Marketing festivals in the interactive age

An article about how Lollapalooza uses online reviews and sponsorships to enhance its image and make money.

Hartford Courant, 8/13/2006: "Giving media passes to bloggers also meant a better chance of positive, fanzine-style reviews of bands playing the festival, instead of risking more critical coverage.

"Lollapalooza was 'a good idea 16 years ago, grown bland, boring and distressingly mainstream, but with lingering pretensions to greatness it no longer has much right to claim,' critic Jim DeRogatis wrote in last week's Chicago Sun-Times, where he also lamented the overwhelmingly white audiences attending sets by Chicago rappers Common and Kanye West, who are both black, and the absence of the city's R&B and hip-hop radio stations as sponsors.

"By contrast, a blog called Stereogum wrote, 'this ain't your grunge-era 'palooza. But the new (and improved?) Lolla is a relatively well-run, music-first festival. And if there wasn't something for everyone (Bonnaroo was much more diverse), there was more than enough for Stereogum.'...

"Interactivity is also a boon for advertisers. It wasn't out of the kindness of its heart that AT&T offered webcasts of Lollapalooza or offered the air-conditioned tent there. They actually paid for the privilege. The Sun-Times reported that AT&T and other companies, including beer and apparel businesses, paid as much as $100,000 for the chance to spend three days marketing to 50,000 people wandering around a finite space plastered with corporate logos. As a bonus, many of those people are part of the coveted 18-to-34 age demographic."