Catching Fyre: 4 Takeaways That Marketers Can Learn From Fyre Festival

Fyre Festival was a complete disaster from an execution standpoint, yet at the same time, it proved how a powerful social media strategy can get someone to buy into almost anything.

Overall, the biggest driving factor in Fyre Festival’s marketing strategy was influencer marketing. The event permanently changed the industry, and even 3 years later, there are still tactics employed by Fyre Media that can be used by marketers today.

Tactic #1

By sending all of America’s top models and celebrities to the Bahamas at once, as well as having those same influencers all post the infamous “orange tile” graphic at the same time, Fyre Media was able to generate tremendous social coverage and intrigue within the press. It goes to show the powerful, compounding effect that high-level influencers can have on a brand with coordinated efforts.

Takeaway #1: Schedule Influencers Together

When working with multiple influencers, try to schedule their activation or shoot together in order to help build their relationships so they post more, tag each other, and create a mini interconnected social web. This will increase the brand impact as users spend time going from account to account seeing different perspectives of the brand activation or campaign.

Tactic #2

Fyre Festival’s team spared no expense when it came to their content budget. From their initial influencer video to their ongoing influencer photoshoots, all the content coming out of the Bahamas was so great that most of the influencers ended up posting more than their contractual requirements stated just because they had to post that photo of themselves feeding the pigs or on the yacht.

Takeaway #2: Always Hire A Behind-the-Scenes Videographer and/or Photographer

Whenever you work on an influencer photoshoot or activation, be sure to hire a good videographer and/or photographer to capture everything. Not only can that footage be used for behind-the-scenes brand content, but it can also be used as a resource to get added value posts from the influencers. All you need to do is give each influencer access to their own personalized folder with extra content featuring them. Let them know that they can utilize it however they like, as long as they tag the brand anytime they use it. If the content is high quality, there’s a great chance that a given influencer ends up posting something, resulting in added value for the brand.

Tactic #3

Fyre Festival used A and B-list celebrity talent to help generate media coverage and build buzz quickly. While their strategy worked, that doesn’t mean they didn’t overpay significantly. It’s reported that Fyre Festival’s visionary, Billy McFarland, paid Kendall Jenner $250,000 for 1 post.

I don’t know what Kendall’s rate was back in 2016, but it’s surely not even close to what Billy paid. Billy probably felt like he had to get Kendall Jenner on board, and this caused him to overpay. If he would have stayed flexible and shopped around for celebrity talent, he could have saved hundreds of thousands and still had a similar impact.

Takeaway #3: When Choosing Influencers, Stay Flexible

In influencer marketing, it’s critical to stay flexible on who you choose to work with. Once you get too locked in on bringing aboard one specific person, that’s when you will almost certainly overpay. Create a budget, then create a list of influencer targets with multiple backups and proceed accordingly with negotiations, removing anyone that’s over budget.

Tactic #4

Fyre Festival influencers all posted the same orange tile to Instagram at the same time and none of them included much information about what Fyre Festival was. At the time, this caused a mini “break-the-internet” type of situation. In fact people remember the iconic orange square to this day.

Takeaway #4: Drum Up Intrigue by Coordinating Something Wacky & Leaving Out Details

In a world full of more noise than ever before, thinking differently is key to standing out. First, get users’ attention by having your contracted influencer(s) post something visually unique from anything else on their news feed. Next, don’t have them over-communicate details. Instead, make their followers have to work and dig a little to find out more information. Social media gets repetitive, so the posts that get the most attention are normally the strangest (see egg Instagram).

Did I miss any? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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