Sponsorship

Many researchers agree hat sponsorship is increasing and becoming a more significant part of marketing communications strategy.

Both Ultra Music Festival Miami and Lollapalooza Brasil make use of sponsorship relationships in order to fund their events and bring more recognised performers, a better show and more exciting event as a whole.

Here are a number of businesses hat sponsor each individual festival.

Ultra.

Lollapalooza.

I find it interesting that Heineken sponsors both festivals. A reason for this might be more strict rules on advertising on alcohol products, therefore sponsoring events with wide coverage and a large audience might be a way for them to increase sales by association with the festivals.

Websites

Websites have become a very important part of any business's success as the internet has become more and more popular.

There are many aspects having to do with a good website and for this reason I will be analysing the websites of Ultra Music Festival Miami and Lollapalooza Brasil under the 7 C's of good web design.

1. Context
2. Content
3. Community
4. Customisation
5. Communication
6. Connection
7. Commerce

1.Context.

Ultra Music Festival has a very modern and interactive web design. it is new, clean and sleek and fits in perfectly with there brand of a EDM festival.

Lollapalooza has a very colourful, playful and fun web. Their use of cartoons, colour and design fit perfectly with their playful brand that they have created when making Lollapalooza.

2. Content

Both Sites make use of several sorts of media on their website.

Where Ultra music Festival has a media tab with pictures, videos and radio,

Lollapalooza have their media of pictures and videos on the homepage.

3. Community

Both sites advertise their social network pages where users may interact with each other and the festival to create an online community.

Ultra:

Lollapalooza:

4. Customization.

Both sites have been tailored by the web designer to meet all the possible needs of each festivals customers and each contain well organised tabs leading the browser to the parts of the site they currently need.

Ultra.

Lollapalooza.

5. Communication

Both Ulrta Music Festival Miami and Lollapalooza Brasil make use of direct mail in order to communicate with their current and potential customers if they choose to recieve it.

Ultra.

Lollapalooza.

Alternatively they also communicate with their customers using their social networking pages as I previously mentioned.

6. Connection

Ultra Music Festival has several partners and is linked to many other sits in the industry. Here are some examples of these partners.

Lollapalooza Brasil is only really linked to their sponsors and the other lollapalooza festivals. increasing association with other business's and their sites could help to give their festival credibility and recognisation.

7. Commerce.

Both sites have the capabilityto sell tickets to their customers from the site itself. By making it easier to buy tickets by making them easily available online can help to see more tickets and increase each festivals attendance.

Ultra.

Lollapalooza.

Ultra Music Festival Miami has a merchandise section where all times of UMF merch can be purchased online and delivered.

Lollapalooza could create the same sort of space on their website if they want to increase merchandise sales and increase revenue.

In my opinion Ultra Music Festival has the better website, it is not only better of the 2 but better than most of the websites I have ever seen.

Sales Promotion - Competitions

Ultra Music Festival Miami and Lollapalooza are both holding competitions where winners stand to win tickets to the festival itself.

UMF created a competition suing Facebook and Twitter where competitors must create their own unique design of the Ultra logo. There are 15 winners, the 7 with the most votes and UMF's 8 favourite designs.

In the attempts for competitors to gain votes, many shared the competiton link to friends and more over many different social networks and UMF gained mass exposure.


Ultra Music Festival Competition

Lollapalooza's competition involved creating a T-Shirt design where there are 2 winners.
 Lollapalooza's choice will win:

• Two VIP Passes to Lollapalooza Festival 

• Sale of their shirt at the Festival, online and at the LollaShop pop-up store

• Featured placement in both the online store and LollaShop, along with a biography and/or link to other work

• Social media exposure through all of Lollapalooza Blog, Facebook and Twitter

Winner also has the option to receive $1000 if they are unable to attend the festival.

Voter's choice will win 2 regular passes and exposure of their design on Lollapalooza's social networks.

Lollapalooza has also gained alot of exposure through their competition.

Lollapalooza T-Shirt Competition

Advertisement - use of Magazine advertising

DJ Mag and Rolling Stone are 2 of the largest music magazines in the world. Each one of these 2 festivals have advertised in a magazine. Ultra Music Fesival Miami in DJ Mag and on the DJ Mag website, and Lollapalloza in Rolling Stone Brasil.

UMF Miami advert on DJ Mag website

The above screenshot shows an advertisement for UMF Miami at the top of the home page for the DJ Mag website.

Lollapalooza Brasil has a promotional video for their interactive advert in Rolling Stone Magazine Brasil.

Interactive advert.

By these 2 festivals advertising in large music magazines they will reach a greater amount of their target audience and gain a lot of publicity for their event. Sponsors will also gain advertising if their trademarks are included in the advertisement.

Marketing using the Social Network

The social network such as websites like Facebook and twitter have become a major part of how  the current generation and both festivals target markets receive information. Both Ultra Music Festival and Lollapalooza have pages on Facebook and Twitter to get information of their festival to people and market their festvial to them so as they will firstly know about the festival, and secondly attend it.

Ultra Music Festival posts everyday on their page about the latest news, videos of past acts, new releases of music for artists performing at the festival at March, updates on ticket sales and sales promotions. This is a good marketing strategy because by giving their audience as much information as possible and by showing them what they would experience by attending their festival they will have more people attending their 2 weekend festival in March.

Ultra Music Festival Fan Page

Lollapalooza also has a Facebook where they upload information about where to purchase tickets, promote the acts performing, upload videos of these acts and news about the festival in general. This page however is in Portuguese which has made it harder for me to get information from it and this suggests that their target market are people staying in Brazil. English might have been a better option if they were planning on targetting people to attend the festival internationally.

Lollapalooza Brazil Fan Page

Ultra Music Festival has a Twitter profile aswell. They use this profile to give the latest news, answer questions and show updates about their festival. this is a clever marketing strategy as once someone follows them their Tweets will continue to get to their target market on a regular basis.

Ultra Music Festival Twitter Profile

Lollapalooza has the same strategy for their Twitter profile, but once again in Portuguese shwoing they may only be targeting people in Brazil and could change to English in future as to help target international attendees and make their profile more international friendly.

Lollapalooza Brasil Twitter page

Youtube as a Marketing Tool. Part 2.

Today Ultra Music Festival Miami released the phase 2 video of Line up for March 2013.

Youtube as a Marketing tool.

Youtube.com has fast become one of the most viewed websites in the world. Millions of people go onto Youtube every single day to watch videos of all types uploaded by individuals, businesses and even broadcasters.

UMF takes advantage of all these viewers and has found a way to market their festival to millions without even spending a penny. They do this by uploading teaser videos where they show past festivals, announce news and updates on the upcoming festival and reveal the line up.

After every Ultra Music Festival they upload a after movie video of highlights of the festival and announcing the dates for the next years festival.

This video is the official teaser which announce phase 1 of upcoming artists performing in March over the double weekend which was uploaded to Youtube on the 5th of January 2013.

Lollapalooza has also used Youtube in the same way to promote their festival by uploading this video announcing thee date of their Line Up announcement.

The on the 6th of November 2012 they uploaded the video showing their line up for the 2013 edition of Lollapallooza Brazil.