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Business News Education & Events Marketing & PR The Great Escape 2014
Festival PR tips shared at The Great Escape, and now in the CMU Digest Report
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 27 May 2014
The conclusions of CMU’s recent survey of music media about the ways festivals PR themselves are shared in the latest edition of the CMU Digest Report, now on sale, alongside three other papers based on the insight strands presented by CMU at The Great Escape Convention in Brighton earlier this month.
Sam Taylor of CMU Insights presented the top-line findings of the survey at the start of the Festival Business strand at The Great Escape, which included:
1. Give media proper access: Make press accreditation as simple as possible and provide up-front information preferably ahead of public release under embargo. While ticket allocation will be tight, if just a single journalist is allowed in from one publication, they won’t have as good a time, and that might be reflected in the coverage. And remember media today operate on incredibly tight resources and ad revenue generated from your coverage will be unlikely to cover the costs of getting to and being at your event.
2. Provide good facilities: News and feature coverage during the event is arguably most rewarding for both media and festival, but publications need decent facilities onsite to help with this. Providing some refreshments and a smiling face will also make the experience for media more pleasurable. But most importantly, power sockets and really good internet!
3. Partner with us, but be strategic: An increasing number of media are looking to do content partnerships with festivals, where they get special access to line-up news, artists and other information. Though festivals should only look to do a small number of these – and think about which media work best for your event. It isn’t necessarily the magazine or website with the biggest circulation or traffic.
4. Be a true champion of your line-up: Ultimately a media will decide whether to cover a festival based on who is playing. Where possible, keep an eye on what artists on your line-up specific media are already championing and hone in on that.
You will find a more detailed summary of what the editors of various leading music websites told CMU about the ways they approach festival coverage in the Report, which you buy via the CMU Shop here. Or sign up to become a CMU Digest subscriber here and receive this and future reports, plus the weekly CMU Digest email, summarising the biggest stories and events in music each Friday afternoon.
