Brand Strategy goes to V Festival: our marketing roundup of the experience

Brand Strategy visited the 2008 V Festival in Chelmsford this weekend, thanks to Virgin Radio. We were there to check out the Virgin brand’s flagship music event and see what marketing initiatives we could pick up on at the site…….

V Festival brandwatch

Virgin Radio – as the lead sponsor of the VIP area, the Virgin Radio brand was held up as the festival’s most exclusive partner. We saw plenty of festival-goers hanging round the door of the VIP area, hoping to catch a glimpse of any famous faces and hear the special sets from bands such as Squeeze, taking place inside the tent there. Meanwhile, with locally-sourced food and plenty of free booze, many people seemed to find no reason to leave the VIP area once they’d found themselves inside.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 8.5/10. The local food was a nice touch and the area positioned Virgin Radio at the heart of the festival, with live radio broadcast by the presenters from a specially-adapted caravan inside. Not too heavy on the branding and marketing once inside, the area was mainly dedicated to broadcasting the radio brand’s image.

Sloggi – not content with doing some marketing, underwear brand Sloggi had a stage at the festival. It appeared to be pumping out dance music whenever the Brand Strategy team wandered by and occasionally showing off a range of the brand’s underwear on models. There was also an MC shouting a lot about the company’s competition ‘Show Me Your Sloggi’ which seemed to be about finding the best male and female bums.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 4/10. While it was good to see that Sloggi had decided to do something a bit more inventive than slapping its logo on some merchandise, the stage itself seemed a bit redundant. It was never playing any really inventive or interesting music (that we saw, anyway) so it was just a giant ad. However, we suspect that this view may be something to do with the Brand Strategy team being a bit older than the average V customer; we saw plenty of festival-goers enjoying a boogie to the dance music being blasted out even though the content wasn’t the most exciting stuff on offer.

Sony Ericsson – the mobile phone manufacturer gave away thousands of inflatable mini-chairs and giant mobile phones to festival-goers over the weekend. These inevitably were used, abused and thrown around the crowds.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 7/10. We can’t deny that we saw a lot of people making use of their inflatable mini-chairs from Sony Ericsson, so they must have come in handy. This is the real test of a festival marketing campaign; does your brand add something to the consumer experience? In this case, people seemed happy to chuck the inflatables around and use them. However, we did see literally hundreds of them burst and discarded, getting in the way all over the site, which didn’t look too pretty. Perhaps a dedicated Sony Ericcson clean-up team would have come in useful? But overall, for Sony Ericsson, it was no doubt a relatively cheap way of getting their brand on television screens as the inflatables were thrown around and the young crowd appeared to enjoy them. Not rocket science, but not bad.

Microsoft Xbox 360 – the computer console was on show both in the Virgin Radio VIP area, where a small number of lucky people were playing games with the hands not holding free drinks and the main festival area, where it had a much larger tented area. The Xbox brand seems to have created a multi-layered sponsorship for V this year, with ‘Xbox’ areas online on the Virgin Radio site, competitions and of course, the big areas where people can actually play games.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 8/10. The Xbox marketers are old pros at event partnership and it shows. Not only did the Brand Strategy team see a lot of online Xbox associations when researching V online before heading down to the event, this is backed up with competitions and most importantly, the chance for people to play on the consoles at the event. While some people might feel that Xbox is a bit loosely connected with a music festival, the kids couldn’t seem to get enough. They were packing out that tent whenever we passed by. Did it add to the festival experience? Probably; it was a fun thing for people to do between the acts they wanted to see. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it probably worked. Points deducted, however, because the main tent blasted out its music so loudly that it was difficult for anyone standing to the left or centre of the main stage to hear some of the acts when the wind was blowing as a result.

Carling/Strongbow/Pimms – the booze brands were, as you’d imagine, on heavy display at the V festival. It’s hard to rate these on a marketing scale since it’s more about being the sole brand available and boosting sales and visibility. We liked some of the little touches – people told us that you could swap warm beer cans for cold ones at Carling.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 5/10. These marketing partnerships are more about raking in the sales and visibility than anything else. Not that we’re knocking the strategy; brands like Carling hope that people will not only get a taste for its beer but that the good memories of V will keep them coming back for more after the festival is over. And they may be right. But we didn’t see any truly revolutionary marketing from the brands. We did notice, however, that a number of young people were keeping every cup they used all weekend, apparently as ‘trophies’ of their consumption. So they were having fun. Points lost by the booze sellers, however, due to the amount of it that ended up being chucked on Brand Strategy during every single gig. There was so much beer (well, we hope it was beer…) being thrown around during the sets by drunk people that we ended up with extremely matted, smelly hair after a couple of hours.

