Sumo

I set out to write an article comparing staplines used for positioning UK festivals. I know that museum marketers suffer from an overabundance of, and lack of synonyms for, explore, discover and engage, and I suspected that similar is true for festivals. However, it turns out that, in most cases, from the big hitters to local gatherings, festival marketing rarely takes advantage of straplines.

There are plenty of ‘Ronseal’ names out there which, on the surface, don’t need clarification; I’m quite clear what is likely to be involved in Folkestone Book Festival, for example. But what should I expect as an audience member? How does it differ from any other book festival? How big is it? What kind of atmosphere is there? If I have to buy tickets before the contributors are announced, what am I buying in to?

The UK Festival Guide website has over 400 festivals listed for the UK in 2010. A strapline is one way of adding personality and emotion to your festival communications, helping audiences to choose you over other similar (at least on paper) festivals. For example, The Mayor’s Thames Festival is brought to life by their strapline: ‘London’s fabulous end-of-summer festival’. Who wouldn’t want to try it out?

Perhaps the giant and established festivals feel that they don’t need to summarise themselves; they’re so well known. But straplines can also be used to give characteristics or focus to each year’s festival – it’s likely that the planning team have an over-arching theme so why not communicate this to the audience? It’s certainly helpful to the promotions team to have a summary statement, strapline or theme each year; when I worked in Formula One hospitality marketing, our brief each season was ‘Something as nice as last year. But different.’ We were selling the same experiences in nearly the same locations each year, with almost the same positioning message. It was surely a matter of time before the effect became diluted and tired.

A theme or positioning also gives the press a ‘hook’ and something to talk about before there are specific acts or events announced. Our naming concept for the Milton Keynes International Festival – IF – gave us the opportunity to create inspiring straplines for the festival itself: ‘IF you’ve got a sense of adventure’ and for specific events: ‘IF you thought all carousels were round’ which the media were quick to support. Brass: Durham International Festival carried the strapline ‘Bigger, bolder and brassier than ever’ for 2010 which supplied them with a creative hook (in their gorilla concept), an impactful slogan, and another chance to remind audiences that the festival isn’t about 10 brass bands in a park! All in six words.

Perhaps some festival communications teams feel that a strapline, in just a few syllables, is too limiting and rely instead on a positioning statement or general introduction. But just because you are a varied mix of content, aimed at everyone, doesn’t mean you can’t portray your essence in a tag line; the marketing teams of organisations, campaigns, political parties and even countries put good faith in a snappy soupcon of words. Perhaps more relevant is to look at communications for films and shows – all heavy, and effective, purveyors of straplines – you can probably quote ten off the top of your head.

However, reviewing a number of festival positioning statements and introductions still provides an interesting study. A large proportion of them follow this general principle:

[Name of festival] showcases the very best in [genre of festival] with [event type 1], [event type 2] and [event type 3] taking place throughout [location name] across [length of festival]. The festival is now in its [X]th year and this year promises to be the best yet.

Being so factual may have an effect on your search engine rankings, which is why Download festival include their straightforward positioning statement in their website footer, but it’s rather generic and flat.

Another common format is the use of superlatives:

• The world's first international festival of original, new work and special events (Manchester International Festival)
• The largest as well as one of the most exciting contemporary visual arts events in the UK (Liverpool Biennial)
• One of the most exciting, innovative and accessible festivals of the performing arts in the world (Edinburgh International Festival)
• The largest public celebration of books in the world (Edinburgh International Book Festival)
• Widely acknowledged to be the biggest arts festival in the world (Edinburgh Festival Fringe).
If you’ve got it...!

What most festival positioning statements have in common is that they concentrate on the offer, not the result; the old marketing adage of selling holes not drills. Philip Kotler defines the core product (some events), the actual product (events gathered into a festival in a specific location) and the augmented product (fun, new experiences, learning, collective experience, emotion, new thinking, etc.) It’s the augmented product which catches audiences’ imaginations and spurs them in to action – the first two levels are the detail.

If you’re not sure who your audience are, or what their most important benefit from the festival is, or how to put that into words, why not ask them? You could carry out research at the event or post questions on Twitter and Facebook: ‘What do you love about us?’ ‘What makes you come back?’ ‘How would you sell us to your friends?’ Not only will this be really valuable feedback but your fans would probably be pleased to be asked.

You may already have the perfect user-experience-related message, you just haven’t used it to its full potential yet. I found these gems hidden in the About us pages of festival websites (exclamation marks optional):

• Come and enrich your life with the Guildford Book Festival!
• LIFT is about opening eyes and sharing a vision
• A festival of big ideas... (Edinburgh International Book Festival)
• Aberdeen will be alight ... Share the excitement, see something new! (Aberdeen International Youth Festival)
• Expect the unexpected! (London International Mime Festival)
• Enjoy criss-crossing this fine city, experiencing art both familiar and unfamiliar (Edinburgh Art Festival)

Once you have started to think from this angle then your visual communications can follow suit – our consumer research has shown that audiences are more drawn to, and much more responsive to, images of other people enjoying a cultural venue than simply images of the event or venue itself. Even if the blockbusters and celebrities are the head-turners for your festival marketing, some great images of people having fun / learning / enjoying a collective experience, etc. will positively impact the effect of your advertising.

Sometimes the message which will win hearts is not strategic but passionate. These expressive turns of phrase were also tucked away in 2010 festival communications:

• Glasgow International Arts Festival is Glasgow’s art scene at its liveliest and best
• For ten weeks the city is transformed into the most amazing living gallery of new art (Liverpool Biennial)
• We quicken the pulse of Yorkshire’s cultural heart (Harrogate International Festival)

Using peer recommendation and ‘herd mentality’ isn’t new to festival marketing – last year’s attendance figures are often used to encourage new audiences to join in. But why not use a more inspiring ‘Be part of it’ message, like the TAKEPART Festival of Sport? Or, to take this concept a stage further, use your communications line to build loyalty – after all, keeping audience members is cheaper and easier than getting them; a ‘we love it, you’ll love it too’ campaign will encourage your loyal fans to spread the word. Or could you turn your festival into a verb; imagine a Dublin International Film Festival ‘DIFFerent’ campaign with ‘I’m a DIFFer’and ‘5 year DIFFer’ badges on Facebook and FourSquare...

That is the sign of a really brilliant strapline, when, not only does it ‘fit’ with who you are, but the possibilities for extending it and building campaigns from it just seem to happen on their own.