Monitoring the Daisies

Please note this is a re-post from an article I wrote on 08/10/2012 on http://www.brandseye.com but the website has since changed format and my posts are no longer accessible there.

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Each year BrandsEye partners with Rocking the Daisies to learn about what people have to say about the festival. In return, the BrandsEye-landers get festival passes to experience the festival vibe for themselves and generally make a big deal about it. So what did we learn?

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This year 6 805 people posted online about Rocking the Daisies. While this will include people who were upset they couldn’t attend, that does mean that more than one out of every three festival attendees talked about Daisies online!

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There have been 14 756 mentions of Daisies in the last five months online. That’s more than twice as much as Heritage Day/National Braai Day received.  If 6 805 people tweeted, this means that most people who spoke about Daisies online, tended to speak about the festival at least twice or more.  That’s a healthy measure of brand loyalty for you!

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Most of these publicly-available mentions came from Twitter. There was still of course, lots of conversation about the festival on Facebook, but many of the attendees are more than likely to have quite high privacy settings and we wouldn’t want to infringe upon them – what we’re reporting on here is what we’re allowed to monitor.

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The benefit of inviting famous bands and artists to your festival is getting coverage from highly influential sources. This means that Rocking the Daisies saw incredible return on investment from their online conversation.

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There were 15 287 380 Opportunities-To-See conversation about Rocking the Daisies this year.  If Seed Experiences (the guys who brought you Daisies) had paid the online community to talk about their festival, it would have cost them R 3 324 775.  These values are more than all of the conversation generated about Lady Gaga coming to South Africa!

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Highly influential authors (of which there were many) included DJ Fresh, Poppy Ntshongwana, 5fm,  Bloc Party, Rob Van Vuuren, various clubs and as well as several press websites’ profiles. People spoke the most about seeing Bloc Party, getting tickets, being generally excited about the weekend and having a good time.

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There were an incredible 4 287 mentions of #RTD2012, with conversation about the festival generating 3 603 re-tweets. Many of these were related to headline act Bloc Party, which in itself generated 16% of all conversation (2 410 mentions to be exact).

There were 1 801 tweets which engaged with official festival profile, @rockingthedaisy but interestingly a further 799 tweets incorrectly referenced @rockingthedaisies in their tweets.

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Interestingly there wasn’t all that much conversation about the various bands – we’ll put this down to the fact that not too many people were busy on their cellphones during the festival. That said, the band that scored the most volume (other than Bloc Party) was Desmond and the Tutus, which generated 91 mentions.

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And just for laughs, festival-joke, “Alan and Steve” appeared in conversation 176 times. We were seriously hoping that “Alan” and “Steve” would have popped up on this word cloud but people were just so excited for the festival and had such a great time that the prevailing themes of conversation were overwhelmingly positive.

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Thanks to Seed Experiences and to all of the Daisies’ Sponsors, Organisers – we had an amazing time!

Rocking the Daisies and DeadMau5 Online

Please note this is a re-post from an article I wrote on 08/12/2011 on http://www.brandseye.com but the website has since changed format and my posts are no longer accessible there.

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What value does getting involved with festivals offer you – and how should you get involved? Some observations about the online conversations surrounding weekend festivals and single night concerts using Rocking the Daisies and DeadMau5…

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Rocking the Daisies happens once a year in Darling, South Africa. It’s a weekend of live music, comedy and outdoor living showcasing everything from the most loved local bands to the most niche of South African dance acts.

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The target market:

– Guys and Girls aged 20-33

– Mostly English consumers from Cape Town and surrounds

– Some tourists, mostly American or German

– LSM groups 8-10

– Students and young professionals

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DeadMau5 is a world famous Electronic-House DJ renowned for his unique sound and stimulating audio-visual displays and who recently toured in Cape Town.

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Even though both events represent vastly different genres, their target audiences are actually quite similar; suggesting that this market could be reached off the back of co-branding or associating with quite a varied mix of artists and entertainers.

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Exposure by the numbers: 

During the lifespan of the 2011 brand (between August and October), the Daisies generated:

 – 1 782 920 Opportunities-to-See (OTS)

– An Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of R 1 609 652

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Aside from backing the festival financially – the Daisies’ sponsors do a lot to support and create an awesome atmosphere on the ground. 23.9% of its AVE came from direct conversation about this year’s sponsors, most of which were either in the alcoholic beverage or entertainment categories.

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Who are the top influencers?

Identify those consumers with large audiences and who are already speaking about your brand (reduces paid endorsement) and inspire them to get their networks involved.

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Moreover, 13.9% of Daisies’ consumer conversation came from influential consumers, mostly on Twitter. This segment alone generated 57.2% of the total OTS suggesting how important a specific network of influencers was in keeping the Daisies’ community together.

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When and where should the brand’s community be engaged?

Leverage the promotional build-up toward your event. Incentivise user interaction with and fun campaigns and giveaways in return for the most valuable content and brand evangelism to encourage positive conversation.

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The majority of Daisies’ festival goers can be reached via Twitter (which contributed 72% of all conversation) and then on Facebook (4% of all conversation).

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However, the Daisies festival is remote and based entirely outdoors. Few people actively tweeted or blogged about the event while they were there, so interacting with users while they’re partying up a storm won’t give you any return on engagement.

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However, high levels of intensive or concentrated brand engagement are more likely to be met at one-night, urban events like the recent DeadMau5 concerts. Concerts like these are more likely to have authors engaging throughout the event purely because there is higher social media usage in urban areas and because users always have their phones on them.

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The event sponsorship recipe is four-fold:

1. Provide a unique and interesting brand experience on the ground that proves that your brand not only talks the talk but that it lives up to what its advertising promises. If people have fun, they’re more likely to talk about it when they come back.

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2. Leave a message: Remember to seed some call-to-action to maximise on online conversation and retain its community following even after Monday morning. Ideally encourage engagement on specific platforms – either your Facebook Wall or using a Twitter hashtag for easy identification after your campaign.

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3. Take a step back: The community’s response to this is the perfect feedback loop. Find out which strategies worked for them and which ones didn’t. Find out who to call on for your next event – both your top influencers and your most avid fans.

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4. Develop a slick “head held high” exit strategy if your brand isn’t going to keep its event page live until the next one and remember to thank your community for their involvement.