Brands or the festivals themselves are getting a lot more because they're not actually paying so much to the creator. Often all they need to give you is an access-all-areas pass. It’s a way better experience.”
The business of influence: Fashion’s original creators grow up
BY KATI CHITRAKORNThat said, fees can mount if a brand wants image rights for the content created, according to one talent agent. Paparazzi photos of creators wearing branded products are another metric used to raise the fees paid to an agency or creator.
Legacy brands use festivals to tap Gen Z
Following a strategic decision in 2021 to more clearly define the demographics of its brands Boss and Hugo, Hugo Boss looked for opportunities to reinforce the status of Hugo as its Gen Z brand. Coachella in April presented a perfect opportunity, says Andrew Lister, vice president of fashion at Purple New York, which executed the project. Hugo invited TikTok creators including Noen Eubanks and Euphoria star Chloe Cherry to stay at Hugo House in the desert and create their own unique content in and around the festival. During the opening weekend, Hugo also partnered with Soho Desert House on an activation close to the festival for press, creatives, VIPs and KOLs.
The activation resulted in over 1.3 billion impressions and 193 million views on TikTok within two weeks, according to the platform, as well as an engagement rate described by Lister as “huge” across Instagram and other social media platforms.
Youth-focused London-based agency EYC Ltd has also seen an uplift in festival activations this summer, says founder and CEO Cora Delaney. The agency took a group of creators to UK festivals in collaboration with Depop, dressed them in head-to-toe Depop outfits and shot fun content. The goal? To show audiences that they could buy their festival ‘fits secondhand.
Searches on Depop for festival-related products surged across the app, with “festival outfit” among its top 10 searches, says Dontae Mears, Depop global head of influencer marketing. “This indicates that our community is excited to browse and shop on Depop for their festival outfits, so we have a clear opportunity to be an authentic voice in this space,” he says. “This spike in activity is also replicated across social platforms where we see trending hashtags, viral content and a wide range of people tagging us in their festival looks.”
EYC also staged a project with Wellington boot brand Hunter, synonymous with festival season after being worn at Glastonbury by the likes of Kate Moss and Alexa Chung. EYC took a group of Gen Z creators including Mandella and TikToker Olivia Neill on a tour of UK festivals including Wireless and Parklife, shooting diary-style social media content and videos about “how to style your Hunter”. Delaney notes the importance of the festival season for Hunter’s sales. “This year they really wanted to tap into Gen Z and develop their image beyond Kate Moss and the previous generation,” he says. “They wanted the brand to feel cooler and younger.”
Models Iris Law and Mia Regan were photographed by paparazzi wearing Hunters and featured heavily across UK media. Regan talked about her Hunters for a feature with Vogue, creating extra media momentum for the brand.
The risks of festival marketing
Festivals are live and unpredictable events, meaning that brands have to accept the possibility of the unexpected.
In its festival planning, Wrangler carefully calculated the flows of people through its pop up spaces to avoid overcrowding and ensure there was enough product. “You don't want to disappoint people,” Wrangler’s Wheeler says. “We’ve tried to use Live Nations recommendations and our expertise on activations to avoid any issues and overcrowding. But, it’s always a risk.”
This April, US-based online retailer Revolve, a leader in festival fashion activations for many years, revived its Coachella event, Revolve Festival, inviting influencers to attend wearing Revolve head-to-toe. The oversubscribed event threatened to backfire when influencers complained vociferously about long delays and chaotic organisation. But mockery of influencers’ complaints, which quickly spread across social media, simply created another viral moment.
For Revolve, even a setback became an opportunity. At Revolve’s Q1 2022 results, co-founder and CEO Michael Mente was far from defensive. It was, he said, the “best event we’d ever held”. Festivals seem to work out well — even when they don’t work out.Read more at:prom dresses 2022 uk | short prom dresses uk