Investigate your brand

All interviewees agree that more background work both on internal and external aspects is required by the new approach, as it is more strongly related to brand’s identities than before. Even if each festival already has a more or less clear idea of its brand and story, Expert 1 underlines the need for reevaluating it according to the new environment. The strategy renewal process includes rethinking long-term goals and direction of the event, and re-assessing its assets (Expert 2). Festival Manager 2 also underlines the importance of evaluating the event’s assets that can be turned into selling points. She also believes that you need to have your objectives ready before contacting a potential partner.

This joins Expert 1’s opinion that partners should be presented with something meaningful to be convincing and that objectives should be clear. Expert 2 also encourages to have a clear general vision for partnership policy, as well as clear objectives for each partnership.

On the other hand, Festival Manager 3 explains that strategies should not include “pre-defined and calibrated operating model and objectives, but rather a continuous availability of the team and a structured market research based on measured needs”. Indeed, if the festival’s individual objectives are brought forward, the potential partner might feel like they are just being prospected because they can serve some objectives, which therefore diminishes the idea of collaborative partnership. As a reminder, Expert 1 stated that to be meaningful, a partnership should be co-created together. Partnerships are based on people and human interaction, so things cannot be too clearly defined compared to when sponsorship was prevailing. Following the idea of Festival Manager 3, shared objectives should prevail over individual ones. At Premiers Plans, the partnership policy is regularly re-evaluated the same way that the overall strategy of the event is. Their partnership strategy-thinking process is presented below.

• For which needs, resources and objectives are the partners needed for?

• What type of entities and companies? How are we compatible and what are our common values?

• How to tell about and spread out common values, objectives and actions?

• How would the project be perceived by our stakeholders?

• What can our partner ask from us? What can we give him and allow him?

• How to establish a co-construction relationship with partners?

Figure 6. Partnership strategy-thinking process at Premiers Plans European First Film Festival Source: Premiers Plans European First Film Festival, 2013

As we observe from the figure, the interactivity and collaborative aspects of a partnership are at the forefront in the strategy-making process. Experts

underline the need to investigate the festival brand’s identity, strengths, but also its vision for the future, and its resources. The idea is that the more you know your brand and you can play with it, the more professional and convincing you will be. Business Partner 1 explains that festival should really work on “having an identity, know their audiences, what they are trying to do, their purpose”.

Demographics are of key importance when it comes to co-create content that will actually have an impact on the targeted audiences. Expert 1 underlines that festivals do not analyse those demographics as much as they should, and therefore fail to create just the right content. Indeed, even if a festival manages to convince a corporation that a certain idea has some potential, there is still a need to co-create this idea a suitable way so that it reaches the targets.

Festival Manager 3 agrees, explaining that the multiplicity of content at the festival attracts different audience segments, which attracts different kinds of partners. In its strategy, Premiers Plans gathers resources to give the team the possibility to work on developing partnerships, which goes hand in hand with developing audiences.

Business Partner 1 explains that “on my side of the table it really matters to know who attend, because it is part of a plan “do I want to reach this audience”.

Interest-based audience targeting and segmentation is really becoming a big thing.”

Festivals should continuously inspect in detail the habits, lifestyle and behavior of their audience segments in order to convince companies. Business Partner 1 explains that festivals should know what people truly care about the event, in order to reach more people than just the ones physically attending the festival.

She also says that companies usually search for mass reach, and festivals are offering usually quite small segments. It is about convincing them that quality sometimes overcome quantity, and showing that the purposes of both sides are similar. For that reason, it is of key importance that the festival is aware of its own identity and direction.

According to Expert 1, festivals also should “know who is interested in them.

Who do not actually come but maybe listen to the bands that come there, for

example”, claiming that “those demographics are interesting to companies as well”.

Finally, Festival Manager 1 emphasises the importance of creating a “portfolio of interesting properties” for a festival brand, which can be used to attract and convince partners.

“Forming strategic partnerships with businesses is important. Part of the challenge at Edinburgh Fringe is that we do not own the product, the performers do. So we could not sell the traditional way and had to find other properties and ways to do it.” - Festival Manager 1

Properties are all aspects or items that characterises an event and makes it unique, be it concert halls, own productions, content dimensions etc. The value of each of those properties must be assessed to be able to “know the kind of organisations we want to work with and find them” (Festival Manager 1).

Alongside, Festival Manager 1 argues that it is important to know which fields you want to cooperate with, aligning with your needs and vision. Following this idea, Expert 1 proposes that to create more collaborative partnerships, events should think about what kind of content they can create with some help, and that only they can provide and to which specific audience segments.