Fyre Festival: A Brand’s Responsibility to Its Consumers
From the moment the Fyre Festival influencer campaign launched on December 12th, 2016 until April 27th, 2017 when the first planes landed on Roker Point, Great Exuma in the Bahamas, the world was captivated. It’s not so much that an event like Fyre Festival had never been done before, but the way in which it was being marketed to the masses was absolutely uncharted territory. For more than 5 months leading up to the event, the infamous CEO of Fyre Media Inc., Billy McFarland and Rapper Ja Rule pushed the Fyre Festival via social media. Their thought was that when (not if) the festival was a success that they could use the profits to further develop their Fyre music booking app.
For months prior to this, McFarland sat in a plethora of investor meetings, making wild accusations of unlimited basis with nothing more than a pipe dream and a few wild ideas to back it up. Sure, there have been companies that have been able to fake it till they made it, but that’s a highly risky route to run if you haven’t proven your ability to turn a profit in the past to investors. But let’s get one thing straight, what Billy McFarland did wasn’t technically “Fake it till you make it.” What he did was fraud. There’s a big difference between the two notions and it is something very important that both brands and consumers need to remember every time they make a sizable purchase either via a brand partnership or at the point of sale.
Fyre Festival Promises
Fyre Festival promised festivalgoers a truly VIP experience on an idyllic Bahamian private island “once owned by Pablo Escobar.” It was precisely this marketing claim that lost them access to the island and had them scrambling to find a new site mere months prior to the festival. Check out the original promo video:
Festivalgoers were told they would fly in from Miami on a custom, VIP-configured Boeing 737. Instead, they were crammed into commercial airliners. Guests were expecting to have their food delivered to them by a luxury catering group. Instead, they were served cheese sandwiches in Styrofoam containers. To add insult to first world injury, it rained the day before they arrived, and the half-built huts (which were actually leftover FEMA hurricane tents) that were marketed as luxury villas were drenched in rainwater.
Do your Due Diligence, People
This goes without saying, if you’re dropping serious coin on an experience half way across the world, you should probably do some research on the company beforehand. Don’t get caught up in the fact that your favorite supermodel influencers like Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid, and Kylie Jenner promoted it on social media; they got paid bank to do that.
This might sound like an uber first world problem and it is. But, if you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars for a weekend getaway, you want to get what you paid for. Red flags should have gone off in the brains of every passenger on that plane once they saw that plane, but they didn’t. Instead, they chose to live in the moment and hopefully things will get better once they got to the island.
Due Diligence isn’t just for Consumers
The infamous pitch deck that Fyre Media pushed to investors featured no mention of financial data, but rather the promise of profits thanks to its ability to tap into its rolodex of influencers and media connections. Investors immediately fell in love with its potential profits rather than acknowledging the obstacles that might get in the way of achieving them. Fyre Festival investors rushed into their investment because they wanted to be on the ground floor of something special. They also may have had major FOMO which could have detracted them from doing their due diligence in the first place.
What Have We Learned, Children?
Well class, we learned that marketing can seduce even the best of us. Influencer marketing has a tremendous effect on consumers because people have a vested interest and personal connection with these influencers. Influencers are their own brands and, as such, have a social responsibility to do their due diligence on any brand partnerships for the sake of upholding their promise to their fans. It’s really important for the influencer and their team to get as detailed information as possible about the partnership.
Long gone are the days of slipping into the DMs of an influencer and sending a partnership contract. No longer should influencers say yes to a partnership or project just because of the offer no questions asked. It is because of Fyre Festival that we as brands must practice socially responsible ways to market our product and practice transparency in all of our dealings so that consumers aren’t left with the equivalent of a cheese sandwich when they were expecting a gourmet meal.
