Undertaking a placement for events company JumpClimb has meant taking on public relations activities related to the production of, and marketing to promote those events. This October saw the BeauVine festival welcomed to the Perth cultural calendar; a meat, wine, art and music culinary festival in the heart of Mount Lawley. The festival was inspired by JumpClimb's premiere festival The Beaufort Street Festival and was associated as such.
BeauVine was run over a weekend with a Friday night session, a Saturday day and night session, and a Sunday session. The festival was marketed as a 'contemporary take on the traditional food and wine festival template' with a 6ft inflatable cow, wine tasting hosted by comedians and a RC chicken derby where punters could race remote controlled chickens around a barn-yard track whilst being yelled at by a Russian farmer's wife (that was me!).
One of the jobs for the PR/marketing team over the weekend (and as usual protocol for our events) is social media monitoring. As an events team we were also very conscious of other events that were happening around the city on that weekend that could potentially compete with us for media attention and attendees. On the Saturday of our event weekend was a French festival, also in its maiden year, called 'Bonjour'. The festival was held in Langley Park, Perth and received 13,000 attendees where BeauVine only attracted about 2,500 a session.
The Bonjour festival was received with quite a bit of contempt from punters who took to social media to publicise their disappointment. Run by four amateur event volunteers, the festival seemed to lack basic event organisation and failed to deliver a French flavour. Bonjour did however do a great job publicising their event, they were able to get their name out and have a lot of people attend, but then again let themselves down with the way that they responded to the backlash they received on Facebook. Following are a few of the comments from attendees taken directly from their Facebook page.
Those that seemed to be affected most by the festival's disorganisation were those that had either paid money to be a part of the VIP option or were French themselves and expected more from an event called a "French Festival". When asking your customers to pay money for something rule number one is, give them something in return or they will get mad at you. Seems pretty simple however people's understanding of 'value for money' differs, particularly that of an event organiser to a client. At BeauVine an entry fee was charged. In the box office we were continually being asked "what do we get for our money?". Some punters were happy to pay the fee, considering it an afternoon or evening well spent, while others were not prepared to pay.
For those that attended BeauVine, we received very positive feedback and rave reviews from local media. While we were a little jealous of Bonjour's big crowds JumpClimb's perogative for the event was to get the brand right. We wanted our attendees and our media to be associating us with creditable wines, beers and food as well as offering punters a unique and enjoyable festival with quirks and spaces to be enjoyed with friends. Following are a couple of the headlines from The West, The Sunday Times and Perth now with content put together by our JumpClimb media team.
BeauVine planning for 2016 is already underway with the event to be held earlier in the year. Like the Beaufort Street Festival, JumpClimb believes that this festival will only become more popular each year that it runs. As previously stated this year the focus really was to establish the festival brand and gain the support and trust of our vendors, sponsors and the community. It is another event to add strength to the JumpClimb brand and help us establish ourselves in the Perth community as well which is exciting!
Looking forward to see what 2016 brings for JumpClimb.
-Heather.
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