“You can’t change sentiment with advertising”: the impact of social media on festivals – at Face The Music

“You can’t change sentiment with advertising” in the festival market, according to Paul Sloan from Billions Australia, speaking at the What The Festival panel this morning. Social media is killing both multi-genre festivals and the power of advertising to convince punters to spend money on festivals –with the negativity of online commentary diminishing the impact of any lineup announcement.

The festivals market certainly seems in free-fall at the moment, with both Homebake and Harvest collapsing this year. This, however, isn’t the case, according to Big Day Out founder Ken West. “I don’t believe there is a crisis going on here at any level”, he stated.

Despite Sloan’s claim that this is “the end of an era” for multi-genre festivals, promoter Steve Halpin, who runs the successful region Groovin’ The Moo festival states “there is still room for multi-genre festivals”, claiming that region audiences “like tasting different kinds of music”, while also admitting his brand and lineups were closely aligned to triple j’s playlist.

While panelists disagreed on a number of key issues, the one point they all stressed was that social media is having a negative impact of the success of festivals, with Ken West admitting that there was “too much bagging on social media”, while suggesting these naysayers were “not fans of bands”.

The truth of the current state of the industry may however  lie in Ken West’s off-the-cuff response to Camp A Low Hum’s Founder Ian ‘Blink’ Jorgensen’s comment that he has “massive respect for the BDO going through with their Auckland event in 2012.”

“My wife doesn’t”, West quipped.