With winters early arrival and the accompanying reappearance of woollen knitwear from the back of the wardrobe, the memories of the summer months still linger on. Like a lot of people I now forgo a week of lying on a scorching beach in a Mediterranean resort which bears more than a passing resemblance to Basra in terms of heat and charm (I’d imagine, since I’ve yet to visit Basra).
This particularly “pleasure” has been replaced in my affections by the charms of donning a sparkly outfit and camping in a field, whatever the weather, at one of the many boutique festivals across the country. This summer was no exception and I managed to squeeze in going to two of the smaller festivals (Glastonbury has still eluded me, but one day…) and danced my way through glitter-filled fun to my heart’s content. However both festivals suffered from problems which were either unforeseeable or outside their control, and whilst it wouldn’t have solved the problems a stronger digital solution could have eased their woes and resulted in a less stressful time for organisers and punters alike.
But these two festivals are not alone in having a digital offering that is not working hard enough when the going gets tough, and when the going gets tough, brand loyalty gets going. The first example of this is often before revellers have even entered the site. Many a festival attendee will arrive in high spirits and join the back of the queue, either in their car or on foot. Three or four hours later they can still be in the queue, but high spirits have long since disappeared.
These delays can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from staff being unprepared for the large numbers that arrive earlier and earlier each year to the long arm of the law adopting a strict search policy for illegal substances (although I don’t think it’s that difficult to find illegal substances at a festival – or at least that’s what I have been told!). But the crowd does not know this; staff have no way of communicating it to them, and the brand suffers as a result with negative comments from the crowd attacking the staff themselves and no longer believing in the carefully and lovingly created brand mythology.
Another common problem faced by festival organisers in putting on a fun-filled weekend is nature’s typical insistence on making its presence felt. This was a problem faced by one of the festivals I attended this year. God made it rain – a lot. The car park flooded and organisers were forced to delay revellers for 24 hours. But this information didn’t come from the website, it came from Facebook. Panic stricken parents who had put teenage girls on a coach on the Thursday morning were desperately trying to find out what was happening. Confusion reigned as questions went unanswered as Facebook couldn’t cope with providing the information required.
As already stated digital media can’t stop these problems arising, but it can help contain them. The way in which people view digital media is constantly changing and has undergone massive changes in the past year alone. Festivals have visually beautiful websites but often made using an inflexible solution such as flash with no way of creating two way communications with their audience. Simple search functions are forgotten about and if they do exist information is poorly tagged (this alone would greatly solve the confusion of the official alcohol and glass policy, one story is of a group of friends having a champagne bottle ready for a 40th birthday toast confiscated whilst watching others carry in crates of cider). Widgets and polls can be used to gather information about when and how people are getting to the festival and a greater emphasis on good user experience needs to be considered when creating the navigation hierarchy.
The expectations of people to have the information they require provided quickly and concisely means that any site suffering from bad usability is dismissed and abandoned quickly. This is more readily acknowledged as a problem by companies directly selling products via the website, however it is still a problem for an organisation using the website for purely promotional purposes as it’s from this initial confusion and frustration that the breakdown of brand loyalty starts.
The full potential of social media platforms is not being realised, or not yet being used in the correct manner and ultimately costing money in maintaining the pages. Social media is best put to use when generating conversation and allowing people to play for short burst of time on apps, built to entertain and dazzle.
Festival organisations can use this to their advantage changing from beautiful but static and bandwidth heavy website’s in favour of flexible and searchable websites which broadcast information gathered from questions, conversations and comments already started on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. This will free up time and budget to commission bespoke apps, be they social media, web or mobile, to fully engage and play with the brand and allow people to fall head over heels in love with the festival before they have even got there. Now has anyone got a spare Glastonbury ticket?
Article first published in Nameless blog: 09/12/2010
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