Virgin Mobile – the brand had a charging area for mobiles of any description. It also had the ‘Union’ tent which showcased less well-known bands. This always seemed to be pretty packed out. Allegedly, there were Virgin Mobile ‘angels’ on hand to help festival-goers with everything from directions to tent-pitching but we didn’t see any of those. The brand also ran a ‘Road to V’ competition with Sony Ericsson, offering unsigned acts the chance to get on stage at the festival. The VIP area from Virgin Mobile was where lots of the celebrity guests spent their time hanging out.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 8/10. As part of the Virgin brand, you’d expect the mobile company to do something a bit more interesting than other sponsors. The competition element helps support Virgin’s brand about being on the customer’s side (helping the unsigned bands get a leg up) and the Union tent seemed to be popular. The charging-your-mobile element appears at most festivals these days and it’s still probably done best by Orange at Glastonbury; that said, you’d expect to see Virgin Mobile offer a charging service so it fulfils its brief. Also notable was the texts appearing at the side of the main stage in between bands playing, which was quite fun. These were cheaper for Virgin Mobile customers (5p) as opposed to competitors (standard rates) so nice to see a little bonus for the brand’s consumers there. With a young crowd, does Virgin Mobile add to the festival experience for people attending? Yes, we thought so, which is the key test for any branded experience. And of course, the celebrities hanging out here attracted plenty of media attention and coverage of the festival.

4Music stage/JJB Champion arena – these two stages are sponsored by Channel 4’s music sub-brand and sports brand JJB. The 4music connection is pretty obvious while the sports one is a little more tenuous. Brand Strategy eventually decided that JJB and its Champion brand got involved because the music in that tent is very dance-oriented and this is by nature, energetic and sporty. The lineup on the JJB stage featured acts such as Robyn and the excellent Hot Chip, who both packed out the area. Meanwhile, the 4music stage featured One Republic and Duffy.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 6/10. This type of stage sponsorship is pretty standard. The JJB Champion sponsorship didn’t really add anything to the dancier tent; the headline sponsor could have been anything from Lucozade to Red Bull and it would have had the same impact. Having said that, we appreciate that just getting the JJB name out there, associated with pretty good music may now drive some extra consumers in the direction of the sports store. The 4music stage was a good link-up in terms of the brand being really relevant. However, some of the acts – ie One Republic – were very middle-of-the-road. We expected to see the young, Channel 4 brand associated with more cutting-edge stuff, although perhaps it was keen to reach a mainstream audience. All in all, two sponsorships that will probably pay off for both brands but nothing that special.

Bacardi B-Live tent – this tent was pretty sweaty so Brand Strategy didn’t get too close. Serving up cocktails and music sets, the drinks company has been heavily promoting its associations with music for the past few years, so it’s no surprise to see it appear at the V festival. We saw plenty of youngsters spill out of the tent.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 7.5/10. The booze brand has been upping its profile in music recently in a deal with dance act Groove Armada to work in partnership. So the B-Live tent, already a festival staple for a number of years, makes pretty good sense. With so many beer and cider outlets on site, those people wanting a different style of drink probably found the bar useful and enjoyed the music. We didn’t get to spend that much time sampling the tent ourselves but the brand seems to be making link between music and its products better than lots of other booze businesses. Did it add to the experience for festival goers? Probably!

Other brands apparently at the V festival that we didn’t notice: Guitar Hero, NME, Philips, EA Games, Gillette, Indesit, Volvo, Celtic Spring, Chupa Chups, Pro Plus, Coca-Cola and Big Fish.

The cheeky marketing brands that we did notice: outside the festival, on our way in, we had pressed into our hands some Radox Shower Smoothies. We’re not sure whether Radox was a festival partner (we think not, as it isn’t mentioned on the official website) but this was probably a nice little sampling exercise for the cheeky brand. After all, campers need showers so why not give them some free shower gel? However, we did notice hundreds of the little bottles discarded even before the entrance, so we hope there were some Radox cleaners on hand to deal with all the mess created.

Another brand we saw was the RAF Careers man inside the festival, carrying about his little packs with info on careers in the Air Force. We’re again not sure if this was an official brand partnership but we did see him get to chat to a few people. We guess that the audience at V is around the right age for the Air Force to try and recruit, although we’re not sure many people were sober enough to think about piloting any vehicles….

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So all in all, Brand Strategy would give top marketing honours to the Virgin brands. As you would expect, given that it is the V festival, these companies did more than badge their operations at the event. We also liked the local menu in the VIP area; most of the ingredients came from farmers and producers local to the site. It was little touches like this that made a difference to the festival experience and made it come across as less corporate than a brand-backed occasion might otherwise have done.

We also liked the cup return points (see the stand in the photo below). Nice touch.

Any negative points of the festival? Well, sadly, it was drunken attendees. Brand Strategy was covered from head to toe in who-knows-what after a few hours at the event and this was the biggest complaint from consumers we spoke to, who were otherwise having a great time. There was a really nasty epidemic of people chucking bottles full of beer (and er, possibly bodily substances) during shows. We saw security trying to deal with this problem but it carried on throughout every performance. Also, the festival site was strewn with discarded items everywhere, despite bins being available. We wouldn’t put this down as the V festival’s fault – with metal detectors at entrances, the team were clearly focused on keeping things pleasant for everyone – but this kind of behaviour wasn’t on display at other festivals, such as Glastonbury. If Virgin could make throwing around beer seem very, very uncool by 2009, that would really be something!

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Did you attend the V festival? Tell us your views. Do you agree with us or did you see any interesting marketing initiatives there that we’ve failed to mention?