A music industry vet’s experiential marketing playbook — Justin Moss // Pineapple Agency

Quotes

• “I started in the music industry back in high school, 22 years ago producing underground raves, then moving into producing concerts to multi-day music festivals. My first multi-day festival was in 2002 with five stages and over 75 artists from Outkast to Stone Temple Pilots.” -Justin“From a marketing standpoint, I learned very quickly that it was about that emotional connection between the artist and the fans and how you can sell that and package it for a consumer.” -Justin“I wouldn’t say small and big venues have the same playbook but essentially you are telling a story of what are they going to experience.” -Justin“Backin the day, we did a lot of guerilla marketing. But today, it’s a whole different ball game with the digital world and how we communicate with the consumer but more than that, we have to cut through the clutter of all the other content that is out there as well as all the other events that we are competing with.” -Justin“Today, what we try to do is to get the consumer to be a brand ambassador for the event, the brand that we are working with and once we find our markets, we try not to market to them butinstead market with them and engage them with our strategy.” -Justin“We normally start with some teaser campaign. So for example, at a festival, we create a theme for the customer journey.” -Justin“Our whole goal is we need them to sign up in our database somehow. But that is not a guarantee that they are going to buy a ticket or come to an event so we need them to have a conversation with us, one way or another.” -Justin “We really focus on the experience. For a music festival that just starts out, has no name and just launching in the middle of a field, you have to intrigue the consumer on what the experience is going to be like.” -Justin“We start thinking about the entire user experience and their journey. Everything from the ticket buying part to when they walk through the gates to when they leave. We create a lot of Instagrammable moments, obviously in this digital age and that allows share-able moments.” -Justin “As far as interacting with the consumer, there are all sorts of strategies that we deploy like a lot of contests. Then after the fan leaves, we market to them about the experience so if there are things that they might havemissed. We try to market and show them those experiences or those artists so you are constantly keeping the festival brand, top of mind.” -Justin“I was lucky that I understand how to produce experience coming from the music industry and once I started in experiential marketing, it was easy for me to identify similarity and the biggest similarity was you are appealing to the same emotional connection.” -Justin “I believe that brands that are not doing experiential marketing are definitely losing outand risk not being around at some point.” -Justin“I think the trend that we are seeing is that consumers are oversaturated with advertising. There are impressions everywhere you go. Experiential marketing is a medium that I think plays right into that theme where the more that you are able to built-in memorable moments and points of differentiation, be creative, the deeper and more lasting the relationship that you are going to have with the consumers.” -Ben “Sometimes when we create an experience, it is about that brand but it is not always front and center. Sometimes it is in that subtle nuances and content plays we are showing the consumer that we are engaging with you, talking to you and not marketing at you.” -Justin