When Steph Mrmacoski was 22 she flew from Australia to England – her first time overseas – and, upon landing, went straight to Glastonbury Festival. She neglected to take a solid pair of Wellington boots, and spent her first few hours on site slipping around in the mud.
“I was like, this place is Hell, how do people enjoy this?” she smiles. “But it only took me about six to eight hours to start to see the magic. And by the end of the five days, I was fully converted.
“I left there going, festivals [aren’t about] just coming to listen to music or partying. It's a way to connect with the people around you. And it was just beautiful. And that's kind of the reason that I still work in festivals and why I love them so much, because it goes beyond the music. It's not about throwing a party, it's really about community and connection and giving people a space to leave their worries at home and connect.”
Mrmacoski is currently the Senior Marketing Manager/Major Festivals Specialist at Untitled Group, overseeing a portfolio of some of Australia’s biggest festivals such as Beyond The Valley, Pitch Music & Arts, Grapevine and Wildlands, to name a few.
Here, she discusses the wildly successful marketing campaign for Beyond The Valley, her approach to marketing on TikTok, maximizing presales, and much more…
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When marketing festivals, particularly to a Gen Z audience, which social media channels do you find consistently reliable?
Meta over the years has been the one that's consistently reliable.
However, there has definitely been a shift towards TikTok. But what's been interesting is how rapid the shift has been. Twelve months ago Pitch Music & Arts wasn't even on TikTok, because [the] Pitch brand is very cool, calm, collected; the tone of voice is very effortless. And we were thinking [we’d] just let people do the talking on TikTok.
Thankfully we jumped onto it last year, [and] I feel like with the campaign kicking off this year we'd be in a really tricky position if it didn't have TikTok. So we just had to think, how can we keep that brand the way it is while also adapting to that platform?
What kind of content do you see really resonating on TikTok?
We've definitely seen that lo-fi, more organic content resonates with our audience there. But interestingly, we've also found that there has been a little bit of a shift towards higher quality content and longer form content as well. Whereas I think a few years ago, it was forbidden to do anything longer than 15 seconds.
And while that's very much still the case, and you need to capture attention within the first three to four seconds, I think there is a place now for longer content.
I’ve spoken to people who said when marketing on TikTok they’ll try and ride on the back of what’s trending. Do you also pay attention to those TikTok trends and tailor your marketing accordingly?
For sure. Throughout the campaign we leave spots for TikTok content, but we'll keep them open ended depending on what’s trending at the time.
Because while a lot of content on Instagram is pre-planned far in advance, I think it's hard with TikTok because you don't know what will be trending in a month or two months or even in a couple of days. So we try to stay agile there and adapt to whatever is going on on the platform at the time.
Where does direct to fan communication like SMS marketing figure in your plans?
For our major festivals we definitely look at SMS marketing. But it can be really spammy if it's not right.
So our tactic has been very much to engage with [the audience] before there's a call to action. And that way, there's a relationship there, so you're not just getting some suspicious link or message.
"Our tactic has been very much to engage with [the audience] before there's a call to action. And that way, there's a relationship there, so you're not just getting some suspicious link or message."
In a typical festival campaign you’ll have that excitement around the on sale and the announce, and then another surge in the last couple of days or weeks leading up to the event. What levers do you find effective in those quieter periods to keep momentum going?
The way that I think about marketing a festival, particularly our camping festivals, is how can we showcase the experience before someone even gets to the site? We want people to arrive on site like they already understand the festival. It's like the marketing campaign’s the beginning of their experience.
And so through those quieter months, there's a lot of opportunity to showcase different elements of the festival, or showcase a new space that might be there, or you highlight an artist that people might not know as much about, as well as a lot of important messaging so that people are prepared.
So with camping festivals, with Gen Z we found that a lot of our audience may have turned 18 during COVID. And they're starting to go to their first camping festivals, their first multi-day festivals, but they didn't have that older sibling to show them the ropes.
So we're educating them on the cultural importance of it, as well as things like what they need to bring and how to manage their time and how to play it safe.
Sustainability is another kind of education piece. Obviously people come to festivals and tend to leave a lot behind. And it's really important to us at multiple touch points through the campaign to educate them on why they should take their stuff home and respect the land that they're partying on.
It's also another time to highlight upsells, whether that might be camping add-ons, or VIP options or transport passes. Those mid-sections are great to look at those things that might also need some attention.
What have you found to be the most effective ways of creating urgency in ticket buyers?
Honestly, just the tried-and-true tactics of scarcity and countdown, that fun engaging content showcasing experiences and music.
From the get-go of the campaigns we make sure that counting down to the event is a big one, through email marketing, through social media, as well as our dark ads messaging and retargeting. Making sure that those people who may be on the fence understand that you need to make your decision soon.
