FYRE Festival Doco - A Social Media Case Study

So, many of us have heard about, or seen the Netflix documentary about the failed Fyre festival in 2017. It ended up being an absolute debacle and I could probably turn this into a case study on project management, or even how to get stuff done when the odds are firmly stacked against you. But let's forget about the failure of the project proper and focus on the social media masterclass that this doco was. This is how they did it...

Branding

Right form the start, they had the brand. A simple orange square (which later became an identifier

for the festival on its own) the symbol and the zig zag. It was everywhere and became known around the world. Forget the zig zag on Charlie Brown's shirt - it was now owned by Fyre.

The Attractive Character

Russel Brunson discusses the attractive character in his books as "a persona that attracts clients or customers and helps you build your following". Enter Ja Rule! His expletive laden descriptions in social media, shirtless photos sucking on a corona at a tropical beach and appearance of the ultimate lifestyle of booze, money and babes was the centrepiece of the marketing strategy. He spoke with F#$@#%ing investors, hooked F#$@#ing big names and spruiked the F!@#$!#@ing Fyre festival - all whilst shirtless and with a beer in his hand... The target makret loved him! And later, when things got a little strained - he was front and centre again, telling all and sundry to find a way to F!@$#!@ing fix it!

The Social Media Influencers

Here is the big one! Take your brand, your attractive character and find some social media influencers to help you promote them. If you look carefully, this part was genius in regards to identifying a niche and targeting them directly. Who goes to music festivals? Now who do these people follow - girls because they want to be like them and boys - well - you known! And if they don't, their girlfriends do! Yep, super models!

Add Ja Rule and his yacht hopping lifestyle to a couple of dozen supermodels, a few bottles of champagne and of course, some more F!@#$!#@ing beers, and you have social media gold! Oh, and to really get the boys in we had better throw some of them models on a jet ski - after all, who doesn't jet ski in their bikinis? In the end, the brand became so powerful via this method that the girls were simple posting orange squares!

And as a further identifier as to how important this was, there was a scene where one of the social media managers was going to town as the girls were not tagging the festival in their photos - the girls were good, but social media 101 still applies - tag your brand!

Then it turned!

What social media giveth, social media taketh away! As things started to go south, the social

media teams had another problem. Those that were quick to follow the Fyre brand, were just as quick to attack it - the justification for this is for another day but some crucial errors were made at this point!

• The first complainers were not responded to - which made them angry - which others saw
• Negative comments were removed completely - which made them angry - which others saw.

Then the real nightmare - once some of the punters actually started to arrive and were tweeting, snapchatting, instagramming and facebooking their experience - often on live video - others were contacting for refunds before they even boarded their planes.

Artists then started pulling out as they no longer wanted to be associated with the mess this was becoming - all due to social media reporting. Then came the cheese sandwich!

To me, the power of social media can be summed up with one line from the doco:

"It took super models with millions of followers to get this off the ground and one guy from Canada with just under 400 to bring it all crashing down"....

Conclusion

Social media is an amazing beast, but one that has to be nurtured and managed at all times. I am not saying that those in charge of the Fyre festival should have ignored it to get the interest or blocked it when things went bad - it was not social media's fault that the festival failed - but it is the thing that can make or break you in any business.

And as we are now seeing, Mr Rule and co are looking to jump on the social and mainstream media hype for the Fyre festival and try and get it up and running again... before social media turns its attention to something else...

Have fun

Paul