The explosion of social media has forced brands to get smart about the way that they interact with fans and audiences. Localized advertising has become a combination of the digital and the physical, providing the right experience in the right place, at the right time to encourage sharing. In the age of the customer it’s up to brands to create experiences that are unique enough for fans to share offline experiences, online. Audiences these days want to participate in brand experiences. Millennials, in particular, want to be a part of the conversation, participate in the experience and contribute to the content that is created.
Fall festival season has kicked off and across the country folks are tuning in to hear the latest and greatest from festivals around the world. This month, ACL Music Festival has taken over Austin, Texas. As folks flock to the Lone Star State, bands, brands and marketers are jockeying for ways to use the event to raise awareness and generate buzz about their client or product. Location-specific experiences are popular this year. The ACL Fest “Frame” is a popular attraction that popularizes the #ACLFest tag on the festival’s instagram account.
Current line status for the #ACLFest frame. pic.twitter.com/s5XIq0Es3G
— ACL Festival (@aclfestival) October 10, 2014
Snapchat has teamed up with ACL to offer localized branded filters for festival goers to advertise their attendance. Red Bull has partnered with festival organizers, C3, to live-broadcast the festival for fans who were unable to make the event. Each year at ACL, two top performing artists headline the Sunday night spot. Artists tend to vary–past headliners include The Cure, Muse, Coldplay and Morrissey. This year is no different. Headlining the festival, Pearl Jam and Calvin Harris will split the park. Taking localized, user-generated content into consideration, we decided to take a look at the data to compare the headliners key demographics and audience engagement during the event. Using the People Pattern Platform, we ingested the Twitter followers of Pearl Jam, Calvin Harris and the Official ACL Festival account to better understand the landscape.
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam’s audience skews a bit older than the baseline data for ACL Fest’s fan base, with the numbers showing that some 65% of the audience is over the age of 25. The baseline ACL demographic data suggested that the majority of the audience was female, while Pearl Jam appears to attract an older, male audience. That said, 48% of the Pearl Jam audience falls within the Student persona. Based on the fan’s ages and interests, we can assume that these are more mature people, educated, spontaneous and mostly male.
Pearl Jam rocks ACL Fest. #ACLFest #360acl #PearlJam pic.twitter.com/ahI8ASCg9L — jayjanner (@jayjanner) October 6, 2014
Calvin Harris
Calvin Harris’ audience is more diverse than both the ACL baseline and Pearl Jam’s audience breakdown. Although the majority of the artist’s followers fall in line with the trending festival demographics, the second-most common age/race demographic is the Hispanic Millennial. Taking a step back to look at audience interests, the data shows that 45% of those fans fall within the Arts and Music Persona. The Calvin Harris fan is young, trendy, educated and has disposable income to visit music festivals and share images with their smart phones.
I’ve never cried so much at a set, thank you so much @CalvinHarris #ACL #aclfest pic.twitter.com/juRr5e0EjT
— A L I C I A (@imm0rtaal) October 6, 2014
The social media landscape has changed the way that fans engage with talent and experience events. ACL Music Festival organizers use information about band fans to entice new customers to the event and engage fans and talent online. By embracing this behavioral shift of community participation, organizers can use the digital landscape to provide easy outlets to share unique physical experiences with diverse networks online.
Interested to know more about how brand audience stacks up? Email us or request a demo below and someone from our team will be with you in no time.
Recent Comments