And particularly when tickets are selling really fast. That's always really important for us to communicate with them.
At Beyond The Valley the camping sold out within a week this year, and Pitch sold out two years in a row now, and from the start of the campaign that's really important to communicate so they understand that waiting on a decision might mean you miss out.
"At Beyond The Valley the camping sold out within a week this year, and Pitch sold out two years in a row now, and from the start of the campaign that's really important to communicate so they understand that waiting on a decision might mean you miss out."
Even though the campaigns may be different from festival to festival, are there certain strategies that you find successful in encouraging presales?
Again, it comes back to education. We like to explain why you should [fill out the form].
And I think that has really helped our presale numbers. People understand why they should sign up, whether that means they might be going in the running to win a competition, whether that just means first access to tickets ahead of the general public.
Beyond The Valley’s presale was very much about that first access for tickets, because we knew it was going to be a high-demand event.
Do you approach marketing a multi-day festival different to a single day event?
Yes and no. It's always about telling the story of the festival. So in that way, I do that for single-day festivals as well because there's always a story to tell.
But with multi-day festivals, there's a lot of those touch points to educate and so much more information that you can share as well. If something's four days long, generally there's a lot more activations and experiences that you can highlight. And I guess there's more education and important messaging that needs to go out to prepare people to camp for a few days as opposed to a one-day event in the city.
At what point during this year's festival do you start promoting next year's?
I think we're still trying new things with that.
I definitely think that capitalizing on that FOMO directly after the event is a great thing. Depending again on the brand, it really does vary.
But if it's been a great experience then talking about next year and capitalizing on that, whether that means advance tickets or opening up a mailing list; capitalizing on that post-festival depression, when you get home and just want to go again, I think it's almost a missed opportunity if you don't talk about the next year.
But I also think you do have to think about the fact that people might be exhausted physically and maybe not in the best position financially. So thinking of strategies around that, if you are going to do that type of activity.
How can you make it appealing to them? Are there payment plans available?
Your marketing activation for Beyond The Valley 2023 contained a 1-800 number, and generated a buzz almost immediately. Can you talk about the idea behind that activation and how it worked for you?
It was an activity that we were waiting to try, and I think with Rüfüs Du Sol headlining Beyond The Valley this year, we knew that there was going to be a lot of excitement.
We ended up marrying it with an out-of-home campaign, where we put some lyrics from a Rüfüs song [on the street posters], and the number 1800-BTV-NY23.
[When fans called it] there was a voicemail that said, ‘Hey, you've called Beyond the Valley. We can't get to the phone right now, we're working hard behind the scenes to get our lineup ready’, or something like that.
And then it was like, ‘But we can't wait to see you this New Year's for four days of music, arts and camping. Any guesses who's playing this year?’ And then it had a Rüfüs song playing in the background. And people were able to leave a voicemail.
And back to that point of engaging with our community and that banter, it was so fun to hear their actual voices because you were able to leave a message.
We weren't sure how many calls we would get, because it was something new. I don't know the exact number, but thousands and thousands of people called.
We promoted the number via social media, but then it was on all the out-of-home as well. I don't think that campaign would have been as strong had we not done some more traditional marketing and hitting it on the street and hitting them at different touch points and eliciting that excitement and momentum in different areas.
So that gave us a really viral moment for the campaign, it started on such a high, and by the time we even announced the lineup, Beyond The Valley was out there. As opposed to sometimes the campaign really kicks off with the lineup, there was already so much buzz going on. It was organically trending on TikTok. And there was so much hype that it just kind of snowballed, and I think that was a really big reason why the festival sold so well so quickly, because people just wanted to be there regardless of who was playing.
Aside from slower buying patterns, has any other customer behavior stood out in the past few years that has impacted the way you market events?
Something that I pay special attention to, because I can really see that Gen Z expect it, is values-based marketing, and making sure that you're being authentic, and you're really communicating the value of the ticket and the experience.
And while I think maybe years ago it felt a little bit more separate, we really try to communicate with our audience now, and have that open dialogue. So I think definitely communicating the value of the experience and being authentic about things.
Gen Z really want to be on the same wavelength as the brands they support, whether that's fashion or lifestyle or music, or the events they attend; they want to know that they stand for the same things that they personally do. So communicating that throughout as well is really important.
Is influencer marketing a tactic you employ for your festivals as well? And if so, how do you find it works effectively?
It’s a super important part of our strategy, because it basically means talking to our audience through different touch points. But the way that we do it effectively is being authentic with who we engage.
So we work with influencers that are already fans of Untitled or already fans of Beyond The Valley, therefore it feels really natural to get them to be an advocate for the festival, because they already are. So I think that's the main part of it – we don't work with people that are not already involved in the community in some way.
Visit Untitled Group here. Follow Steph on LinkedIn here.
