Enjoying festival sponsorship responsibly

You wouldn’t know it to go outside, but summer really is just around the corner, and with festival line ups being announced and tickets selling out already for most of the big ones, the subject of sponsorship starts to become quite heated.

Take Professor Gerard Hastings recent comment in The Main Event about alcohol sponsorship of festivals. Professor Hastings has produced a study looking at how alcohol advertising influences the behaviour of the people it is targeting. And whilst I agree with his point that “the problems we have when people drink too much could be serious issues at festivals”, I don’t agree at all that alcohol brands are the cause of this.

In my view, no alcohol brand wants its consumers to drink TOO much. In fact it is quite the opposite.

The idea of creating a memorable experience for an alcohol brand at a festival is about having more than a few drinks in a tent. A huge amount of thought and effort goes into creating an experience where the consumer will not only enjoy the product being promoted, but enjoy the environment and atmosphere around them as well.

Far from promoting excessive drinking, alcohol brands have, working closely with the alcohol concessionaires, been keen to prevent the general ‘free for all’ that has occurred at events in the past. For example, I have no doubt that every festival this year will have numerous branded bars, all of which will have professional bar staff who adopt the challenge 21 policy.

Now, I’m not totally naïve in thinking that there won’t be one single festival goer that has one too many. I’m just saying that the blame simply isn’t down to alcohol brands sponsoring the event.

Sponsorship of festivals can be an effective and rewarding form of communicating with target consumers. This communication is never based on a quick fix “sell as much alcohol as you can” approach. In fact, it is about establishing a much longer dialogue with consumers, and building valuable relationships through the power of the experience.

Over a cold pint of cider preferably, enjoyed responsibly of course